AI-Enhanced Training Platform

IRI Disaster Specialist Training

For Contractors And Adjusters

Training restoration professionals since 2006

Harnessing Technology For The Storms Ahead

4 Courses All $299 each
100% Online Self-paced, no fixed schedule
Hope AI Tutor Trained on 20+ yrs of real jobs — not generic AI
Enroll Now ▼ Learn more about IRI
About

International Restoration Institute

Who We Are

IRI Was Built for the Victims of Disasters — Since 2006.

We stand with you in the field. IRI is built for the licensed contractors, adjusters, and property owners working the raw wreckage of a storm, fire, or flood — and we've been doing it since 2006.

With the integration of modern technology and applied ML science, we have unlocked the true potential of disaster recovery and restoration training. As disaster professionals, we are no longer tied down by static handbooks, rigid study guides, and outdated PDFs as the backbone of technical education.

Today, harnessed tech works directly for you — the contractor and the adjuster. When you train with IRI, you are never alone in the field.

No more scrambling for a book or fishing through a manual under high-stress conditions — Hope and your IRI training are with you on every jobsite.

IRI Disaster Restoration Contractors
IRI at the Forefront

We Taught It Online
Before It Was Accepted.

IRI was one of the first to deliver disaster recovery and restoration certification fully online — a discipline the industry was slow to embrace. For over a decade, the conventional wisdom was that structural drying and disaster restoration could only be taught in a classroom.

We never believed that. We built our courses in the field, tested them on real jobsites, and put them online while the rest of the industry caught up. Today, online training is the standard — and we're proud to have helped lead the way.

Then we did it again. We built the moisture mapper, 20+ restoration tools, the digital documents, the jobsite forms — and then we built Hope: an AI that walks the job with your crew, fills out every form by voice, gets the customer’s signature, and files the PDF. Not a chatbot on a website — an agent in the field, on the phone, doing the work.

Agentic AI — AI that takes actions, not just answers questions — exists today at a handful of AI laboratories. In the trades, it exists at IRI. No other restoration school or software platform puts an AI agent on the jobsite, in the worker’s pocket, filling out the forms by voice. That’s not a claim we make lightly — it’s what we built.

And for the owner, we built Storm Command — one screen that tracks every specialist’s training progress, certification status and expiries, jobs with form-filing status, and a private internal messaging system hosted at IRI. The worker has Hope. The owner has Storm Command. Two command centers, one system, included with enrollment.

Same mission since 2006: disaster workers are ground zero. When the hurricane makes landfall, when the fire takes the house, when the flood fills the basement — they're the ones who walk in. They already pay the price in the field, for the victims of disasters, hurricanes, fire, flood, and storm. They deserve better tools, better training, and a price that respects the work — not a $2,495 seminar or a $5,495 notebook. We're still creating, still innovating, still standing beside you.

AI Upgrade

Why the New Changes?

What's behind the excitement about the AI upgrade at IRI? IRI was honored and grateful to receive a discrete API development grant from the OpenAI Foundation — funding that helped cover the research and development costs behind building Hope. Hope now runs as IRI's own sovereign AI, on our private silicon, dedicated to helping the disaster recovery and restoration industry and humanity as a whole. She's the latest in a long line of IRI innovations — from the moisture mapper and our restoration tools to the field-based AI systems that read your photos and complete your project documents.

Hope AI

Hope AI — Frequently Asked Questions

Meet Hope — IRI's own restoration AI, built in the field

Is Hope just an API, Cloud AI Model or a wrapper for ChatGPT?

Absolutely not. Hope is IRI's own proprietary AI training system — a large AI model system consisting of hundreds of billions of parameters. She is not a cloud endpoint, a monthly subscription API, or a standard corporate chatbot. General-purpose models like ChatGPT are brilliant at everyday tasks — and even they recognize that a specialized model trained on a specific field will outperform a general one. That's exactly why IRI built Hope: a model trained on 20+ years of restoration field data, so you get answers grounded in the work, not generic guesses.

What is the difference between Hope and an AI chat assistant?

Category. A chat assistant is a closed-loop text lookup tool — it answers questions from a library, then hands off to a human when the answer isn’t there. Hope is an agent. She tutors inside the lessons, grades your exercises, dictates storm documentation into filed PDFs, sketches the rooms, and prices the estimate line by line from federal data — in 12 languages, on the job site, on IRI’s own hardware. A chat window answers. Hope works.

What are WordPress chatbots and website AI widgets?

