Transcription
(00:00) In terms of history, we started out as a restoration company. And that meant that we responded to stratas when they had issues that involved fire or flood. And as we went through that process, we began to explore technologies that involved infrared, that involved working within spaces between studs, between joists, between rafters with specialized technology, and then also with metering equipment. And the purpose of all that was to determine where water had or had not moved. And of course, that allowed us to minimize the amount of damage that was done in chasing that water and in drying structures so that we were able to work a lot faster. We were able to return people to their homes more quickly and create some efficiencies for the insurance companies. So as we went through this process, the thing that struck us was that we would get multiple return calls to these multifamily places.
(01:07) And so clearly what was happening was that the source of the issues was not being dealt with. So Strata started to say to us, well, why don’t you pursue figuring out where the sources of these issues are and fixing those as well? So that’s what we did. We bent our technology to determining where the sources were, began to repair those as well. And then as the conversation ensued beyond that, the stratus said, well, if you can figure out where the issues are coming from, would it be possible to take your technology a step further and try to predict where some of these issues might begin and head them off ahead of time. And so that became a part of our practice. And that was more than 20 years ago. Our restoration company started in 1967. We began using the technology company in the 2000s and had that fairly well developed by the time we got around to 2006, 2007.
(02:29) So that was kind of the beginning of what became predictive analysis, where we were actually looking at the entire envelope and then expanded that to look at things like mechanical and electrical and looking for issues where, in a mechanical or electrical situation, things were operating outside of their normal temperatures. And that typically indicated there was a brewing problem. Of course, the technology from the outside of the building allowed us to see where moisture was beginning to penetrate the envelope, starting to create problems. And by using meters, by using in-space technology, we were able to confirm those issues. design solutions for them and head off problems. So there’s two things that come out of that process. The first is that the building owner begins to have a greater level of confidence in their building. The second is that the building performs better and the benefits out of that are clear.
(03:14) And that is that there is less cost long-term and maintenance. There are much fewer incidences where insurance is required to recover the facility, and the property begins to present better in the community. It has a stronger presence visually, it has a better reputation with the real estate community, and all of that tends to lend higher values. And so that was the beginning of predictive analysis and how we bent that to benefit strata. Then in 2010, the provincial government in response to a leaky condo crisis decided that they were going to create something called depreciation reports. And the intent of the depreciation report was to act as a disclosure document. And this was intended to prevent a situation where someone would buy a condo and then discover within a relatively short period of time that they were going to be subjected to huge special assessments that they were going to have to fund to repair the common property.
(04:38) Our clients at that time said to us, you know what? You’re already doing the predictive analysis. You’re already helping us with our maintenance schedules. Why don’t you add the financial schedules that relate to the common area and the capital costs associated with it and start producing these depreciation reports for us? And so that pulled us into that space. And it was also the point in time where we began to very seriously pursue digitizing our process. And that digitization gave us a huge leg up in terms of the efficiency of our operations, our ability to move through the process much more quickly and to produce a more reliable result.
