It is everyone’s nightmare. One day you get to the office and discover that it has been flooded — with all manner of electrical equipment damaged and seemingly beyond repair.

Or another, perhaps even more disastrous scenario, is a fire — with not just the flames but also smoke and water damage proving potentially disastrous.

But, in may cases, there is a solution. The equipment that you thought was gone for good can be brought back to life, thanks to the efforts of specialist firm SG Restronics.

Now based at a 2,000 sq ft workshop at Millets Farm, near Abingdon, understandably most of SG Restronics’ work is for the insurance industry.

Clearly, restoring equipment is cheaper than buying new and every effort is made to return items that may have been damaged by fire, flood or by accident to a condition that is better than it was before the incident.

Owner Vinod Kumar (pictured) said: “We like to act as a one-stop shop. While we concentrate on the restoration of mechanical and electrical items, we outsource other work, such as cleaning files and books, but we remain the sole point of contact.”

The nature of the work means SG Restronics is a niche business, but a very necessary one.

Cleaning up after a flood or fire is also a time-consuming process and involves a lot more than just cleaning a piece of equipment inside and out.

Its staff are experts in their field, whether it be electronics or IT.

Mr Kumar said: “It is very technical work. For example, if we pick up anything damaged by smoke we strip the machines, remove the soot and any other debris, wash and dry it and then put it back together.

“We return all the data back to computers — it is safe with us and we do not touch hard drives as they are sealed units. Then we get the machine operational again, checking the electronics and the software.

“Most times it goes back to the policy holder better than it was before!”

Those policy holders are both domestic and commercial. One particularly big job was at the warehouses of electricity and gas supplier npower in Swindon which suffered a flood.

Mr Kumar explained: “It took us six months. We were doing everything from the computers to the wiring and restoring it all back to life.”

Plenty of work came SG Restronics’ way in the aftermath of the floods in 2007 when many businesses were hit by damaging water levels and another major disaster from which it benefited was the Buncefield refinery disaster in 2005.

The company was called into the offices of finance firm Citigroup near the site in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, which had been contaminated not just with smoke, water and dust, but also heavy metals deposited by the toxic cloud which resulted from the blaze.

A total of 80 computers, 50 franking machines, televisions and even overhead cranes in the warehouse had to be cleaned and restored.

Mr Kumar said: “That job took us more than a month but we managed to restore 99 per cent of the equipment.”

SG Restronics currently employs four people but more can be taken on depending on the nature of a particular job.

Mr Kumar set up the business in 2003 and was the sole trader for a couple of years when SG Restronics became a limited company.

He has a background in technical management, having previously worked at Siemens Magnet Technology in Eynsham and also ran a TV and audio repair business in Oxford.

His job at Siemens involved restoring equipment such as electronics and machinery that had been damaged by fire and flood on behalf of insurance companies.

He said: “It made me think that I would rather be working for myself and I have been doing it ever since.”

Mr Kumar is now looking to expand the company’s horizons and wants to take it away from its reliance on the insurance industry.

“Until now we have not really had a public face but we can offer a general restoration service,” he said.

Typical areas for more general work will include portable appliance testing and general cleaning of equipment such as computers, fax machines, printers, telephones or photocopiers that build up vast amounts of damaging dirt that can affect performance and even cause a breakdown.

That could be expensive, not just in terms of the equipment but in the potential loss of business caused as a result of it.