Rented assistants embedded into a website — a third-party widget that routes questions to a public cloud model over a document library. They are common, quick to deploy, and genuinely useful for answering questions. The pattern to understand: the school owns the library, but a vendor owns the brain and the pipe. A widget like this is a closed-loop text lookup tool — it retrieves and rephrases text, it is not a field agent, and its behavior can change whenever the vendor or the cloud model behind it changes.

What should a worker ask before paying for an AI training subscription?

Fair questions, asked before you pay:
• Who controls the AI — the school, or a third-party vendor routing to a public cloud model?
• If the vendor raises prices, changes models, or shuts down, what happens to the content I paid for?
• Do I own my logs and workflows, or rent them?
• Is the AI part of the training platform — or a chat window bolted onto a marketing page?
• Does it work in my language?
• Is the AI a subscription forever, or included with the certification?
Any school that answers these straight is worth listening to. At IRI, Hope is ours — on IRI’s own hardware, included with the certification, in 12 languages.

What happens to my training content if an AI provider changes models or shuts down?

It is the real risk of renting. With a third-party widget over a public cloud model, the answers can change overnight with an unannounced backend update — and if the vendor closes its doors, subscriptions, logs, and workflows can disappear, because you never owned the system. It matters doubly when industry standards and association guidance are served through a rented pipe: the standard itself doesn’t change, but the answers about it can. IRI runs sovereign: Hope runs on IRI’s own hardware, your courses carry 2-year access, your certification lives on your account, and the documentation tools are part of the platform — not a bolt-on anyone can repossess.

How does IRI quality-control Hope's answers?

Through IRI’s own AI lab — real-time quality-control systems built into the learning platform. Hope’s answers flow through proprietary monitoring: dashboards watch the conversations in real time, flag anything off, and human specialists review and correct — and the corrections go back into Hope’s knowledge. System-issue panels watch the platform’s health around the clock, and student struggle patterns surface while a course is still running, not after. A chatbot that hands a question to a human is doing the minimum. IRI treats every AI answer as something to verify, catch, and improve — that is what an AI lab is for.

Does Hope's knowledge stay current?

Yes — that is the point of the lab. Corrections from reviewed answers are folded back into the knowledge base. Course material updates flow into her grounding. Market facts on IRI’s public pages — prices, schedules, read dates — are swept and re-indexed on a cadence, and Hope searches the refreshed knowledge live. An AI is only as current as the school’s discipline behind it; at IRI that discipline is a running system, not a promise.

How was Hope built, and what makes her different?

Hope was built locally using advanced ML reinforcement learning science. Her restoration knowledge comes from IRI's own proprietary curriculum — the courses and field resources we've built and refined over 20+ years of real projects — not from proprietary industry textbooks or published manuals. We trained, tested, and benchmarked her performance for the disaster recovery and restoration processes. Hope's style of training is comparable to many frontier models — think modern Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Qwen. We fused her logic layers on our own private, secure silicon, creating a hyper-specialized brain built on IRI's own field engineering data.

What kind of hardware does Hope run on?

Hope runs on a custom, industry-specific AI system built on IRI's own private supercomputer, powered by next-generation accelerator hardware we own and operate — our models, training, and orchestration are proprietary to IRI. We do not route your private data through public clouds. Because we build and control the infrastructure ourselves, your questions stay confidential and you get zero-latency answers, 24/7.

If an association or corporate entity recommends generic ChatGPT for field work, are they right?

No — and we say that kindly. A general-purpose AI is a great everyday tool, but a disaster zone is not an everyday situation. Generic models can get the technical details of structural drying, fire restoration, mold remediation, or disaster estimation wrong, and on a high-liability job, a wrong recommendation is a real risk to your business. That's why restoration-specific training — and a specialized model like Hope — matters.

How does Hope help me save money on equipment?

Hope teaches you how to work efficiently using the gear you already own — whether that's drying a flooded structure, cleaning fire and smoke damage, containing mold, or scoping a full disaster estimate. She does not guess. She's mapped using modular logic arrays that calculate psychrometrics, vapor pressure, and grain depression in real time, and she knows what equipment each type of loss actually needs — so you don't rent gear you never needed. Because IRI accepts zero corporate sponsors, Hope's logic loop is entirely unbiased — she recommends only what the science and your job actually require.

What is Hope's policy on Data Privacy and student tracking?

