Top PuroClean Owner Launches Mobile Lab Franchise to End Testing Delays

 AccuGuard Environmental, a new mobile environmental testing franchise that brings on-site testing and analysis directly to job sites, rather than the traditional off-site laboratory process, was born from a large-scale problem founder Ben Doebler experienced firsthand as a restoration franchise owner with PuroClean.

“I was out on a job site, and we needed asbestos testing before we could start to address the contents and get the job rolling,” said Ben Doebler, founder and president of AccuGuard. “The vendor came out, and they showed up in flip-flops and shorts and picked up a piece of drywall and put it in a tool bag and was like, ‘See you guys later.’ Then the next thing we knew, we got a $600 invoice, and it took two days to get the test results back. Intuitively, during that interaction, I was like, ‘This is not a professional service. This is not the way that this should be, and this could be done so much better.’ We had this ‘aha’ moment of what if we design a lab that’s inside of a truck and we can immediately provide results. ”

The experience highlighted a challenge property owners alongside restoration and insurance professionals encounter every day as a result of dangerous, highly regulated materials like asbestos and lead. Projects often can’t move forward until environmental testing is complete, yet the testing process itself can introduce major delays that impact every stakeholder involved in the claim.

Rather than accepting the status quo, Doebler started asking a different question: What if the laboratory could come to the jobsite instead of the other way around?

Over the next several years, he invested his time, resources, and determination into developing the answer. Doebler worked to create a fully equipped, certified mobile environmental laboratory capable of bringing professional testing directly to properties. That concept eventually became The Mobile Lab™—a groundbreaking innovation in an industry that has seen little change since its inception.

When Doebler shared the concept with PuroSystems leadership, they immediately recognized both the need in the marketplace and the entrepreneurial savviness of the person behind the idea.

“I’ve been in this business for 30 years,” said Mark W. Davis, PuroSystems chairman and CEO. “When executed properly, [AccuGuard] will solve a problem that’s in the industry, and yet the person who’s coming up with this innovation is a phenomenal operator and someone that I know can execute.”

That confidence was built on an established relationship. Doebler has spent the past decade as a PuroClean Franchise Owner, another brand under parent company PuroSystems, growing his business to four locations and becoming one of the network’s top-performing operators.

“Ben is one of our top-performing PuroClean franchise owners,” Davis said. “We have over 500, and he’s in the top 10—not 10%, the top 10.”

He has been a member of PuroClean’s President’s Circle for nine consecutive years, served a term on the brand’s franchise advisory council, as a brand ambassador, and earned numerous system honors. When he brought The Mobile Lab concept to PuroSystems, he wasn’t simply presenting a new business concept; he was bringing the organization an idea developed from his own experience with a known industry-wide issue and backed by a track record they knew firsthand.

For Doebler, AccuGuard as a franchise opportunity is the birth of a revolutionary idea born on a jobsite years ago. For PuroSystems, it’s another example of what’s possible when ingenuity comes from within their own network.