How ArcSite Improves the On-site Fire Investigation Workflow

Jeff Crain conducts fire investigations for insurance companies to determine their liability after the conflagration. His role is to analyze a site after a fire and provide detailed information about the cause, trajectory, and extent of the fire’s damage. His work requires complete, sufficient, and error-free data.

“Other tools are so tedious. ArcSite just works.”

Jeff’s work leaves zero room for error, and his old methodology wasn’t cutting it. He needed a solution that would allow him to capture all data in one inspection and with greater ease than other tools he’d tried.

This case study highlights how Jeff utilized ArcSite to deliver high-quality work with greater ease and efficiency.

Pre-ArcSite Challenges & ArcSite Solutions

Challenge #1: Limited by Tools

When he arrives at a job site, Jeff starts at an outside corner and works his way around and into the location, capturing as much detailed information as he can about the cause of a fire and extent of its damage. This information is vital for insurance companies to determine their liability for a claim. However, the graph paper and pencil Jeff used prior to ArcSite limited his ability to do his job thoroughly. Graph paper provided a finite amount of space, which made it difficult to adjust a drawing mid-evaluation, and even harder to amend after the fact. It was difficult to keep his drawings to scale and hard to organize photos of the fire site to accompany his drawings.

ArcSite Solution #1:

With ArcSite, Jeff has an endless canvas—one that does not “bend, get frayed and, unlike large printouts with multiple pages, is not hard to organize”—so he spends less time trying to draw within arbitrary boundaries and more time focusing on the details of a fire site. ArcSite also allows him to scale drawings with precision down to the ¼ inch, draw with ease, and make precise changes repeatedly. And ArcSite’s interface allows Jeff to take photos, mark them up, and store them alongside the digital drawings forever, where they are organized and easily accessible.

Challenge #2: Incomplete Data Collection

Fire sites are by nature messy and “incomplete.” Occasionally, Jeff works from a PDF blueprint of the pre-fire floor plan, but 95% of the time he creates a drawing of the site from scratch. Drawing with paper and pencil, he often missed key information or spent precious time thinking about how best to capture intricate site info in a scribbled hand drawing, rather than ensuring completeness of data. Sometimes he forgot the specifics of the work he’d done at the job site by the time he got back to the office to “interpret” hand-drawn information. When his work was incomplete or forgotten, Jeff often had to make a return visit to the fire site—an inconvenience that wasn’t even always possible for job sites hundreds of miles away.

ArcSite Solution #2:

The ease of drawing with ArcSite helps Jeff finish and “fill in the literal holes” of his drawings. The app helps him connect pieces of an incomplete drawing, and enables him to spend less time thinking about how to capture site details and more time focusing on the thoroughness of his work. Creating a precise and complete drawing in one site visit eliminates the need for re-visits, saving time and money.

Challenge #3: Inefficient Use of Time On-Site and Post-Inspection

Making multiple visits to the same fire site wasn’t the only inefficiency in Jeff’s old workflow. He used to spend precious time on-site drawing common shapes or making notes in margins of his paper, rather than focusing on a thorough inspection. Often, he spent additional time in the office cleaning up drawings—or even re-doing them—and organizing site photos.

ArcSite Solution #3:

ArcSite users can drop in common or custom shapes to reduce the amount of time spent drawing and improve clarity. And it’s simple to send digital drawings to team members or clients at any stage of the process—simply click to share. Jeff now includes ArcSite drawings in the report he provides to his clients and especially likes that he can create a shape legend to help his clients understand what they’re looking at in his drawings.

Challenge #4:

Insurance claims can stretch out for extended periods of time before resolution, which means Jeff is often called upon to provide information about sites long after he visits them and puts together his site report. His previous methods for data collection did not generate materials conducive to long-term reference. He was unlikely to remember the finer details of a job site, and didn’t have a visually-rich, easily accessible report to reference or send to a client long after his initial assessment.

ArcSite Solution #4:

ArcSite stores data indefinitely so users can access it any time, anywhere. Having this comprehensive visual- and data-rich package allows Jeff to provide a higher level of service to his clients and gives him peace of mind that he will be able to reference his work long after it’s completed.

OVERALL OUTCOMES

• Precise and complete drawings with one site visit
• Streamlined workflow—from drawing through report building—saves time and money
• Polished, professional deliverables for site reports to the client

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