We try and help our clients avoid disasters and try and get ahead of things and alert them of
"Hey, let's think about this, or let's review this."
Marx Okubo is a leading, full-service, architectural, engineering, construction consulting firm.
We look at the, the fabric of buildings to determine the structural integrity of them.
Claris FileMaker is, is the best platform to be able to explore these solutions, because, in terms of
research and development, it can, it can happen really rapidly and you can test out
whether something's going to work or not. I had built things in other platforms, with, um
other consultants, and there can be considerable cost implications in doing that.
ASAP is an acronym for "automated structure alert program."
It's something we developed in-house, with some outside consultants.
It really started with a client asking us a question: "Hey, with all these earthquakes...is there something, ah
...we could do to help them understand their risks when an event happens?"
What the ASAP application does is really provide near-immediate information to the, to the customer
regarding their properties during a seismic event.
When that information is available from the U.S.G.S, the customer can have the--uh, a report regarding their
properties within five or ten minutes of that event occurring.
As a structural engineer, I'm typically involved with looking at the condition of the structure itself, coming up with costs
related for repair, or seismic retrofit if it's a risky property. I also specialize in looking at structures to gauge the
risk of potential damage during an earthquake. What differentiates our system from others
that are emerging in the marketplace is really that hands-on approach of doing the, the de facto
structural engineering assessment and getting it into the system, whereas other providers are only
putting local sensors, or using algorithms to develop the predicted amount of damage.
I love that Claris FileMaker has actually given me the ability to be able to integrate with cloud platforms
via APIs. APIs are like, my, my love and it allows me to extend the platform out by, by using other cloud services.
It became very clear that FileMaker--and Alan's knowledge of it--was going to be a better use of our resources.