Jun. 7—Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series featuring the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce's finalists for 2023 Small Business of the Year. The winner will be announced Saturday, June 10, at the Chamber Awards Gala.

Pipes burst. Roof leaks happen. Fires can too. What's left behind is a mess homeowners have to try and live their lives around.

That is until ServPro steps in to make it "Like It Never Happened." The slogan fits the company's local full-service franchise that handles disaster restorations from estimate to remediation/demolition to reconstruction.

"If you can file a claim with your insurance agent on your property, we can repair it," local ServPro franchise co-owner Jason Latimer said.

"It runs the gamut from a little water damage to fire," Latimer's business partner Josh Eady added. "We've seen just about every possible thing."

Eady and Latimer already had backgrounds in construction insurance repair when they purchased the local ServPro franchise 12 years ago. They had just five employees when they began. Now the company employs 25 and covers 10 counties (Baldwin, Putnam, Jones, Washington, Wilkinson, Hancock, Morgan, Jasper, Greene and Walton).

For the second time in three years and third time under its current ownership, ServPro is a finalist for the Chamber's Small Business of the Year award. The co-owners are quick to point out that the recognition is due to the hard work of their employees.

"We've got a great group of long-term employees that have made careers here," Latimer said. "The dedication of the people we have working here make us who we are."

Dedication is definitely what it takes to work in the insurance repair industry. Emergencies, by their nature, don't operate on a 9-5 schedule. That can make things, as office manager Lyndsey Lavender put it, "pretty hectic" around the ServPro office just off Garrett Way.

"The phone starts ringing at 8 a.m. and usually doesn't stop," said Lavender, who started with the company as a receptionist answering that phone. "We're a 24/7 emergency service, so a lot of times the first thing we do when we come in is catch up on phone calls that came in the night before. It's an organized chaos, for sure."

The ringing phone kicks the ServPro team into action. That's what the company is — a team with different departments handling their respective jobs to make the business successful. Job file coordinators provide estimates to insurance companies. Production technicians remove affected walls, flooring and other materials before reconstruction comes in to make everything brand-new, producing the "afters" for eye-popping before-and-after photos. That's start to finish through the whole insurance claim process.

Lavender shared what she thinks makes ServPro stand out in the local business landscape.

"We are focused on the community," Lavender said. "We work with a lot of other small businesses in our area, insurance adjusters and agents, and the office itself is a very family-oriented environment."

ServPro will be recognized along with the three other finalists for Small Business of the Year at the Chamber Awards Gala Saturday at the Magnolia Ballroom at Georgia College & State University. Other finalists this year include Citizens Bank of the South, Edward Jones: Financial Advisor — Crystal Law, and Amici. Ambassador of the Year, Rising Star, and Making a Difference in Milledgeville award winners will also be announced at the formal event.