Krinkle Damage Tracker

Who's Using Krinkle? Krinkle Debris/Damage Tracker️: Davis Disaster Consulting: Using Software to Drive Debris Removal Missions & FEMA Compliance

Davis Disaster Consulting (DDC), a highly recognized industry leader, has chosen Krinkle’s lineup of disaster industry mobile apps and reporting systems to run their growing post-disaster debris management and Public Assistance (PA) consulting business. Namely, they have chosen Krinkle Debris Tracker® for their debris management missions and Krinkle Damage Tracker® for their public assistance work.

DDC has been in business since 2014 and has helped several clients throughout the United States recover from tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, windstorms, and mudslides. As a full-functioning disaster consulting service, they have excelled in assisting their clients in obtaining federal reimbursement of over 500 million dollars in disaster funding. Benjamin Davis, the President/CEO of DDC, is a former FEMA employee who became involved in debris-monitoring and public assistance work as a contractor following Hurricane Katrina. He is a driven subject matter expert who is constantly looking for ways to improve his consulting company’s efficiency and thoroughness.

In 2016, DDC teamed up with one of the nation’s most successful debris monitoring companies for work on debris removal missions. While Ben and his company had experience using other Automated Debris Management Systems (ADMS) in the past, those systems were never built by actual software companies whose core competency is mobile software. Rather, those ADMSs were built by debris companies. This project was the first time Ben was exposed to Mobile Epiphany’s ADMS, Krinkle Debris Tracker®. For the first time, DDC was able to see how restricted and overly complex prior ADMSs were once he experienced the simplicity and comprehensiveness of Krinkle Debris Tracker®. Ben laments on his experience using other ADMSs when he recalls, “At the time, there were only about four ADMSs that you had to choose from. Three of them hadn’t been updated in years and were still running on less powerful windows mobile devices, even though iPhone and Android were the dominant mobile devices at the time. Those aging ADMSs were what they were and you just had to deal with it. We were constantly confronted with challenges stemming from the lack of flexibility inherent to those other ADMSs, many of which forced you to do huge amounts of data work outside of the system. Nothing was truly automated. Krinkle provided everything that the others could not. It is truly modern technology.”

Through working with their partner, Ben and his team were able to see quickly the advantages of using a comprehensive and flexible ADMS that could handle FEMA’s requirements for the entire mission. After the mission, DDC continued to communicate with the subject matter experts at Krinkle and help with updating and improving the mobile app and reporting system. With Ben and his team’s ability to make requested changes and see them so quickly and easily implemented, Ben made the decision for DDC to adopt Krinkle Debris Tracker® as his company’s ADMS. Since its adoption, Krinkle Debris Tracker® has been used to support many of Ben’s clients across multiple missions throughout the years.

In addition to Ben’s success with Krinkle Debris Tracker®, DDC also has a vigorous and growing business in the PA arena. Ben leverages another one of Krinkle’s advanced disaster mobile systems, Krinkle Damage Tracker®, to document all FEMA categories (A-G) of damage necessary to support the FEMA-required Project Worksheets (PWs) that his organization excels in. DDC is already engaged in joint ventures supporting the recently approved 1.9 trillion dollars American Jobs Plan using Krinkle Damage Tracker® as the backbone for the program’s highly detailed data collection and reporting requirements.

Krinkle Debris Tracker® is an Automated Debris Management System (ADMS) designed to help monitoring companies and jurisdictions prevent fraud, control their data, and quickly audit and reconcile after a major disaster. Krinkle Debris Tracker® meets and exceeds all the FEMA data tracking requirements during the debris removal mission. The application acts as a step-by-step guide for every monitor, recon team leader, truck certifier and more. Krinkle Debris Tracker® incorporates all of FEMA’s documented best practices, forms, and processes from the official FEMA-325 and the PAPPG documents. It keeps users’ data organized, accurate, and up-to-date. Whether you’re a monitoring company or a self-monitoring jurisdiction, Krinkle Debris Tracker® instantly provides all the relevant and necessary geospatial and summary reports you will need. Our variety of useful reports track the ongoing progress of every aspect of the project and calculate payments associated with the debris removal effort. Our system gives users the ability to run progress reports, daily and cumulative, including a variety of reimbursement reports and fraud detection reports. The system is easy to learn and use and thanks to Krinkle’s flexible Rapid Application Configuration (RAC) platform, changes can be made to the system as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible.

