Natural disasters aren’t new, but restoration companies are working in brand-new and even cutting-edge ways to accelerate the reconstruction and repair of properties damaged by floods, earthquakes, windstorms, and fires. The rise of smartphones and even more advanced digital technologies are increasing both the ability and the pressure to modernize.
Enter the remote estimating engine by California-based mpartial, a Matterport Platform Partner. mpartial builds upon Matterport technology—digital twins, an API, an SDK, and TruePlan—to produce accurate property restoration estimates for software called Xactimate. Ultimately, mpartial helps contractors generate repair estimates for more rapid approvals from insurance carriers while relieving burdensome administrative processes. Each mpartial repair estimate is produced with objective accuracy, using immersive 3D imagery and precise physical and geospatial measurements. The company has almost doubled its growth since early 2020.
An Estimating Engine Built with Matterport Technology
Matterport can create a digital twin of any property by capturing everything both inside and outside in 3D at 4k resolution. And it automatically measures everything the camera sees with millimeter accuracy.
Joe Argollo, Vice President of mpartial, first saw what the technology is capable of six years ago when working as a civil engineer for a restoration company that used Matterport for all its claims. “I was really impressed with the quality of the digital twins and by how much Matterport helped us avoid litigation and reduce cycle times,” he says. “When other companies started using it and Matterport became the standard within the industry, we saw the opportunity to create a platform to build on and create even more value.”
Insurance carriers require contractors to write estimates using Xactimate, a complex property claims estimation platform that includes more than 20,000 line items, each referring to a specific activity that occurs on a work site. “Mastering Xactimate takes years,” Argollo says, “and most restorers and claims professionals are too busy with mundane and repetitive work. mpartial does 80 percent of the heavy lifting and automates these repetitive tasks, giving restorers and claims professionals the time they need to focus on their customers, the policyholders.”
Contractors also face challenges beyond mastering Xactimate. Damaged properties are often several hours away from the office, so estimators spend days at a time commuting back and forth. Once on site, they had to take thousands of photographs and draw manual sketches, which often took another couple of days.
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