Emergency response
Emergency Building Repair for Commercial Property in Lexington and Richmond, KY
We stop it, secure the building, and document it the same night. Securing and making safe is the whole scope — this page says where it ends.
If anyone is hurt or trapped, or there is a report of gas, smoke or arcing, call 911 first. Then call us.
Is this an emergency, or is it a Monday problem?
The cleanest definition we have read is not ours. The District of Columbia’s Department of General Services writes it into its maintenance contract: an emergency service call is one placed outside normal working hours “and of such a nature, that response cannot wait for the resumption of Normal Working Hours.”
In plainer words, and this is the question we will ask you on the phone: can this wait until morning without getting worse, more expensive, or unsafe?
| What you are looking at | The honest answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Anyone hurt or trapped, or a report of gas, smoke or arcing | 911 first, then call us | Life safety outranks the contract, and it outranks us. |
| The building is open — broken glass, a forced door, a breached opening | Tonight | It is a security problem and a weather problem at the same time, and both compound. |
| Water running that cannot be isolated | Tonight | The damage compounds by the minute. Stopping it is the cheapest thing anyone does all week. |
| Water isolated at a shutoff, contained, not spreading | Usually first light | Send a photograph of the containment. If we disagree with you, we will say so. |
| A stained ceiling tile, no active drip | Next business day | Nothing is degrading tonight. It still gets logged, and it still gets looked at. |
| “While you are out there, could you also…” | Next business day, quoted separately | An after-hours rate applied to work that was not an emergency is the invoice that gets disputed. |
| Anything on the stop-list further down this page | Not ours, at any hour | Named below, with who holds it and the Kentucky statute behind the line. |
We say the no out loud and put it in writing the same night. A logged “advised next business day, customer agreed” protects both of us. A silent no is how a call becomes a dispute.
What we do when we get there
Six steps, in this order, on every call. It is deliberately short — a night call is not the place to be improvising a scope.
- Stop the source Close the valve, stop the flow, divert or contain what is still running. Where it is coming in through the building rather than out of a fixture, we contain it and the envelope work gets scoped in daylight.
- Secure the opening Close the breach so the building is not standing open to the street overnight. What that takes on an aluminium storefront or a glass entry with panic hardware is its own subject.
- Protect what is in the room Move stock and contents out of the path, cover what will not move, and get anything on the floor up off it.
- Document it Time-stamped photographs, the damage described in plain language, and the authorization on the record — captured on the night, not reconstructed on Monday.
- Make it safe to occupy, or say plainly that it is not Barricade, sign and isolate. If a space should not be occupied in the morning, you have that in writing tonight rather than a phone call at nine.
- Status before we leave the site Nobody drives away without telling the person who called what was done, what is temporary, and what still needs doing.
Where securing ends
This is the boundary, and it is not a formality. What follows is a different trade with credentials we do not hold, and you should hire somebody who does hold them:
- No water extraction.
- No structural drying, and no dehumidification.
- No mold remediation.
- No fire restoration, and no smoke or odour work.
- No certification claim of any kind. We hold no restoration credential and will not imply one, and a competitor advertising theirs is not a licence for us to hint at ours.
“Water intrusion” is the phrase that hides that boundary, so here it is without the phrase: we stop it, we secure it, we document it. We do not dry the building out afterwards. Where the water was getting in through gutters, flashing, sealants, masonry or a wall, that repair is building envelope work and it is a daylight job.
A response time is three different promises
Buyers write “response” into contracts and mean three different commitments by it. We have read them side by side in real solicitations, and they are not interchangeable. Whoever you hire, pin down which one you are buying.
| The clock | What it actually commits to | Settle this in the contract |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledge | A live human answering, confirming the call is logged, and telling you what happens next. | Does a returned call satisfy it, or must it be answered live? And does the clock start at your call or at the work-order timestamp? |
| On site | Somebody physically at the building, looking at the failure. | On site to assess, or on site with what it takes to fix it? Those are different trucks. |
| Repair complete | The failure resolved and the building back in service. | Does “complete” mean secured and made safe, or the permanent repair finished? On an emergency call those are usually two visits. |
Two things fall straight out of reading those contracts. First, response is priced per trade, not per company. One Kentucky institution’s own bid workbook asks for a response time against each trade block, twice — once for normal business hours and once for emergency hours and holidays. A single blanket figure spanning every trade is the promise that gets audited and lost. Second, missing the window reprices the call. A municipal contract on file says outright that a contractor who does not reach the site inside the stated window is not paid the emergency rate; the invoice reverts to the regular rate.
Which is why there is no response figure anywhere on this page. We have not measured one, and we will not publish a window we have not held. When we agree one with you it belongs in your contract, against a named clock — not in a headline.
What we will not do at 2am, and who holds it instead
Kentucky licensing does not relax at night. None of the statutes below carries an emergency lane an unlicensed company can walk through — “it was an emergency” is not a defence. Publishing this costs us calls. It is also the only reason to believe the rest of the page.
The stop-list
- A gas smell. Get out of the building and take everyone with you. Do not touch a light switch, a flashlight or a garage door on the way. From outside and away from the building, call 911 and your serving gas utility. We will not put anybody into that building until the utility has cleared it — and if you are calling us from inside it, we will tell you to hang up and walk out.
- Standing water in an electrical room, or water reaching energised gear. Nobody goes in. Not us, not your maintenance tech. The utility or a licensed electrician kills it from outside the water. In Kentucky an unlicensed person may not perform an electrician’s duties unless a licensed electrician or master electrician is “present on the site where the work is being performed” (KRS 227A.020(4), KRS 227A.030(2)); the only carve-out covers routine maintenance, which this is not.
