The Fire Protection Podcast: Episode #58 – The Compliance Engine’s Role in Advancing Fire and Life Safety

Drew Slocum:
This is episode 58 of The Fire Protection Podcast, powered by Inspect Point. Today, my guest is Bryan Schultz of Brycer’s The Compliance Engine. Wanted to get Bryan on for quite a while now. I actually flew out to their office in Chicago and got to sit down with him for well over an hour to chat about things, had a great video feed set up in their office and my A/V skills weren’t able to capture the video. Great audio, though.

It was a great chat with Bryan about what he’s seen throughout fire prevention bureaus and AHJs throughout the US, what their needs are, and what they’re asking of The Compliance Engine and Brycer, and how the industry can help. Inspect Point recently launched their integration with The Compliance Engine, which provides better data flow down to the AHJs and building owners. So, cool to debut that and kick that off and discuss. But also the entire stakeholder analysis, the different stakeholders in the process of fire prevention, not just the building owners, not just the service providers and contractors, but the AHJs themselves, and everyone who interacts in between the better data flow means it’s a win for everybody. Brian gives the story of where they started, how they came to be, and where they’re at now.

Hey, just a quick plug. If anybody does listen to this episode and wants to see some more about the integration of Inspect Point’s data flow to The Compliance Engine, mention this episode when you book a demo, and we’ll shoot you a free iPad. So anyway, onto the podcast. And again, thanks everybody for listening.

Drew Slocum:
All right. We’re here, Bryan! We’re finally getting this together. It’s been a long time. I think I was just telling Matt out there, I was like, well, I saw you guys. I thought you were there at the moment. But we were at the NFSA ITM summit in Chicago, which I think I just–we had started Inspect Point for a few years, but it was the first, I was just full-time at that point, and it was quite the event, little contractors versus what’s going on in the city of Chicago.

Bryan Schultz:
It’s totally changed now, right?

Drew Slocum:
It’s a lot better sentiment, and I think it’s been good. So Bryan, thanks for coming on the podcast today.

Bryan Schultz:
I have to say though, when we talked about doing this, we were going to be in Florida with warm weather on a golf course. We’re in Chicago right now.

Drew Slocum:
We’re in Chicago in January. Yeah, I know. My bad. Hey, we can still do that. We just don’t have to record, right? Thanks for coming on. It’s been a little bit, I know we have some good stuff, or we’ve announced at this point, but wanted to really explain The Compliance Engine by Brycer, and where you guys are going. And it is mainly in the U.S., but there are other areas in the world that obviously we were just talking about, where there’s potential for compliance software and how that works. So give us the background of Brycer and why you’re in this.

Bryan Schultz:
It’s interesting, because I grew up in the contractor side of the business, and I’ll preface that my grandfather and my uncle were both in fire departments, various fire departments in Illinois, Bellwood, Westchester, and Lobar. And so, growing up I was surrounded by family members in the fire department,, but my father went a different path. He wanted to be a business owner, so he had various businesses, from hotdog stands to real estate, but the one that clicked was the fire protection service company, which has since been sold. So growing up, I did jobs in the warehouse, would recharge fire extinguishers over six years and basically sweep the floor and do all that stuff. But then, as I got older, I was a fire extinguisher technician, went out there and would walk around buildings. And to me that was one of the coolest jobs I ever had because I got to go into every business and go walk through the whole building.

And I always thought that was amazing. I go to a paper mill one day or a train brake manufacturer, and you get to see the inner workings of all these businesses and you go into every room. Surprisingly, they let you go all over the place too, with sometimes very minimal oversight. And I think back to that now, and I’m like, I guess if you wanted to get into a business, go through the extinguisher technician route. Maybe it’s changed. It’s been 20-plus years since I’ve been on a truck. So that’s how I got into the business. It was a family business, like most people in our industry.

