Document a Fire Loss on the First Visit

On a fire claim, the investigator and adjuster both need to understand the same scene.

For Ryan Swearingen at NEFCO Fire Investigations, accomplishing that used to mean a long day on site. Typically the first call, NEFCO is on site within 24 to 48 hours of the fire. An adjuster would meet them there with a tape measure, measuring every door, window, opening and hallway before sketching it all by hand. On a larger structure, that could take five to six hours. Now, NEFCO's investigators are in and out within minutes.

The difference comes down to how NEFCO now documents a fire: one DocuSketch scan that serves everyone on the claim.

"[Documentation] could take five to six hours... Now with DocuSketch, we set up the tripod, we do the scans, and we're in and out within minutes." — Ryan Swearingen, Senior Production Manager, NEFCO Fire Investigations

Maximize Time On Site with Accuracy

The 360-degree scan creates a digital floor plan that an adjuster uploads into Xactimate or Cotality Estimate and builds the estimate from. Ryan puts the dimensional accuracy at 98%, which saves adjusters the hours they'd otherwise spend measuring in the field.

It also means the desk adjuster doesn't have to travel at all. They can be in a different state while NEFCO walks them through the scene and shows them exactly what investigators are seeing on site.

Use Documentation to Tell the Story of the Loss

Talking about time saved is great. But fire investigation has a harder problem: showing what the fire did, and where it started, to someone who wasn't standing in the room. 

Todd Soong, a fire analyst at NEFCO and National Training Manager for the Institute of Fire Science, can now take someone into the room with him. He can look down at the floor, up at the ceiling, and walk through the structure virtually. He can point at a burned chair and show that the fire attacked it from the back, not the front, which supports where he believes the fire started. Seeing the same room before and after, side by side, struck him as especially instructive.

With one tour of the structure, his note package can depict every artifact that led to his opinion. Everyone on the claim sees the damage with their own eyes.

"The clarity and the quality of the product after the effort is where it really stands apart." — Todd Soong, Fire Analyst, NEFCO Fire Investigations

One Visit for Investigators and Adjusters

For claims teams, the lesson here is about treating the first visit to a fire scene as the only one that has to happen. When the capture is complete, accurate, and shareable from day one, the investigator and adjusters all work from the same record, and nobody needs a second trip to understand the loss.

Manual sketching and repeat visits were never the goal. They were the cost of not having a better way to record what the fire left behind. And as Buddy Fulton, Regional Manager at NEFCO, puts it, DocuSketch brings an investigation to a higher level.

See how DocuSketch captures a fire scene, or book a demo. → https://www.docusketch.com/solutions/forensics-software