Krinkle Damage Tracker® is an advanced mobile application supported by back-office reporting software that accurately documents the damage caused by a natural disaster. This supports Project Worksheet writers to accurately track each reimbursable element of damage (categories A through G) at the level of detail FEMA expects. The mobile app acts as a step-by-step guided process for users in the field. First, it ensures that even the newest field data collection personnel can efficiently document every aspect of the damage, at just the right resolution of detail, needed to complete an accurate Project Worksheet. Second, the back-office tools make reporting on data simple and quick. Third, It allows easy exportation of this data in a highly detailed, line-item fashion so that the data can be imported into other systems you may use. Krinkle Damage Tracker® also supports taking photographs, measurements, and inputting material types to support cost analysis.

When asked about the process of implementing Krinkle Debris Tracker® and Krinkle Damage Tracker®, Ben stated, “All of Krinkle’s apps are incredibly user friendly. We’re able to quickly train our employees in all these mission types because the apps are standardized and are constantly checking data entries and reducing human error. For example, most ADMSs that I’ve used in the past take much longer to train users because they aren’t holding your hand and guiding you through the complex FEMA-required processes as Krinkle does. Krinkle takes me an hour to do the training, and in that time our users are already familiar with the app and FEMA regulations, which is unheard of in other ADMSs. Most of the time training for other ADMSs takes much longer than an hour and it doesn’t actually keep the users focused on the accurate management of FEMA rules.”

Soon after implementing Krinkle Debris Tracker®, Ben began to see more advantages of having the software handle more of the debris removal mission. Ben looks back on his history with Krinkle when he recalls, “We have done numerous missions with Krinkle over the years and we’ve used it for navigable waterways, Right of Ways, hazardous trees and debris assessments. We also use a combination of data from Krinkle Damage Tracker® and Krinkle Debris Tracker® to write our Project Worksheets (PWs) and it works perfectly for that as well.”

Ben continues to recall the advantages of using Krinkle when he states, “I didn’t have to go in and recreate anything. The system provides us with everything we need to submit to FEMA including the costs, documentation and more. Everything from capturing photos to creating financial/cost estimates are done within the system, which is powerful and saves tons of time. The flexibility that Krinkle gave us was a rare opportunity. That’s why we chose Krinkle and have stayed with it for so long.” Ben has also noted that he has received similar appreciation from his clients and even FEMA for the thoroughness of his data. DDC further reports that when they have submitted Krinkle data and reports to FEMA, the feedback has always been very positive. He attributes this to the comprehensive capabilities of the mobile app and reporting tool as well as his own thorough understanding of the software.

Over the last 5 years, Krinkle and DDC have continued to develop their partnership and make improvements to the mobile app and reporting system. When asked to advise other businesses facing similar challenges with choosing an ADMS, Ben offered the following: “FEMA requires you to have an ADMS. Many companies assume that just because Krinkle’s ADMS is the most comprehensive and intuitive in the industry, that it must be too expensive. We were pleased to see how reasonably priced it actually is. Monitoring and PA companies need to determine what quality of mission they want to run. How much manual work do they want to do versus letting the ADMS or damage assessment application unburden your team? We believe companies should look for comprehensive mobile apps and reporting systems, as Krinkle provides, which will allow them to do all of their work within the system instead of having to take data and manually build their own spreadsheets and whatnot. You need an A to Z system that handles everything and that’s what Krinkle can get you because they’re constantly adapting, updating and changing the system to better optimize the system for the next storm season.”

Mobile Epiphany, and its Krinkle brand of mobile apps, enable businesses to create and/or adapt existing mobile solutions rapidly and cost-effectively. Contact us today to see how Mobile Epiphany can help solve your business challenges.

by Joseph Valentin