But then I gravitated towards sales, so I would go knock on doors. Back then, we were a small company, and my job was to go out and bring in new customers, and we were primarily inspecting, testing, and servicing. Very little install work. And I would go out the old school way with paper maps. Some of your audience may have never seen one of these, but you’d kind of highlight the streets that you covered. And I would go door to door and hope that they would choose us for their service company. I was naive at the time, but what I learned is that I would go into businesses and they would say, “Sure, let’s go look at the sprinkler room.” And I could see a report hanging on the riser and on the backflows and on the fire alarm panel. It’s all right there. And I would see reports that said, last time it’s been inspected was three years ago, four years ago. Sometimes it would be when it was installed and it had never been touched.

And I would see this all the time. The person at the building, the engineer, would say, “We hadn’t seen the fire department in years.” And it just fell by the wayside. And this would happen in various cities. I thought growing up that everybody had their tests done. I wanted them to use my company versus somebody else, but I thought that everybody was doing it because the fire department was making you do it. And that’s really what sparked this business.

Drew Slocum:
Interesting. Was that how all of these businesses were operating? You were in the field and a light bulb went off?

Bryan Schultz:
It was very similar. I thought, if the fire department knew about this, then they could act on it, right? So that was the question I was asking; how do they not know about this information?

So that was the motivation. Oh, wow. It was like, this might be real. This might be something really cool to do. 

Drew Slocum:
That’s crazy. What year was this? 

Bryan Schultz:
This was just about 15 years ago. At the time, we were a family business. I was running the business and it was one where dad’s going to pass it on to the son. So, that was what I was supposed to do, and I came to my dad’s office and said, “Hey, I have this idea I might want to go chase down.” And I give him all of the credit in the world because he never tried to stop me. He was like, yeah, go chase it. So, how Matt and I got connected then is that Matt was from the insurance industry and had been with the insurance industry for a long time – 15 plus years when we got together – and I kind of walked him through this idea and said, “Hey, here’s what I got.”

Granted, he had six kids at the time. I only had one when we started talking. And so we spent about six months researching the market and putting all the numbers together and figuring out what we needed to do and who’s going to develop it. Neither one of us are software developers. We know what it should do or want to do, but I can’t tell a computer how to do it. So we needed smart people to do that. And we spent about six months on that, got a business plan, and we got some family office money, and we both said, we’re going to give it a shot. 

Drew Slocum:
And so did you go all in at once or were you kind of double dipping? 

Bryan Schultz:
Once we committed, we were all in. We quit our full-time jobs and we were a hundred percent dedicated. You have to be one hundred and fifty percent dedicated to start a business. And he had three more kids. I had four more. So at some point we realized we don’t have any choice. You got to make it work, right? Everything wasn’t perfect. There were lots of growing pains. And people ask me, they’re like, what’s one of the things that you just didn’t foresee? And I tell people, and this kind of touches on some of the things I think maybe you want to touch on today, is one of the assumptions we made in our business plan was that the fire departments would be able to give us the data of what they had. And that we weren’t going to create the data or have to find the data. We were just going to take over the process of the data flow coming in.

So if somebody tests a fire alarm or a sprinkler system, we would be collecting that data from the contractor and then we would update the database. Then, we would use that data to let a building know when they’re due or past due, et cetera. But we thought we were going to start with this solid base. So Warrenville, Illinois, where we’re at right now, and where our office is, was our first customer. And we say, okay, we’re ready to go. We say, can we export your data in a format that we can digest? And they weren’t able to. They’re like, well, we can give you some properties, but they didn’t know in their database. They could say, this building 123 Main Street has a fire alarm, has a split system. It wasn’t there. So we were like, oh, well, now what do we do? And what’s interesting is that roughly 15 years past that point, that’s how the data still comes from the fire departments.

Drew Slocum:
That’s crazy.

Bryan Schultz:
I thought as a contractor–and maybe most of your customers still don’t fully understand that the fire departments just don’t have this information.