We enforce a strict privacy policy. We track only the academic activity needed to run your courses — grades, quizzes, exams, and progress — and nothing more. We do not log your proprietary jobsite photos, never package your information into marketing lists or mass emails, and never sell your data. Because Hope runs on our own private silicon, your technical queries, business strategies, and student metrics remain confidential and secure from corporate surveillance.
The IRI Commitment

Our Commitment to You

IRI was built in the field, not a boardroom. For over 20 years we've trained the advanced disciplines — structural drying, fire, mold, and disaster estimation — and were among the first to teach them. We respect the professionals who do this work and the science behind it. Our commitment is to teach field-tested procedures and science — free of outside influence — so you get the real-world edge.

Independent by Design

  • IRI is fully independent — we do not belong to or associate with any trade organization, approved school, or affiliate, so our curriculum serves you, the student. Direct, no middlemen.
  • We build on the industry's shared science — psychrometrics, relative humidity, vapor pressure, grain depression — then go further with real, scenario-driven learning that is used in the field every day.
  • All IRI content is proprietary, built in the field over 20 years — no borrowed industry learning material. What you learn here, you will not see at other institutes.
  • We haven't partnered with insurance industry associations or corporate entities — and we've stayed fully independent for over 20 years, teaching our proprietary, field-proven training combined with advanced science.

No Hidden Money

  • Zero sponsored ads in IRI coursework. Your learning is never interrupted by a sales pitch.
  • We sell direct to the student — no referral fees or middlemen built into your tuition.
  • We teach water, fire, mold, and disaster estimation using the gear you already own — and we never sell equipment or push you to buy hardware. Hands-on skills matter; buying gear from your school shouldn't.
  • Your tuition covers your full education — courses, AI tools, documents, and proctored exam — with no hidden fees and no upsells. All included, nothing extra to buy.

Standing With the Student

  • We bring learning and modern tools directly to disaster events like hurricanes and wildfires — IRI crews train in real time, 24/7.
  • We've offered training in 12 languages — more than any of the traditional bodies — and we're adding more, because every community deserves training in their own language.
  • We never package your information into marketing lists or mass emails. We value your privacy and your time.
  • We stand with the student who wants the honest, practical learning they need to work responsibly in any disaster event.
What We Offer

Advanced Training for Experienced Professionals

Professional-Level Courses

  • Advanced construction related courses for experienced individuals with at least 1 year of experience in construction, restoration, property adjusting or a related field.
  • IRI does not offer entry level courses for career training.
  • Used by construction, insurance, restoration and the property management industries to expand their companies' education and training.

Lowest Cost, Highest Quality

  • IRI is proud to offer the highest quality training at the lowest cost available to all students and their companies.
  • Online training reduces company costs: no Hotels, Gas, High Training Class fees, or Airfare.
  • We do not resell, use affiliates or instructors to sell our courses. We sell direct to the student to keep the cost low.
  • All material you need is included in the price. No hidden fees.
Our Platform

Built for Modern Learning

100% Online, Self-Paced

Every course runs on your schedule — study when you want, within your 2 years of campus access from enrollment.

Hope AI Tutor & Field Agent

Hope is trained on restoration, not generic answers — tutoring you through every lesson, then agenting your jobsite documents after certification.

Hands-Free Documents

Open a form and just speak — Hope fills every field live, files the PDF, and gets the customer signature. No keyboard, no stopping.

Field Tools & DryIQ Included

Moisture mapper, drying log, safety reports, daily logger — plus 30 days of DryIQ Estimator free with enrollment ($49/mo beta after).

Proctored Exam, Zero Fees

Human + AI proctored via webcam, free unlimited retakes. Certifications are earned — not clicked through.

12 Languages

English, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Arabic, French, Korean, Haitian Creole, and Chinese — your crew, on any device.

Our Courses

Professional Certification Programs

Water Restoration Specialist training — moisture mapping technology in the field

Water Restoration

Water damage assessment, extraction, structural drying, moisture mapping, and restoration documentation.

$299 Learn More
Fire Restoration Specialist training — command scene operations

Fire Restoration

Fire damage assessment, smoke and odor removal, content cleaning, structural evaluation, and safety protocols.

$299 Learn More
Mold Remediation Specialist training — containment command

Mold Remediation

Mold identification, containment, remediation protocols, air quality testing, and prevention strategies.

$299 Learn More
Disaster Estimation Specialist training — estimator on the jobsite

Disaster Estimation

Damage estimation, Xactimate, scope of work, insurance claims, and project management for disaster recovery.

$299 Learn More
Disaster Recovery Specialist capstone — the restoration command center

Disaster Recovery Specialist (DRS)

Complete all 4 courses above and earn your 5th certification — Disaster Recovery Specialist — absolutely free.

