Two words on every fire job that can cost the claim

Read any Australian fire restoration course outline and you'll find the same list: scoping, mitigation, cleaning, deodorisation, subrogation, spoliation, documentation.

Five of those you can guess. Two you can't, and they're the two where getting it wrong has consequences that land on someone else's desk months later.

Nobody explains them, so here they are.

Subrogation

When an insurer pays out a claim, they may then go after whoever actually caused the loss to recover what they paid. That's subrogation.

If a fire started because of a faulty appliance, the insurer might pursue the manufacturer. If it started because of dodgy electrical work, they might pursue the contractor. The homeowner gets paid either way — this happens behind the scenes, between the insurer and whoever's responsible.

Why it matters to a technician: your documentation becomes part of that case.

Photographs taken on day one, notes about the condition and position of things, what was affected and what wasn't. All of it can end up supporting a recovery action that might run for a year or more after you've finished on site.

Which means the standard of documentation on a fire job isn't just about getting your invoice paid. Someone may be relying on it to prove what happened.

Spoliation

Spoliation is the destruction or alteration of evidence.

On a fire job, the thing that started the fire is evidence. So is its position, its condition, and often the material immediately around it. If you clean it, move it, throw it out or alter it, you may have destroyed the insurer's ability to recover — and potentially exposed your employer.

This is the one that catches people out, because the instinct on a restoration job is to get in and start clearing. On a fire loss that instinct is wrong until someone has confirmed the origin and cause work is done.

The practical version: on a fire job, what you don't touch matters as much as what you do. If there's any question about whether something is evidence, it stays where it is and you ask.

Why nobody tells you

Partly because it's legal language dropped into a technical course without translation. Partly because the people writing course outlines assume you'll pick it up.

But mostly because fire jobs are less common than water jobs, so fewer technicians build up the reps. Someone can do water damage work for years and encounter their first fire loss with none of this explained.

What good practice looks like

Photograph before anything moves. A street-view shot of the property first, then work through room by room. Start at the doorway, capture the whole room, then step inside and photograph consistently in one direction so nothing gets missed.

Record what was already damaged. Pre-existing damage — dents, cracks, scratches, wear — gets documented so it isn't attributed to the loss or to you.

Photograph position, not just condition. Where things were sitting matters as much as what state they're in.

Include a scale reference. A tape measure in the frame turns a photo into a measurement.

Capture serial and model numbers on appliances and electronics, particularly anything that could be a source.

Timestamp everything and ask the customer whether they took photos before you arrived. Theirs might show something that's since been moved.

None of that is unique to fire jobs. It's just that on a fire job the consequences of skipping it are larger, and they arrive much later.

The mindset difference

On a water job, speed is usually the priority. Every hour water sits, materials degrade and the category can shift. Getting in and getting moving is generally correct.

Fire is slower at the start by design. The fire is already out. Nothing is getting dramatically worse in the next two hours. What can go wrong is destroying something that mattered before anyone established what happened.

Assess, document, confirm what's cleared for handling, then work.

Where to learn it properly

Both terms sit in the IICRC Fire and Smoke Restoration Technician syllabus, which in Australia runs two days in person or three days as an online livestream at four hours a day, through providers including Coach8, Corestone and Decon Systems. Providers state it suits people brand new to the industry as well as experienced techs.

If you're already doing water damage work and fire jobs occasionally land on your run sheet, that's a short course for something that's genuinely hard to pick up by osmosis.