How ASA-MMP Transformed Their Estimating Process with Instant Sketches

ASA-MMP Construction Partners specializes in providing expert restoration services to homeowners and businesses throughout the greater Washington D.C. metro area, and also in Houston, Texas. The company handles a wide range of insurance-claim projects, including water-damage restoration, fire damage-repair, and mold remediation. Team members are adept at planning, managing and executing multi-phase projects. Plus, they always work closely with insurance companies and property owners to restore properties as efficiently as possible to their pre-loss condition. This helps ensure a smooth experience from start to finish. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS 

• CHALLENGE: Make the estimating process more efficient

• SOLUTION: Switch from rough pen-and-paper documentation to detailed digital drawings

• RESULT: Faster and more accurate project estimating that enhances project outcomes

• OUTLOOK: This experience is spurring the company to expand the use of digital technology in the field

CHALLENGE 

Leo Almony, a senior estimator at ASA-MMP, manages the company’s restoration estimating, most of which involves insurance claims. “We get about 99% of our projects from insurance companies, primarily residential work,” he says.

Almony has a lot of experience navigating large-loss restoration projects for insurance claims, and says he always focuses on leveraging his skills to produce accurate, well-informed estimations. However, that can be rather tricky, since he works virtually from an office and has to rely on others to gather job-site documentation. That task has always fallen on the shoulders of field technicians – individuals who were in the habit of measuring and sketching manually. “They were just drawing each sketch on a piece of paper. And then I was having to recreate it within Xactimate®️ or CoreLogic,” he explains.

That extra and often tedious work was time-consuming for him. Plus, the measurements and sketches were not always completely accurate, due to the manual methods the field technicians were using. That problem caused complications for Almony. “Working with their documentation got a little funky,” he states. “I would have to make the measurements they provided somehow work.”

SOLUTION 

Luckily, the owners of ASA-MMP attended a restoration conference where they ended up meeting with magicplan representatives and learning about the app’s capabilities. Shortly after that encounter, the company adopted magicplan as the tool of choice for job-site documentation.

That means ASA-MMP field technicians now use the magicplan app to gather accurate measurements and create real-time floor plans instead of hand-drawing sketches. The app allows them to quickly and accurately create detailed documentation, save it in cloud storage, and notify Almony that it’s ready for him so he can export the sketch as ESX files to send to Xactimate®️ and as FML files to send to Symbility/CoreLogic, streamlining the workflow even further. “The app was very easy for them to start implementing,” he affirms.

RESULT 

The more modern, digital approach involving magicplan enables technicians to create and submit sketches much faster than they ever could before. That means they are spending a lot less time documenting new job sites.

The improved approach also allows Almony to work faster as well because he can import digital sketches directly into his desktop software. He notes that this more efficient process is particularly beneficial during the company’s peak season from March to November each year, when more storms tend to occur and business is booming.

Almony emphasizes the positive impact magicplan has made on his estimating process. “It has been very efficient. It's a huge time saver,” he says. “Before, it would take me anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes to recreate a sketch for a typical job. But now, instead of wasting time trying to recreate each sketch, I can just start working on my estimate.”

He mentions that magicplan is especially helpful for large-loss jobs involving multiple rooms, because the app can merge two or more room sketches into a single, easy-to-work-with master floor plan. “It's nice that magicplan stitches all of it together,” he states.

OUTLOOK 

Almony is highly satisfied with the way magicplan has made his estimating process much more efficient. And he says he believes others in the restoration industry can achieve that same result with the versatile app.

Moving forward, he sees his company’s use of magicplan features expanding. “I think the next big step will be using the magicplan Forms feature to create a checklist for use on-site,” Almony remarks. “That’s something I want to implement.” Ultimately, that will be yet another way the company can demonstrate its commitment to excellence for restoration customers.

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