“The old way sucked” and a better way to document restoration projects
Project Documentation
5 min read
Challenge
Explaining restoration work clearly in a complex industry
Josh Winton owns and operates Discreet Restoration in South Florida. Before starting his company, he worked at UPS and later entered the remediation industry as a part-time employee at a mold remediation company. Four years after entering the industry, he opened his own business.
Josh explains that the remediation industry is often viewed as dishonest and misunderstood. Communicating what work needs to be done, how it will be done, and why has been a persistent challenge.
Solution
Using floor plans and visuals to document affected areas
When using magicplan on site, Discreet Restoration starts by walking through the property and sketching out the rooms. Affected areas where remedial services will be performed are marked directly on the floor plan.
“That floor plan is our basis for what ultimately becomes the estimate we’ll produce back in the office.”
Josh explains that magicplan allows his team to put ideas down visually and explain their work in a way that different stakeholders can understand.
“magicplan, at least for us, allows us to not only put all our ideas down on paper but really explains what we’re doing with visuals that the insurance carrier, the adjuster, and the homeowner can understand.”
In the video walkthrough, Josh demonstrates creating a new project, setting the address, capturing rooms using a mobile device and laser measuring tool, adding doors and windows, attaching photos, and building an estimate based on the documented areas.
Results
Faster documentation and on-site estimating
Josh compares the current workflow to how things were done previously.
For an average single-family home under 1,500 square feet, Josh explains that rooms can be sketched in a matter of minutes. He also highlights the built-in estimating tools, which allow estimates to be created during the first meeting if needed.
“If we wanted to, we could produce estimates right then and there. We can sit down with the client, review everything, and finish the estimate during our first meeting.”
Outlook
An all-in-one tool for restoration documentation
Josh describes magicplan as bringing multiple tools together in one place.
“As I mentioned before: having an estimating tool on site. Within our industry, we’ve got tons of different software applications. We’ve got estimating programs, and then we’ve also got floor plan creation programs. We’ve got areas to save photos like your typical Dropboxes and Google photos. magicplan brings it all together where we’ve got an all-in-one tool that can handle everything from photo collection and annotation to floor plan creation.”
He also highlights the value of 360 photos for documenting conditions at a specific moment in time for insurance purposes, as demonstrated in the video walkthrough.
The conversation concludes with Josh describing magicplan in one word.
“… revolutionary.”
Check out the Discreet Restoration website and Josh's awesome YouTube channel.