Drew Slocum:
Property information and maybe the occupancy.

Bryan Schultz:
Yeah. I mean, right. So they’re flying blind. Unless they physically go to all these buildings to look, they couldn’t tell you if a fire alarm hasn’t been serviced. They can’t tell you if deficiencies exist on that fire alarm or sprinkler system. They don’t have any of that. And it’s still like that today. So if somebody’s not using The Compliance Engine, you could walk into any fire department in the country and very few of ’em, I’m talking single digits, could provide you with a database that they could use. I had no idea. We just assumed they have to have this information.

Drew Slocum:
But go back to you being a tech and going through the building, you see the paper there. So that’s almost the key of the whole business. If it’s paper, it’s not moving anywhere from there, or there’s a lot of trouble to enter that information manually.

Bryan Schultz:
Granted, there’s still people out there using paper. But yeah, I was hanging on the riser, there was a report there, a triple kit copy or something that they left at the system and the fire department was supposed to go walk around and look at this to make sure it was right. That’s how the system had been built. Company gets into a place, fire department does this, tech goes out, hangs it there so that the insurance company or the building owner or the fire department can then see that it’s done. And that works if the fire department physically is going to be in all those places. But where that process broke is that very few fire departments actually can do that.

Drew Slocum:
Right. The staffing.

Bryan Schultz:
The staffing just doesn’t allow for it. Sure. And if we did do that right, we’ll talk about cost. The cost would be dramatic to have a physical person loaded, cost of that person’s retirement, all that would far exceed a report, submittal cost or something like that. It would be massive. So it just doesn’t happen. And then just because the report’s there doesn’t mean the system passed the test. I mean, I can hang a report on a system with a deficiency on it. It doesn’t mean that it passed. What we also found is that it will go out that a test has been done and people won’t realize that the systems are deficient. And I know some states have a red tag or a green, but then you’ve got to go back there constantly.

But who’s going to then follow up and say, “Hey, did these red tags get closed out?” I mean, from a personal experience. Now granted, when I was on the contractor side in my previous role, I just assumed it got done, I didn’t know how it gets done. Now we have close to a thousand fire departments we’ve partnered with, I think it’s six of the 10 top largest cities in the country are using The Compliance Engine. So we have very intimate knowledge about what is possible and what is not possible from a fire department staffing perspective in this arena.

Drew Slocum:
Especially with those large cities, they have big budgets and a lot of buildings. At the end of the day, nobody has the staffing correct. And it is probably not getting better.

Bryan Schultz:
I don’t see that changing. I don’t see how all of a sudden the fire departments are going to solve this. How we solve for this is just go and hire a hundred more fire inspectors. I just don’t see that either. All these systems need to be working. And in order for us to ensure that, they have to be tested and maintained. If that’s true, I don’t write the codes, but there’s data to back that up that you need to maintain these systems. Then the only way to do that in my opinion, is we have to understand the data and we have to build to use the data. We have to be able to do it efficiently.

Drew Slocum:
Right. That gets in a whole wormhole.

Bryan Schultz:
There’s a lot of data out there that everybody has, but it’s still in its infancy. So I mean, I know people that are listening have seen us announce an integration between The Compliance Engine and Inspect Point. And what that solves for is the time in which the fire department can act on things. So statistically, by the time the technician does the test, gets it into The Compliance Engine and then essentially into the fire department’s hand, it can still take weeks. Well, with the integrations we’re talking, that can get into the database at the time of inspection, which means now we could be chopping a month off of time in which things can get acted on much sooner. And what a lot of contractors may not think about is that the fire department is able to push that data into their CAD systems or their response. So the fire trucks, as they roll out, are now using that data if it’s a fire pump issue or there’s a fire alarm issue or a sprinkler system issue that now can show up in the software that they’re using onsite and as close to real time as it’s ever been in our industry.

