Cause and origin work, built on the cases you already closed.
The precedent for the scene you are standing in is sitting in a report your own firm wrote four years ago.
Three places this work actually breaks
Season demand arrives faster than you can staff it
After a storm season the file count triples and the senior investigators are the bottleneck. An IAAI or NAFI certification takes years to earn, so you cannot mint one for the season. A junior can walk a scene; what they cannot do is recall how your firm handled the same ignition scenario in 2021.
“Demand spikes after every storm season and I cannot hire a senior expert overnight.”
The precedent set is real and nobody can assemble it
You have closed dozens of cases with a comparable room of origin, a comparable appliance, a comparable elimination sequence. Assembled, that is a body of evidence. Unassembled, it is a filing system.
“Thirty years of cause-and-origin reports sit in folders only the senior partner can navigate.”
Elimination has to be shown, not asserted
The hypotheses you ruled out matter as much as the one you kept, and the basis for ruling each one out has to be traceable. A conclusion whose elimination sequence is not documented is the opening.
“If it will not survive cross-examination, it is worse than useless, it loses the case.”
Three steps, and you approve the sources
Load the case history
Closed cause-and-origin reports, scene photograph sets, witness statement summaries, the standards edition your firm works to, appliance and product notices. You approve every source.
Describe the scene, not the file number
“Room of origin at a kitchen appliance, low burn pattern on the north wall.” Answers come back with the report and page attached.
Assemble the precedent
Run the finder across your closed cases to build the set of comparable determinations, with each one’s elimination sequence and its source.
The precedent set, assembled from your closed cases
It collects the comparable determinations and their elimination sequences, then stops for your read on which ones actually match this scene.
Input Kitchen appliance ignition, low burn pattern, north wall
- One shares the appliance and the recall notice
- Two match the burn pattern but not the fuel load
Cited, or it tells you
No claim about cause and origin, that determination is yours and it is made on the scene. These are properties of the software, checkable on a case you have already closed.
Cited to the file, and to the edition
Every finding names the report, photo log or standard it came from, NFPA 921 included, and which edition of it. On this work the edition matters as much as the clause, because the one in force then is not always the one on the shelf now.
It tells you rather than pattern-matching
Where your file does not establish something, it says so instead of offering the nearest comparable scenario as though it were this one. A confident wrong comparison is worse here than no comparison.
Related: Materials failure analysis → · Building & transportation → · Expert witness preparation →
Before you send us a document
Does it determine cause and origin?
No. It finds the prior work in your own archive where a comparable scenario was already investigated, and it cites the page. The determination is the investigator’s, made on the scene and on the evidence, this shortens the recall, not the analysis.
Can it read scene photographs?
It finds photographs in your file and the notes and reports that reference them, so you can pull up the image alongside the finding that cites it. It does not interpret burn patterns for you.
How does it handle the standards edition we work to?
It reads the edition you loaded, NFPA 921 included, and every answer names the document it came from, so you can see which edition a statement belongs to. That matters here for the same reason it matters with codes: the edition in force is not always the one on your shelf.
Our older case files are on a server nobody has opened in years. Are those usable?
That is usually exactly where the comparable case is. Scanned reports, photo logs and field notes load in the structure they are already in, and every answer names the document and page it came from, so a determination from 2011 is as reachable as one from last month. Nothing has to be re-filed or rewritten first.
Test it on a case you closed years ago
Send one closed cause-and-origin report and describe the scene from memory. Twenty minutes, and you will see whether it finds the determination and names the page.