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.
When the Going Gets Tough, Krinkle Gets Going: 2020 A Year in Review
At Mobile Epiphany/Krinkle Apps, we understand that 2020 has been a difficult year for many. Despite these difficult circumstances, we have been working hard to support our clients and communities to navigate through this challenging time. Even during a pandemic, natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires still impact our communities significantly. Buildings (especially hospitals) still need to be compliant with NFPA fire codes for occupants’ safety and oil & gas service companies still need to check for leaks and be OOOOa compliant for personal and environmental concerns. Ultimately, all these essential processes and operations need to be completed to the highest quality standard possible and life and work have to continue moving forward. This last year, Mobile Epiphany has been working hard to help people keep this crucial work going by creating and updating our intuitive, enterprise-class software.
While the pandemic has been a disaster of its own, this doesn’t mean that other natural disasters stop. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the most active and costly hurricane seasons on record. This hurricane season featured 13 hurricanes, of which six developed into major hurricanes, with Hurricane Iota attaining a Category 5 strength. The damage and fallout of these disasters have been significant and costly, but Mobile Epiphany has been working tirelessly to push the debris removal process and post-disaster recovery forward. Krinkle’s hurricane ADMS, Krinkle Debris Tracker®, has been used in numerous post-disaster debris removal efforts this year to allow debris monitoring companies and jurisdictions to quickly and easily audit and reconcile payment.
In addition to the impact of COVID-19 and this hurricane season, natural disasters like wildfires have also taken a significant toll on peoples’ lives this year. Even though most major wildfires have dissipated by now, post-wildfire cleanup is crucial to get peoples’ lives back on track. For a process like wildfire debris management, extensive subject matter expertise is required in order to understand the subtle nuances of the multitude of different processes and build comprehensive software. This is what led the team at Krinkle to spend the last several years working with debris monitoring companies, foresters, arborists, state governments and other subject matter experts to create and continuously improve the world’s only Wildfire Automated Debris Management System: Krinkle Wildfire ADMS®.
Krinkle Wildfire ADMS® helps debris monitoring companies, haulers and jurisdictions guide their users through FEMA-approved processes, control their mission data and quickly reconcile following a wildfire. Krinkle Wildfire ADMS® guides monitors and arborists through inspecting, marking, barcoding (if required), and cutting fire-damaged hazardous trees as well as verifying that the trees (species by species) meet fire damaged hazardous trees. It also guides users through the entire debris hauling and eligibility determination process. The mobile app and reporting tool go far beyond the capabilities of a traditional Hurricane ADMS (i.e. Krinkle Debris Tracker®) by guiding its users throughout a wildfire’s unique aspects including material recycling, soil decontamination (scrape and re-scrape), fire-damaged hazardous tree removal, and much more. Finally, reporting can be performed at the “touch-of-a-button”.
While the pandemic has been a major detriment to public health, fugitive emissions are an ever-present danger to the health of our environment and ourselves that need to be addressed. This is why Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® has been working hard with our customers to ensure that OOOOa regulations are still being maintained for environmental and public safety. This year, Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® has been expanding its footprint in the Permian Basin and beyond, supporting our existing clients and keeping OOOOa compliance on track. Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® enables seamless and automated OOOOa compliant work order sharing (we call it “Shared Work Orders”) between LDAR program managers, Infrared (OGI) camera inspectors (and verifiers), and repair techs. Even client executives who must decide how to handle leaks on “Delay of Repair” status are supported. This ensures that every required step of the OOOOa regulation (and even your state regulations) becomes a simple, guided process for your users. The end result is a consistent workflow in the field for all your users, assured compliance, and a system that drives the process through to its full completion.
“Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® has been with us from our earliest days of setting up a Leak Detection And Repair (LDAR) program to our first year of reporting fugitive emissions and leak data to federal agencies for multiple clients and we could not be more pleased. Our users and administrators received thorough training in how to manage Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro services, billing has been efficient and predictable, and the customer support team has remained exceptionally quick and responsive. Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® and the Mobile Epiphany team have helped us support our talented employees and increased our ability to provide the outstanding service that our clients expect.”
– Cianna Logie, Sport Environmental.
“Partnering with Krinkle this past year, we were able to effectively transition from a traditional relationship of hiring an outside LDAR contractor to bring it in-house utilizing automated recordkeeping and reporting. Most importantly, we have reduced our overall operating cost while improving environmental compliance.”
– Kaleb Foster, Maverick Natural Resources.