And so we actually have integrations with other software that the fire department uses. Seattle, for example, was where the first integration was set up between us and them–there’s an alert tile saying, “Hey, fire protection system has deficiencies on it, and that is now showing up.” So they know right away. That could save critical time before they show up to the building, they have this information. Whereas if you think back to the old process, a paper report sitting on that fire pump, that data is essentially useless to somebody responding to that building. So is it going to happen tomorrow that all of the data is going to flow through TCE at the time of service and be in the hands of response teams? No, but it’s happening now. I mean, we already have reports that are going through as we speak through our integration. And as more cities adopt our platform and where contractors adopt your platform and other platforms, that flow is going to change things dramatically. The goal is that we have compliance. When we say compliance, we’re talking about fire protection systems that are reliable and at work. And I think every day we’re getting closer and closer to that.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. I forgot to mention, not even top of mind of the first responder showing up or that firefighter showing up and the team seeing that right on site, that is a big value. And again, they have to have the kind of full flow to the opposite side of the integration going out, but…

Bryan Schultz:
Correct. You could think of it like a technician is at that panel, able to talk to somebody, responding…

Drew Slocum:
To that building, that firefighter. Right?

Bryan Schultz:
Essentially, that’s what’s happening. Now they’re using the integration for other reasons, too. So currently if a fire inspector walks into a building and isn’t using The Compliance Engine, they have to physically walk in and ask for this documentation. Now a lot of people, if you’re doing it on a handheld, you’re not leaving a paper copy anymore sitting at the panel or on the riser. So what happens? Where is that document?

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, that’s a good point.

Bryan Schultz:
So a fire inspector walks into a building and says, “Can I get a copy of your fire alarm report or spring court report? Where is it?” And if the person that they need to talk to isn’t there now, they can’t even get it.

Yeah, we centralized that information at our property management firm–and now the fire inspector has to go call somebody, follow up with somebody, and that takes time and they don’t have it. So what we’ve changed is that before they walk into a building, they can pull all that information up. They don’t need to ask for documentation anymore because they already have it. So they can do quicker inspections and they can be prepared. And fire departments love to be prepared. They don’t just want to walk into something blind. And so having that information on a system prior to an inspection allows them to address things while they’re there too. There could be deficiencies that still exist that they didn’t get repaired and they don’t have to walk around and collect the information anymore.

Well, plus if you look at the old, in-style spectrum reports and they’re still out there, sure you have a document, you have to go through that inspection report. So you need to know, and that’s not standardized, which is, that’s another, separate thing. But now you’re pinpointing, “Hey, I’ve got these five deficiencies and four are noncritical and one is critical. Well, where am I spending my time?” We’re going to address this right now. And what we’re seeing is, and this is feedback from what the biggest change has been since we started, was we’re getting so much more feedback from the contractors. 

Now, I hear from contractors all the time that they’re so busy with work. Their biggest issue now is not uploading a report or paying the fee, it’s technicians to do the work. And I think about that, and I remember back to where, when I was on the other side of this. I don’t even want to say other side, doing a different role, really. We’re all on the same side. My challenge was trying to get business. I was trying to figure out how to get customers, and I talk to companies now where they’re not doing any door knocking. They’re just following up on inbound leads coming in, and maybe they’re just really good at marketing.

But what I also know is that behind the scenes, we do so much of pushing inspection requirements and deficiency follow-up that we generate a lot of inbound for people. And what most people don’t realize is that yes, we get copies of reports, sure, but that’s not really what our business is. Our business is to use that data to ensure that the inspections and the maintenance get done. So we build the database for the fire department, because unfortunately, they aren’t able to give it to us. We thought they were. So I have a full-time team of people. I have five full-time people that walk the streets using Google Earth products and other proprietary mapping services and mapping things where we’ll virtually walk a city to look for a test header on the side of a building. Sometimes you can walk into buildings and see that it has a sprinkler head on the ceiling, see the panel.

