Rob Thomas, founder at Firemate. Source: Supplied.
When Rob Thomas worked as a fire safety contractor, he visited hundreds of commercial buildings to check that their fire alarms, smoke detectors, fire extinguishers and sprinkler systems had been installed correctly and were being properly maintained.
“Most people don’t even know fire protection contractors exist,” he says, “but every single office block, warehouse, retail outlet or factory has to be inspected to make sure they comply with a comprehensive range of safety regulations and standards. If you don’t check the sprinklers, for example, and it turns out there’s no water in some of them, then you wouldn’t know until a fire broke out.”
As his work could help save lives, he needed to be confident that he had carried out all his tasks correctly at every inspection.
Traditionally, while on-site Rob would refer to a range of documents that outlined safety regulations and standard procedures and trust they were the most up-to-date versions. When completing his checks, he would tick them off on a form attached to his clipboard.
He also had to keep weighty operational instructions for the fire systems and have detailed records of previous inspections. It often meant trawling through hundreds of pages to find the specific information he needed at that precise moment.
There had to be a better way.
Revolutionising the way to access fire protection information
Rob realised that hours could be saved every week if only a digital software solution was available so the checks could be completed and submitted online and then be available for subsequent inspections.
Within months, he came up with an innovative solution: FireMate, a cloud-based software that’s set to revolutionise the fire protection industry.
“FireMate transforms the fire protection industry by accelerating field technicians’ day-to-day procedures and automating repetitive processes,” he says, “helping to reduce compliance complexity, control costs and boost productivity.”
Setting new standards
The FireMate app was a deceptively simple concept that provoked immediate interest from the highly competitive fire protection industry. Skills shortages were stymying growth, so the ability to save time and offer a better service to clients was too good to pass up.
“For our customers, the app improves productivity as everything they need is automated when they’re onsite. It also ensures better compliance to safety guidelines as it eliminates the guesswork.”
Rob knew his customers also needed to have all the relevant fire safety standards at their fingertips and have absolute faith that they were up-to-date and trustworthy.
There was only one organisation that could deliver on that promise: Standards Australia, the country’s peak body for developing and updating standards across multiple industries.
It brings together stakeholders from government, business, academia and the community to form a technical committee that formulates standards. The result is an unrivalled knowledge bank of wisdom that’s been gathered over time by the best and most experienced people in a given field.
Standards Australia and FireMate formed a partnership to enable Firemate to integrate fire safety standards into the app. Fire professionals and contractors could now quickly and easily access the content of the relevant standard while on-site and have complete confidence that the information was up-to-date and from a trusted source.
“Our partnership with Standards Australia is very exciting — a real shot in the arm for us that’s opened doors and brought us genuine credibility,” Rob reveals. “For me personally, having spent my entire career in the fire industry, working with such a trusted organisation is actually quite humbling. From the very first meeting we had to discuss the plan right through to the present day, it’s been a fantastic experience.”
An opportunity for innovative companies
It’s also a first for Standards Australia.
“What FireMate has done for fire protection, a startup or innovator could do for another industry such as mining, engineering, logistics or IT,” Standards Australia’s Head of Commercial Partnerships, Daniel Chidgey, says.
“We see many exciting opportunities for re-bundling standards into new value packages. Not having trusted technical standards information integrated into compliance workflows is a real gap in the market,” he says.
“Standards Australia is eager to partner with other innovative companies to take advantage of these possibilities, so we can continue to support Australian communities in new ways.”
Standards Australia is the nation's peak non-government, not-for-profit standards organisation. For more than a century, Standards Australia has set the benchmarks for building a nation, developing over 9,000 standards that cover almost every aspect of our lives. Standards Australia wants to partner with Australia’s most innovative companies to help their customers work smarter, manage risk, and gain insights by transforming how they use standards. Be a part of the change.
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