Hospitals are the battleground for the fight against COVID. As doctors and nurses have been working tirelessly to combat the pandemic, Krinkle Fire Door has been working relentlessly with fire door safety companies to ensure these hospitals are meeting Fire & Life Safety standards. Additionally, our mobile solutions and digital reporting help our customers to be more efficient and contactless when communicating with their clients. Krinkle Fire Door® has been working with subject matter experts in the fire door service industry for years to create its comprehensive (inspections, estimates to repair, repairs performed, etc.) mobile application. The mobile app guides inspectors to easily adhere to NFPA standards, speed up work and automate fire door reporting. Krinkle Fire Door® has taken the mobile app beyond traditional fire door inspection software, to a complete mobile and back-office solution that drives business.
“I have tried several different inspection platforms during my time in business. Each of these platforms had upsides but none encompassed all the features I had been looking for in an inspection and repair software… I am very happy with the Krinkle app and the entire Krinkle support team. Most importantly the software is reliable, the Krinkle team is very supportive, the cost is affordable and my clients are happy with the reports they receive.”
- Vickie Evans, Victory Fire Door.
The pandemic and its impact on the workforce have brought workflow efficiency and process digitization to the forefront of peoples’ minds. This is something that our customers in heavy machinery have been actively aware of and investing in even before the pandemic. After being field-proven in over ten dealerships worldwide, Krinkle Rebuild Tracker is continuously being updated with new features and forms to improve the rebuild process. Krinkle Rebuild Tracker® is a robust mobile application and management-reporting tool for heavy equipment component rebuild centers that track every stage of the component rebuild process with ease. To further improve the solution and enhance the data sophistication of engine inspections and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) tracking, we have worked with our customers to incorporate essential engine inspection forms into the software. This enables more thorough tracking of performance efficiency, Quality Assurance (QA), and overall improved data quality through the integration of various rebuild operations.
Looking into the new year, even though there is still uncertainty in front of us, Mobile Epiphany and its Krinkle brand are still focusing on working with seasoned industry subject matter experts to provide solutions that address the essential operational processes that need to move forward regardless of unforeseen circumstances like the COVID-19 pandemic. This is what led Krinkle to develop the most comprehensive Oil & Gas environmental suite of apps on the market: Krinkle Environmental®.
The mobile app and its modules guide users through oil & gas environmental projects like phase I environmental site assessments (ESA PI), soil sampling with depth samples, spill management with surface soil sampling, reclamation and more! Although these modules are ready to go, out-of-the-box, companies can further customize the software suite to meet their specific needs. Krinkle understands that different Oil & Gas environmental service companies might not handle all of these processes and projects. This is why Krinkle Environmental® is designed and priced to allow businesses to choose which modules and processes are most relevant to their current work and the other modules are at the ready for when new business arrives. Krinkle Environmental® and all its modules were built with the idea of keeping end-users efficient with their time, thorough in their data collection, and guided step-by-step through their work. This ensures accuracy, completeness, and speed while collecting environmental data and makes reporting an easy, “touch-of-a-button”, task. If you are interested in differentiating yourself in the Oil & Gas industry, improving compliance across the organizations you serve, and doing so with significantly less effort and cost, click HERE to learn more.
Despite the uncertainty that lies ahead of us, the challenges that we have faced over the last year have helped us improve our products and relationships with clients. Moving forward we want to continue supporting our clients, regardless of circumstances out of our control. After a successful year of developing new mobile software suites and Krinkle apps and updating existing software, Krinkle has big plans for 2021. Over the next year, Mobile Epiphany/Krinkle plans to expand upon the modules offered in Krinkle Environmental in order to handle processes like weed management, land consultation, and more. Going forward, Krinkle plans to continue improving the business processes and relationships we made in 2020, while simultaneously continuing to launch new products to solve business challenges for other industries. Stay up-to-date with our newest updates and activities HERE.
We’re Just Getting Started: Our Year in Review
Mobile Epiphany is an established enterprise-class mobile software company in its 11th year of business. Its mobile platform technology is used to rapidly create cost-effective mobile apps to solve any business process challenges across any industry, regardless of complexity. Initially, Mobile Epiphany succeeded in creating many custom mobile applications for specific business challenges on a project-by-project basis. While Mobile Epiphany still takes on custom projects regularly, these new, standardized apps fall under our brand “Krinkle”, which we have been expanding upon ever since. This last year, we’ve been particularly busy adding new and innovative capabilities to the next generation of our existing apps while also adding new apps to our suite of “purpose-specific” Krinkle solutions.