- Sprinkler systems. We do not shut, drain, cap or restart one. Kentucky requires a certificate for the “installation, repair, alteration, extension, maintenance or inspection of a fire protection sprinkler system” (KRS 198B.560(1)-(4)) — maintenance included, which is the word most people miss. We will protect contents and get your fire protection contractor and your monitoring company moving.
- Elevator entrapment. We talk to the passengers, call your elevator contractor, call 911 if anyone is in distress, and stay off the doors and out of the pit. “A person shall not work as an elevator contractor or elevator mechanic unless licensed by the department” (KRS 198B.4009(1)). More people are hurt getting themselves out of a stalled car than by the malfunction that stalled it.
- Fire-alarm panels. Silencing, resetting, bypassing or disabling a panel belongs to your alarm or monitoring contractor, not to us. What we will do is tell you before anything is touched: the moment that system is impaired your building owes a fire watch and a notification to the fire department. That obligation is the building’s and we cannot absorb it — but you should hear about it from us first, not afterwards.
- Carbon monoxide. It arrives dressed as a routine no-heat call. More than one person in the building with a headache, dizziness or nausea that eases outside: everyone out, pets included, then 911 and the utility from outside the building. Nobody of ours goes in until the fire department or the utility has metered it. You cannot smell it, and a maintenance truck does not carry a meter.
HVAC, electrical and plumbing are referred, not taken
CPS does not sell those three trades — not at 2am, not at 2pm. On a night call we will do what stops the loss and nothing that needs a licence we do not hold: close a valve, contain the water, reset a tripped breaker once if nothing at the load is wet, scorched or smelling burnt — and if it trips a second time it stays off, because a second reset puts a fault back into somebody’s hand. The fix itself goes to a licensed tradesman. Kentucky requires a master or journeyman licence to “engage in plumbing” (KRS 318.030(1)-(2)).
We do not print a Kentucky statute for HVAC on this page. One exists. Nobody here has read it in full, and an unchecked citation is worse than no citation — so it stays off until it has been verified.
Nothing on this page tells you which work is done by our own hands and which goes to a trade partner. You are hiring one accountable vendor and one invoice; who holds the tool is our problem, not yours. Ask us directly on a vendor form and we answer it directly.
What we need from you on the call
The person who calls at 2am is frequently not the person who can spend money, and a verbal-only approval is how a legitimate emergency invoice becomes a dispute six weeks later. Three things, before anything moves:
- Your full name and title, and confirmation that you are authorized to approve emergency work at this property.
- A PO or work-order number if your system needs one — and if you cannot issue one at that hour, the name of whoever does in the morning.
- A not-to-exceed figure. We stop and call you before we pass it, every time.
You get a one-line written confirmation of all three back the same night, before anybody is on site. Verbal authorization is allowed in every buyer contract we have read; verbal-only is not. One of them puts it plainly: emergency work may be authorized verbally, but it should be followed up in writing at the earliest opportunity.
You are usually on a next-business-day clock to your owner or your client, so what we send back is built to be forwarded rather than decoded: what failed, what was done, what is temporary, what it will take to finish it, and who approved it. Call (859) 310-1209 with those three answers ready and the call takes a fraction of the time.
Settle access before the night it matters
Nobody’s emergency line grants entry at 2am. A municipal contract on file bars work between evening and morning and all weekend without written permission from staff — including emergencies. Badging is a lead time, not a night task: one public buyer requires a background check with fingerprinting and a class run by its own police department before anyone is inside part of its building.
So these get answered once, in daylight, and written onto your account:
- Who can authorize after-hours entry, and how we reach that person at night.
- Is a badge required, and how long does issuing one actually take?
- Does the building require sign-in, and where does it happen?
- Who holds keys or codes — and what happens if one is lost. Key loss is a named liability in more than one contract we have read, with re-keying charged to the contractor.
- Any escort, alarm code, or notification to your monitoring company that has to happen before a door opens.
This is the reason to call us on a Tuesday afternoon rather than meeting us for the first time at 2am. Vendor setup is where the answers get recorded, alongside the W-9, the certificate of insurance and your work-order intake.
The repair that comes after
Securing a building is the start of a scope, not the end of one. Once the source is stopped and the building is closed up, the permanent repair is ordinary daylight work and gets scoped and priced like any other job — numbered steps, the exclusions attached to the same page, and the change-order rule in writing before anything is added.
Interior repairs and build-out
The wall, the ceiling, the door, the trim and the finish work after the make-safe — in buildings that stay occupied while it runs.
Building envelope
Gutters, downspouts, flashing, joint sealants, masonry patching and siding — where the water was getting in before it ever reached a ceiling tile.
If the water is coming through the roof system itself
That is not ours. Roof surfaces and roof systems belong to a separate roofing company, and that is where the call goes. On a night call we contain from inside, protect what is underneath and photograph what can be seen from below, so the scope handed over in the morning is not starting from nothing.
And nobody goes up at night. Not for a look, not to throw a temporary cover over something. A roof in the dark is a fall, and no page on this site sells roof work.
If it is happening now
Call, and have the three approvals ready
Your name and title, a PO or work-order number if your system needs one, and a not-to-exceed. Tell us what failed, whether the building is standing open, and whether anyone is still inside. The written confirmation goes back to you before anybody is on site.
Serving Lexington (Fayette County) and Richmond, KY (Madison County). If anyone is hurt or trapped, or there is a report of gas, smoke or arcing, call 911 first.