Fire Buyer talks to fire safety expert Pete Davies, Business Development Manager from Fireco to discover more about their IoT platform Insite
What sets Fireco out from other market leaders?
For almost 30 years, Fireco has been at the forefront of wireless technology for hold-open devices. From our humble beginnings manufacturing the acoustically actuated Dorgard device, we have helped thousands of customers to tame unruly fire doors and have manufactured and sold over 1 million units. And we continue to innovate our products by incorporating radio frequency actuation for the highest levels of compliance. Our ProHub can be integrated with any fire and detection system as well as things like sprinkler systems or automatic operating vents should traditional fire alarm and detection not be present. And it’s this new radio system, our Pro Range, which we think will be the future for what we do. Why? Because by using our ProHub transmitter, we can offer an invaluable link in customers’ ‘Golden Thread’ of fire safety information.
From a compliance perspective alone, the Golden Thread of building information, as was identified in Dame Judith Hackett’s Grenfell Report, really is vital for ensuring that buildings are safe and that the people in them are protected. That information needs to be accessible by anyone that needs to see it – building managers, fire safety and maintenance teams, risk assessors, enforcement authorities. Even being able to present evidence of good maintenance practice should legal proceedings be undertaken. The Internet of Things and cloud-based technology are the perfect way of being able to store and present this kind of data and make it available at the tap of a screen.
What brought you to improve on Dorgard?
As the manufacturer of wireless products, we’re not ignorant to the fact that, for some customers, maintaining wireless systems, if not properly considered, can be cumbersome. How can you be sure that batteries are performing? Are you certain that devices are releasing? Why is that thing beeping like that? These simple questions led us to a place we wanted to improve upon. So we started looking at how a network of devices could talk to each other and, more importantly, how we could extrapolate that data and present it to customers. And that’s when we thought ‘what if we can connect this radio transmitter, the ProHub, to the internet?’ By incorporating Internet of Things technology into our products, we are now able to offer our customers a full overview of their system via our InSite cloud platform, something that even our hardwired counterparts are, thus far, unable to do.
By connecting our ProHub system controller to the internet via an ethernet connection, we can monitor the whole network with a full suite of maintenance tools to not only help customers manage their system proactively, but also to keep vital records for building maintenance. So as well as the status of your Dorgard Pro units, you can see when they were fitted, by whom, and when a door is due for an inspection. You could even remotely close all your doors to help with a building’s lockdown procedures, or locate a device at the push of a button.
To read the full article see our latest issue: December/ January 2022 Single Issue – Fire Buyer International
Media contact
Rebecca Morpeth Spayne,
Editor, International Fire Buyer
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: editor@firebuyer.com
