Four decades, built one referral at a time
KneppKraft is a family-owned California General Engineering and Building contractor, and it started in 1985 as a yacht repair shop on the wooden docks of Alamitos Bay in Long Beach. Forty years on, we hold a California A and B license, we have assessed damage from Alaska to Louisiana, and the phone still rings because someone told someone else.
From a part-time trailer to a nationwide catastrophe team
What follows is the company’s own account, year by year: the licenses, the earthquakes and hurricanes, the two recessions we stayed open through, and the referrals that carried us between them.
The docks · 1985–1988
Knepp-Craft, Alamitos Bay
The company began on the wooden seaside docks as a yacht repair business in Alamitos Bay, Long Beach. It came out of years at sea as a ships master and commercial fisherman in Alaska, and winters rebuilding commercial vessels in Seattle. Boat repair was a natural starting point for a family man who did not want to ship out again.
One child. Three mouths to feed.
Knepp-Kraft, and the first house call
Home repair work started with a widowed woman in Long Beach who needed help with maintenance around her house. The name changed to Knepp-Kraft.
A tool and material trailer was built from a bare steel frame bought at a yard sale, a portable shop on wheels towed behind a Ford EXP. A construction truck was not an option yet.
Two children. Four mouths to feed.
Licensed by the State of California
General Contractor License #547307B was issued. Referral work became a steady full-time job, five days a week, and the work area widened across Southern California. The first one-ton work truck was bought on a sales contract from its owner, and the logo went on the side of it.
At a remodeling seminar in San Francisco came the sentence that named the business: we are commercial and residential remodeling contractors.
The same year, Knepper’s Alaska Fish Camp began as a ministry for men, in tents alongside a river in Ninilchik, Alaska.
B license issuedAlaska Fish Camp foundedThree children. Five mouths to feed.
Building a company · 1990–1996
Commercial work arrives
A residential client introduced us to commercial and industrial construction, and we began taking tenant improvement work in Los Angeles. Still 100% referral, client to client.
The bedroom office was maxed out. The garage was built out into a proper office for bookkeeping and estimating, a computer was bought and a part-time bookkeeper hired.
Out of the garage
A raw warehouse space in North Long Beach became the first real office: three men and a part-time bookkeeper, with a shop attached. Work came in from Industrial Bank Trust real estate offices in downtown Los Angeles, and we traveled the whole LA and Orange County basin. The first mobile phone sat on the truck seat. The pager went in the bin.
Four children. Six mouths to feed.
Northridge, and the insurance division
The earthquake put us into insurance restoration work in Northridge for the next three and a half years, and the Insurance Restoration Division was formed. The office moved out of a cold warehouse into a built-out space next door, and we bought a 2,200 square foot building of our own on Los Alamitos Boulevard.
Insurance Restoration DivisionXactimate® from 1994Ten years, then a recession
The ten-year mark came and went. Then work stopped. We learned about cash flow the hard way, established a line of credit, cut overhead and staff, and kept the doors open.
Accessibility work grew out of that lean stretch. Working with a local medical equipment provider on grab bars turned into real expertise in home medical and accessibility modifications, and we became a design-build home modification specialist.
Design-build home modificationAccessibility specializationEngineering, and the CAT team · 1998–2006
The “A” license, and Trammell Crow
We became A-licensed General Engineering contractors. That opened the door to commercial tenant improvement work with Trammell Crow, and we were building thousands of square feet of interior office space full time, alongside underground pipelines, larger buildings and engineering projects, while thirteen years of referrals kept ringing.
A license — General EngineeringTrammell Crow preferred builderInsurance consulting, and the witness stand
Fifteen years in, insurance restoration and consulting became a full-time part of the firm. A million-dollar fire restoration on a Santa Monica commercial building put us squarely in the insurance industry, and we began appearing in court as expert witnesses for law firms needing construction expertise.
The company was thirty people strong. Leads still came by referral. No advertising.
Insurance consultingExpert witness workNisqually, and a license to travel
After the Nisqually earthquake our team headed north to Renton, Washington for a year, living and working remotely while examining and reporting on thousands of multi-housing apartment units and shopping malls. Consulting followed for a firm in Connecticut.
We came out of it licensed as general contractors across the Western states for sudden national disasters: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and Texas. The KKCC CAT team could roll anywhere.
CAT team formedSix-state licensingKatrina and Rita, the Gulf Coast
Twenty years old, and the CAT team assembled again for the Louisiana and Texas coast. A team of more than twenty lived in hotels and worked a torn-up coastline for close to two years, establishing repair costs for commercial properties, municipalities, parishes, shopping malls, hotels, schools, restaurants, apartment complexes, arenas and warehouses.
We completed 65 files and estimated over $76,000,000 in damaged real estate for insurance adjusters.
65 files · $76M assessedAlaska to the Mexico border
Commercial insurance claim assignments were managed the length of the west coast, from Alaska down to San Diego, for fire, flood and wind claims, alongside the referral work that never stopped: medical and accessibility, home remodeling, commercial TI and restoration.
Holding on, and rebuilding · 2008–today
The long recession
This one lasted more than two years. Work faded as the economy stopped, and we scaled back again to a lean crew. At twenty-five years in business, still deep in it, we sold the office we no longer needed and worked out of temporary space.
We kept a faithful crew and kept the doors open for the upswing that follows every recession.
The work comes back
Confidence returned, banks lent again, and the phone rang with new opportunity. KneppKraft rebuilt a fire-torn strip mall in Burbank and a duplex destroyed by fire in Long Beach, with a run of projects in between. Ipe became the deck material clients asked for, and we enjoyed working with something built to last a lifetime.
One need kept recurring: repairing broken structural beams in commercial roof systems across the Los Angeles metropolitan area for a roofing company. Plans, engineering, permits and a timely repair to occupied industrial space, ahead of the re-roof. It is the thread that runs straight into the structural repair work we do today.
Structural roof beam repair beginsTrusted builders and consultants
Four decades on, the second generation runs the field work. The craft has narrowed toward what we do best: commercial structural and concrete repair across Los Angeles and Orange County, with the insurance consulting and catastrophe response still on call nationwide.
The cost consulting team stays ready for any catastrophe assignment the insurance industry needs. And the work still arrives the way it always has, from someone who told someone else.
See the structural repair work →Knepper’s Alaska Fish Camp
The Fish Camp started in 1988 as a ministry for men, in tents along a river in Ninilchik, Alaska. Two years later the company bought two acres and a cabin on the bank of the Ninilchik River as a base of operation, and in 2006 built a log lodge there from the first fruits of a good year.
The same instinct shows up closer to the trade today: KneppKraft provides free construction training to students at Roatán Vocational Technical School in Honduras.
Forty years of showing up. Put us on your building.
Licensed A and B, so we can assess the structure and make the repair. Send photos and a few details and we will tell you what it takes.
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