Built for
Industry Experts
By industry experts.
Leveraging real world experience to solve real world problems.
I'm Ethan Holmes —
founder of BetterHolmes Co.
Full-time Construction Consultant living in Englewood, Colorado with my wife and two young kids. Day to day I work restoration and insurance-related projects — fire, water, storm, and smoke losses — and I've been through CAT response after hurricanes, the Louisville wildfire, and the 2021 Iowa Derecho. That work spans 1,000+ property claims, from everyday residential losses to a $27M hotel reconstruction. What started as late nights in my garage learning to code turned into tools for problems I still run into on the job.
My goal is to build and share software that produces better, easier project documentation — anchored to where things actually happened on the plan — and that helps field teams stay organized when the site is messy and the clock is short. That work shipped as live tools: FotoLedger for floor plan photo documentation, PHASE for free CPM construction schedules, and TakeOff Tool for free floor plan takeoff from one known measurement.
If you've worked in construction, restoration, or property management, you know how much time is spent documenting site conditions. If you're on the receiving end of that documentation, you also know how poor most of it is. BetterHolmes exists to close that gap with location-anchored records people can actually use.
Property claims worked
Construction & claims consulting
Largest reconstruction supported
FotoLedger, PHASE, TakeOff Tool
The depth
behind the tools.
This isn't a software company guessing at what restoration and construction need. The apps come out of years estimating and consulting on a high volume of projects — from everyday losses to multi-million-dollar scopes across high-end residential, industrial, manufacturing, and large roofing — plus time-crunched smoke and fire jobs, roof collapses, and most of the loss types you'll see in the field. A whole lot of hours in Xactimate and Excel, too.
Estimating
Xactimate & Symbility
Field documentation
Construction consulting
Restoration & CAT
Fire, water, storm, smoke — including hurricane and wildfire response
Project management
Advanced Excel
From Iowa
to Colorado.
One step at a time — from the track, to construction consulting, to garage prototypes, to apps now running on real jobs.
Iowa roots
Born and raised in Iowa, Ethan attended the University of Iowa where he became an All-American track and field athlete, a multiple-time Big Ten Conference champion, and team captain. The Midwestern reflex to do hard work, slowly and well, still drives the company.
Construction consultant
Working full-time as a Construction Consultant in Englewood, Colorado — estimating and consulting across restoration and construction, from residential losses to larger commercial scopes, including 1,000+ property claims and a $27M hotel reconstruction.
BetterHolmes Co.
Started building documentation apps in the garage at night to solve my own problems — spatial documentation, roof surveys, moisture mapping — because the tools on the market are expensive and still miss the mark.
What’s next
Keep shipping practical field documentation and jobsite productivity tools — and sharing what I know about estimating, construction consulting, and the software that runs this industry.
The principles
behind every release.
Quality
Tools that earn their place — task focused tools, functionality first, no unnecessary features.
Built for the job
New tech is only worth it if it solves a real world problem at a cost that makes sense. All tools are built to serve their specific purpose and nothing more.
Family first
Everything is built around the people who matter most — at home, on the team, and on the other side of the deliverable.