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A resource from RocketLevel for restoration company owners and ops leaders, backed by decades of experience in the trade. About a 5 minute read.
Plenty of owners have done it: said yes to a big job, or a flurry of storm losses, that the shop could not actually staff and equip, then spent two weeks paying for it in missed deadlines, exhausted crews, and a property manager who will not call again. Capacity is the ceiling on how much work you can deliver well at one time, and many owners have never measured theirs. Capacity planning is simply knowing that number before you say yes, so you grow on purpose.
Your real capacity is the lowest of three numbers: crews who can do the work, equipment you can field, and the estimators and project managers (PMs) who can scope and supervise it. A shop with six techs but only enough air movers and dehumidifiers for three average water jobs is an equipment-limited shop, no matter how many people it hires. On a surge, though, you can rent air movers the same day. The bottleneck is usually how many losses one estimator or PM can walk, write and run before quality slips. Count the jobs your crews can run well at once, the jobs your equipment can cover, and the losses your estimators and PMs can scope and supervise without dropping the ball.
For water losses, measure it as concurrent active dry-outs, or open work-in-progress files, each one running its own multi-day clock.
A fast way to pressure-test your true ceiling is to picture next month's volume jumping by a fifth and ask which part of the shop gives out first: the crews, the equipment, or the one estimator writing every file. Whatever answers is the constraint to shore up before you sell into it.
Put numbers on it once and the conversation gets short. Say you run 4 two-person water crews, and each carries 5 concurrent dry-outs before daily monitoring starts slipping. Crew ceiling, 20. You own 60 air movers and 16 low-grain refrigerant (LGR) dehumidifiers, and the average dry-out holds 8 movers and 2 dehus, so owned equipment covers 7 jobs (60 divided by 8 is 7, and 16 divided by 2 is 8, so the air movers bind first). The rental account you keep open year-round lifts that to roughly 20. You have one estimator who can walk, write, and supervise 12 open files without anything falling through. Your capacity is 12, not 20. Hiring another tech does not move it, and neither does buying more fans. The next hire is a second estimator or a PM, and until you make it, 12 is the number you sell against.
| Constraint | Count in the example | Binding? |
|---|---|---|
| Crews | 4 two-person crews x 5 dry-outs = 20 | No |
| Equipment | 7 owned (air movers bind first), roughly 20 with the rental account | No |
| Estimators and PMs | 1 estimator, 12 open files | Yes. Capacity is 12. |
Look back at your busiest stretch and ask honestly how many jobs were in motion when quality and timelines started slipping. That is roughly your current ceiling. Find the stretch itself from your own data rather than from memory, by scoring three years of loss dates week by week. In our experience, owners tend to remember the wrong weeks, usually the ones with the worst single job rather than the highest count. Knowing it changes how you sell: you can take the big job confidently when you have room, and you can stage, subcontract, or schedule out when you don't.
When demand approaches your ceiling, you have three levers.
Add labor. A bench of trained on-call techs, or a staffing partner. Two things come with borrowed people and neither waits for the surge to end. You and the staffing agency are jointly responsible in OSHA's eyes, which means site-specific hazard training, PPE, and fit testing for anyone in a respirator are yours to provide, not the agency's to assume. And under 1904.31(b)(2) the injury goes on the log of whichever employer supervises the worker day to day, which on your job site is you. Settle both in writing with the agency before the first temp shows up, because sorting it out after someone gets hurt is not a negotiation you will win.
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Do not put a borrowed worker in a respirator on your job until your own medical evaluation and fit test are done. Under 29 CFR 1910.134, the medical evaluation comes before the fit test at (e)(1), and a tight-fitting respirator is fit tested before first use at (f)(2). OSHA's temporary worker guidance treats the duty as shared with the agency, so put the split in the staffing agreement before the first shift. The respirator choice belongs to your respiratory protection program, with selection under 1910.134(d) and a program administrator named under (c)(3), not to whoever is running the crew that day.
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Add equipment. Owned, or rental relationships set up in advance. Sign the rental account and confirm the after-hours number in the slow season. A rental house that has never heard of you is not a lever at 11 p.m. on the third day of a freeze event.
Manage demand. Stage start dates, subcontract overflow, prioritize the highest-value work. Two hard limits belong on this lever. First, subcontracting overflow does not transfer your license obligation: the sub has to hold the license the work requires in that state, and you have to verify it is active before they mobilize, not after. Second, chasing a storm across a state line can turn a capacity problem into a legal one. Licensing and registration before you contract are set state by state, and a state can tighten the rules during a declared emergency rather than relaxing them, so look up the destination state's. In Florida, contracting without the required license during a declared state of emergency is a third-degree felony under Fla. Stat. 489.127(2)(c). Confirm licensing, registration, and any emergency-specific requirement in the destination state before you accept the first assignment there.