The story
How Lever360 came to be.
It didn't start in a software boardroom. It started on a job site — with a problem nobody else would own.
01
It started with a problem
One company. One promise. Total service.
Ted Lavender — a former insurance claims adjuster — was tired of watching restoration jobs fall apart because no single company would take responsibility from start to finish. He and Lisa Lavender, an accountant who’d grown up around the insurance industry, founded Berks · Fire · Water Restorations (BFW) to fix that.
Their first two work vehicles were totaled cars Ted rebuilt himself. Twenty-five years later, BFW is still running — over 80 employees strong, still serving customers every day.
learn it.”
Lisa wanted to bring order to a fast-growing company, but couldn’t systematize work she didn’t understand. Ted told her: then go learn it. So she did. Class after class.
Over the next decade she became an IICRC Master Restorer — in water, fire and smoke, and textiles. And she found something bigger than technical knowledge: training inspires people. It elevates the craft.
02
A school of our own
The place we’d actually want to send our own techs.
Ted and Lisa opened the Restoration Technical Institute (RTI) — an IICRC-approved school designed to be the place they’d actually want to send their own technicians.
Years later, RTI’s curriculum became the foundation for a digital training platform, delivering the same education on demand, anywhere — what is now Lever360’s Learning Lever.
03
Software that finally got it
Ryan understood her before she finished the sentence.
BFW kept outgrowing its tools. Lisa evaluated every major restoration system on the market and walked away frustrated every time. Then she met Ryan Smith — a developer who’d grown up in restoration, run his own restoration company, earned his IICRC credentials, and then sold his business to build iRestore: software designed by a restorer, for restorers.
Lisa explained her frustrations. Ryan understood her before she finished — because he’d lived it. Around 2014, BFW brought iRestore on as its software, and the build process sharpened around what a working restoration company actually needs — Lisa and Ryan building side by side. In January 2018, they made it official: Ryan, Lisa, and Ted became partners.
Same people. Same tools. Same mission. Just clearer.
Software, in-person school, digital training — same audience, same goal, same people building all of it. So we brought everything under one name: Lever360. The name carries the meaning: with the right tools and training, plus vision and leadership, a restorer can move the world. The tools are the lever. You are the fulcrum.
Rebuilt for what’s next
A ground-up rebuild.
By 2021 we knew the platform needed to scale further than the original code could carry it. So we made a deliberate decision to rebuild Lever360 Software from the ground up — modern infrastructure, beautifully designed field apps, the same intuitive feel.
Still in the field
We use what we build.
BFW still operates today — and runs on Lever360 every single day. We don’t build software in a vacuum and walk away. We hit the same edges you do. Then we fix them.