Well, I can then immediately know that that building has these systems and if I don’t get an inspection report in 12 months, then it either didn’t get submitted to me or it’s past due. One of these two things is true. And then we start to act on that and we start to collect the data. And if I don’t get another report the following year, we notify the building. We pick up the phone and call. So we have a team of people that are servicing the account for the fire department, and they have to do it right. So let’s say I send a notice to the building owner for a fire alarm that hasn’t been tested. That building owner then goes to Google or looks at who they used last time and calls somebody and says, “Hey, I need to get my fire alarm inspector because I got a letter from the fire department.” Or they don’t even say why they called. They just say, I need to get my fire alarm inspector. Contractor shows up, gets a new account, charges hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars, but doesn’t realize that that business was driven by my team.

So their business is increasing, their asset value is increasing their revenue. And what they’re now concerned about is how do I fulfill this business? I need technicians. And that’s all I’m hearing is I need more techs. I need more techs.

Drew Slocum:
Since you guys started 15 years ago, 2009, right after the recession hit in 2008, that’s when inspection, testing, and maintenance for fire protection was like, “Oh man, the business just crashed on install side.” So a lot of these contracts, how do they get the doors open?

Bryan Schultz:
There was a nice flood following that. And then we had the pandemic hit, and then all of a sudden it was like, well, you still need fire safety in these buildings. It was an essential business within three weeks of everything being shut down for everybody. That was scary. But our business saw a small dip for a month, and then it was business as usual. And I think we were just kind of lucky we were in the right industry. None of us planned for that.

Drew Slocum:
No, no, no. But I always say it’s pandemic and recession resistant because it’s a codified industry and the fire safety is there. The thing is, you put these millions, these very expensive systems in, maintaining ’em is a fraction of the cost. And if you don’t regulate that, then why put ’em in?

Bryan Schultz:
And I think the other thing that’s driving it too is that the contractor businesses, private equity has come into that significantly. So these are assets, these owners, these family businesses, they are valuable if they have recurring revenue.

Drew Slocum:
It’s sticky too.

Bryan Schultz:
So I think that’s driving people to pursue that in their business moreso than maybe the installs. We always looked at our business from a stakeholder standpoint. The fire department gains a tool that helps them do their job at a level that they could not replicate internally. Some have tried, and I have some good examples of that. So they get something that helps them do their job and peace of mind because they’re in the business of compliance, and that’s what they’re paid to do. That’s what they’re sworn to do. The contractors, this generates a lot of revenue for them. I mean, any repairs get done faster, more inspections get done. And some of those can be very lucrative and not just on the revenue they get at that time, but what that does to the value of their business. I mean, the multiples are good on those businesses. And so every time we get an extra thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand dollars into a city for revenue, that’s going to happen. Somebody’s benefiting from that on an asset value.

Drew Slocum:
Well, I think everybody is including the safety of the buildings. If you walk into a building, you want to make sure that that system is secure.

Bryan Schultz:
We get requests every day from building owners, property management companies, and we have the ability to give them view-only access of their buildings. So they can’t change the data, they can’t do anything like that. So they get a snapshot of their information in their building, and software can also provide that to them. But they get it. They want to see that it’s been submitted. They want to see that the fire department has it, they can look into TCE to see that. Or they have a group of buildings across the country, and they want to see all of their buildings. And so we give them a view-only access, and we get more and more of those requests coming.

Drew Slocum:
Interesting.

Bryan Schultz:
So there’s thousands of buildings that are using TCE essentially just to see that it’s happening, see what’s going on. And so it’s been a fun journey.

Drew Slocum:
Do you get any requests from insurers yet? I talked to Matt about it the other day too. I was just like, “Hey, what is the landscape of insurance?” We say AHJ a lot, and everybody thinks fire official or fire prevention bureau, whatever it may be. It depends on what town you’re in, whatever. But the insurer has a big part of this,.