For the oil and gas industry, Krinkle launched two new mobile software solutions this last year. Krinkle began servicing the oil and gas industry four years ago with the launch of its premier LDAR tracking software, Krinkle LDAR Tracker®. Over these last four years, we’ve gained a great deal of expertise in the LDAR process and we further innovated new ways where Krinkle LDAR Tracker® could improve. One of the biggest challenges our clients faced was coordinating the communication between multiple different subcontractors (such as inspectors, repairmen, verifiers, etc.) working on the same well sites, compressor stations, etc. This insight led us to develop Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro®, an advanced version of our original LDAR compliance software. The Pro version adds a series of new and innovative features including its premier feature - seamless work order sharing.
The “Shared Work Order” system automatically pushes the initial work order forward to all the subsequent users who need it (the initial inspector, then repair people, then verifiers, etc.), simply by detecting when the previous step is complete. This eliminates the need for the project managers to engage in endless phone calls, coordination meetings, excel files, and forgotten or lost next steps. Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® showcased this innovative new feature at the 2019 Oil and Gas Environmental Conference (OGENV 2019). Krinkle's Sr. Business Analyst, Dr. Glenn Kletzky, gave a presentation at the event alongside Vertex Resource Services’ VP of US Operations, Mr. Dhugal Hanton. The presentation focused on how deploying Krinkle LDAR Tracker Pro® resulted in Vertex gaining a higher level of compliance and situational awareness which has enabled them to better serve their clients.
Mobile Epiphany’s software has been used to inspect close to 1,000,000 fire doors for the fire and life safety industry over the last four years. Mobile Epiphany has been working with subject matter experts in the fire door service industry for years to create its comprehensive (inspections, estimates to repair, repairs performed, etc.) application. In 2019, we officially launched the standardized version of our fire door inspection software, Krinkle Fire Door®. The mobile app guides inspectors to even more easily adhere to NFPA standards, speeds up work, and automates fire door reporting. Krinkle has taken the mobile app beyond traditional fire door inspection software, to a complete mobile and back-office solution that drives your business.
Over the last 3 years, Krinkle Debris Tracker® has reconciled disaster data required by FEMA in multiple states and counties. From natural disasters including hurricanes Maria, Irma, and Harvey, as well as the Northern and Southern California wildfires, Krinkle Debris Tracker®’s performance, was unrivaled. In 2019, Krinkle Debris Tracker® impressed attendees at the 33rd annual Governor's Hurricane Conference in Florida with its 4th year of updates and increased capabilities. Emergency management professionals and those involved in preparedness, planning, response, and recovery at all levels of the government, industry, and private interest gathered to exchange ideas and see the latest and greatest advancements in emergency response. Krinkle presented our powerful disaster management software solutions - Krinkle Debris Tracker® and Krinkle Damage Tracker® - both showcased during live demonstrations, presented by Dr. Glenn Kletzky. The two solutions attracted the interest of more than 50 organizations.
Krinkle Rebuild Tracker® is a proven solution for heavy equipment dealers looking to track their major components during the rebuild process. The mobile app has been successfully deployed internationally, from the United States to Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. This established success led Krinkle to attend the Western Region Meeting for CAT dealers and their IT people (WRIT 2019 in Las Vegas). The mobile app had already proven itself in component rebuild centers internationally as it has been in use at the Cashman and Mantrac Caterpillar rebuild centers for the last two years. This was highlighted in a presentation given by Dr. Glenn Kletzky. His presentation also focused on how what Krinkle Rebuild Tracker® did for CAT’s dealers could be done for any heavy equipment manufacturer, regardless of the brand, facility size, or language spoken by its users.
Krinkle Rebuild Tracker® was also fully integrated with Modern® this last year. Modern® is a sales department and customer communications text messaging system popular among many of the CAT Dealers that Krinkle works with. Krinkle Rebuild Tracker®’s integration effort with Modern® highlights Krinkle’s commitment to heavy equipment dealers, software vendors, and the ecosystem as a whole. In 2020, we plan on launching a new hose manufacturing tracking mobile application that has been successfully deployed in multiple locations across Mantrac’s dealerships.
After a successful year of developing new Krinkle apps, updating existing software, speaking at trade shows, and integrating with other software, Krinkle has big plans for 2020. Going forward, Krinkle plans to continue improving the business processes and relationships we made in 2019, while simultaneously launching new products to solve business challenges for other industries. Stay up-to-date with our newest updates and activities here.