Learn More

Ready to Get Started?

Join thousands of restoration professionals who have earned their IRI Disaster Recovery and Restoration training and certification. Enroll today and advance your career.

Enroll Now
Questions?

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about IRI certification courses

What is the International Restoration Institute (IRI)?

IRI is an independent online training institute that has been training restoration professionals since 2006. We offer advanced certification courses in water restoration, fire restoration, mold remediation, and disaster estimation, developed from in-field, real-world scenarios.

Is restoration training required by law?

In most states, water, fire, and mold restoration work is not required by law to be trained or certified — licensed contractors can legally perform the work without it. But that's exactly why disaster recovery and restoration training matters. Your state license proves you can do the work; real, industry-recognized training proves you know how to do it right. When customers compare restoration companies, seeing that training gives you the edge that untrained competitors don't have.

Does insurance have to pay if a contractor isn't certified?

Insurance pays for covered losses under the policy — it can't deny a covered claim just because the contractor isn't certified in restoration. Certification is voluntary, not a legal requirement. But there's an important distinction: work done by an unlicensed contractor, or faulty workmanship, can be excluded from coverage. That's why disaster recovery and restoration training matters — it shows you're taking the extra step to protect the customer, and that your company cares about restoring their property to pre-existing conditions.

Who are IRI courses designed for?

IRI courses are designed for experienced professionals with at least 1 year of experience in construction, restoration, property adjusting, or a related field. We do not offer entry-level career training courses.

How much do IRI courses cost?

Each IRI certification course is $299. All material is included in the price with no hidden fees. Complete all four courses and earn a fifth certification (Disaster Recovery Specialist) free.

Are the courses fully online?

Yes. All IRI courses are 100% online, self-paced, with no fixed schedule — study when you want, any time of day, within your 2 years of campus access from enrollment. Our courses are available 24/7 so you can study at your convenience.

Does IRI offer AI tutor support?

Yes. Every IRI page includes Hope, our AI tutor, available 24/7 to help with course questions, enrollment guidance, and study support in 12 languages.

What industries use IRI training?

IRI training courses are used by the construction, insurance, restoration, and property management industries to expand their companies' education and professional development in disaster recovery.

Is IRI affiliated with any other institute?

No. IRI is fully independent of any other institute. Our courses are developed from in-field, real-world scenarios and sold directly to students to keep costs low.
DryIQ Estimator — Beta

Walk it. Speak it. Or hand it the file.
Hope builds the estimate.

DryIQ is the agentic estimating platform for restoration. Walk the rooms with a guided voice workflow, dictate the scope, or upload any estimate PDF and watch it convert to catalog-exact DryIQ pricing. Hope draws the rooms, fills the line items, and waits for your approval — every line priced from federal data in your county. Take the class, then take on the work.

A certification you can’t put into action is just a certificate. Learn it. Then bill it.

Enroll Now →

Every new enrollment includes 30 days of DryIQ free — then $49/mo beta pricing, month-to-month.

See how we compare →

Catalog pricing is proprietary — calculated from federal inflation data. Updated monthly on the 15th.

DryIQ Command Center — Hope proposes a priced line item and the worker approves. Click to enlarge.

“Add a large dehumidifier for 3 days” — Hope proposes the line, priced. You tap to apply. Click the image to zoom.

Walkthrough + Dictation
🗣️

Walkthrough + Dictation

Talk through the room. Hope proposes remove, replace, or restore lines at the right grade.

VIEW →
20+ Trade Tools
🔧

20+ Trade Tools

Roof, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, cabinetry, structural — one sketcher, every trade priced.

VIEW →
Hope, Your Partner
🤖

Hope, Your Partner

She draws the rooms, fills the lines, and waits for your approval. No chatbots.

VIEW →
Proof-Sheet PDF
📄

Proof-Sheet PDF

Every line cites its federal source — BLS materials, SAM wages, your county. Audit-ready.

VIEW →
Best Value — Save $450

All 4 Courses — Disaster Recovery Specialist Package

WRS + MS + FRS + DES certification courses. The 5th credential — Disaster Recovery Specialist (DRS) — is included free when you complete all four.

$750.00
$1,200.00 — All 4 Courses
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All 4 Courses — $750 ⚡ 30-day DryIQ trial
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All 4 Courses — Disaster Recovery Specialist
WRS + MS + FRS + DES · Save $450
Enroll Now ⚡ 30 days of DryIQ free — then $49/mo
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