Bryan Schultz:
We do have some of that. So we don’t actually own the data, the fire department does. We’re hosting it and everything, but we don’t, I can’t just go give or sell to the insurer.

But what does happen, and we have a couple of examples, is the state of Idaho has their own insurance rating bureau. So they came and said, “Hey, when we do ratings on buildings, fire ratings on buildings, we want to be able to see this information.” So we say, sounds great, but you need to get permission from Boise and Meridian and all the folks that we work with. They did. So the rating bureau in Idaho and Washington can pull up information when they go to fire rate buildings. So it’s definitely happening. I wouldn’t say that it’s something significant at this point. It’s something that is probably foreseeable. You can see the insurance companies playing a bigger role. I do think that there is a way for the insurance companies to help play a bigger role to ensure these buildings are tested. So you have the fire department who’s now using TCE as a tool. I think if you get both involved, you could do that.

Drew Slocum:
That’s a big change.

Bryan Schultz:
But it’s not going to solve the supply side though.

Drew Slocum:
Oh, I know. And it’s getting better, but there’s still not enough feet on the ground. And there’s some technology that is, again, I think a lot of this data, and we were kind of getting into this earlier of, all right, we have all this data. Well, this should drive some of the changes to the code where if we know this is happening and how frequently or infrequently these systems are deficient, well, let’s change the code a little bit. Let’s be smarter about it. If we don’t have the people there, do we have to be there on a quarterly or can we move it to a semi-annual? And I know NFPA has done that in the past, but I think there’s such an opportunity to do that. And again, there’s different stakeholders that might not want to change or some that want to change. So it’s like who’s going to organize it?

Bryan Schultz:
Yeah. I think that certainly we see, so there’s some states, so most of the areas we work in, as you know, there’s not standardization on the forms or the data. So there’s deficiencies that can come in that could be typed in, could be coming one way. They all mean the same thing, but they’re not exact, so it’s not easy to quantify it. Places like the greater Seattle area where they’ve gone and said, here are our forms. Here’s these pass fail questions. So they’re collecting this information in a standardized way, and we’ve done some analysis and said, here’s your most common deficiencies, and they can run it against fire alarm panels and size of buildings. So they’re starting to do that.

So we collect all that in a very standardized way. Now, I’m certainly not a code expert. I’m not even all that. My brother actually was the one who held all the licenses, understands the books and the codes, and has the nice set certifications. And his mind is brilliant when it comes to that. I was a sales guy.

So I try to stay away a little bit from telling people how the code should be written or always what they should do with that data, because I think there’s people that should be taking that and digesting it and making determinations on frequencies, things like that. Where we operate is if that’s how the code is written today, we’re just applying as it is. And if the fire department or the code says it needs to be tested annually, that’s what we’re going to hold the building accountable to. But there’s probably a conversation that could or should be had at some point.

Drew Slocum:
And it started and stopped. And again, in the fire protection fire service realm, where are the biggest hurdles? Labor’s the number one, and I don’t think that’s going away.

Bryan Schultz:
Yes and no. I mean, I do know that we, companies like yourself, well, you’re making people more efficient. So can we get more out of our resources? Yes, to a certain extent.

I’m intrigued though with the consolidation in that certainly these assets are growing and being purchased. And what happens then is you do tighten up routes because that company has a larger presence. I don’t know how, if I have a technician that’s driving distances significantly decreased because we now have a larger footprint in that area. From a customer base, you should see that that technician can get more done in the same amount of time because they’re driving distances a lot less from stop to stop during the day. And if you looked at that across the whole country and enough consolidation happens, that will have an impact at some level in terms of being able to get more done. And if they’re using Inspect Point and the combination of all that, do I think that there’s not a need to, on a national level, recruit? I mean, these jobs are lucrative now.

What a technician can make very early in their career far exceeds what most college degrees pay. I’m hopeful that there’s a time where more people are like, no, I’m going to go get my hands dirty a little bit. And I think their quality of life, at least from a financial standpoint, would be improved. And I just don’t know how good of a job we do recruiting people to the industry.

I believe there’s a consolidation happening now, there’ll be a fragmentation at some point. And because there’ll be these younger technicians that are like, oh, I’m the asset to this company. Well, why can’t I just do this myself? So I think there’ll be a little fragmentation probably in another five to 10 years. But because there’s a gap, we’re kind of in that middle generation gap where there’s a lot of older companies that are retiring and selling out, but there’s a few in the middle, and then there’s a lot of newer ones. And we see that every day. Just new owner-operated companies that, hey, they’re the asset to that business. A lot of times, well, why can’t I just go start this?

Drew Slocum:
Sure. Every time a business is acquired, somebody starts, it breaks off.

Bryan Schultz:
And some succeed and some don’t, but you need that competition.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, you do.

Do the fire service have the same problems with labor? I know you guys are solving a labor issue with your software, but I worked with the FDNY or had quite a bit, and they had a really tough time recruiting the last five years or so.

Bryan Schultz:
So people submit information and there’s a fee for it. I look at it as an investment because we think there’s a return on that investment. But some cities have a revenue share where we charge above and beyond our rate, and that money goes to the fire department, and they use that money to hire people that are dedicated to this. So I’ll use Austin, Texas as an example. Austin, Texas, the fee, it’s a $30 submittal fee-

Drew Slocum:
Per annual, per system.

Bryan Schultz:
Correct. And half of that roughly goes to Austin, doesn’t go to us because of the number of systems they have. We’re tracking upwards of 30,000 of ’em. So it’s generating hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city. They use that money then. And they’ve hired dedicated people that help run the enforcement compliance program on just fire protection systems. What that’s done has driven up. One, it’s giving people a job. So they’re hiring people, but two is their compliance rates are through the roof compared to where they were before us. So last I looked, less than 10% of the fire protection systems in the whole city of Austin have an active deficiency on it, which that’s crazy. Which is very, very, almost 90% of their fire pack systems are within test range, meaning they’re not past due for testing. They’ve been tested semi-annual/annual. Now, why I bring them up is prior to The Compliance Engine, they tried to do this internally.

They hired dedicated people. They even charged their own fee. They had a submittal process through some software they built, but they only could get it up to 11% compliance. Now, some of that was, the report just didn’t get submitted. It might’ve been tested. Sure. But internally, they could not get this program going. And they tried for years, and we come in with our resources that we have and our expertise. And over the past few years now, getting to a point that would’ve been unthinkable for them. But they also were able to fund these jobs. Before, they weren’t able to fund them because they weren’t able to bring in enough revenue to fund it. So then it was a cost. Somebody was paying for it, tax payers were paying for it somewhere.

So the contractor’s there. Now, certainly there’s more work, more inspections, more maintenance exploding there, too. And on top of that, you’ve had significant growth. The number of buildings has increased, the population has increased significantly. So that’s a really, really good example of where this process has been very efficient and everybody’s benefited from it in that city. So basically, we’re just talking about probability here. The likelihood that one of those systems working is just higher–there’s no guarantees. Doesn’t mean the second after that tech leaves, that system can’t fail. It just means that there’s a higher probability that systems are going to work. And that’s all basically we’re trying to do is increase that to as close to a hundred percent as possible, knowing that it’s probably never going to go to a hundred. But where we were before in most cities, we’re talking 40% compliance. If you walked around in the average city and you went to a hundred fire protection systems, you’re going to see that at least half of them either aren’t tested or have a deficiency that hasn’t been fixed. You’re talking about half of the market is potentially not in compliance. They don’t even know where the building–you’re identifying buildings that they don’t even know about.

When we got into this, you used to think that buildings did this intentionally that they just didn’t want to pay to have it inspected because there’s a cost, right. If you’re an owner of a building or managing a building, thousands of dollars a year for a decent sized building to maintain these systems. And what we’ve learned though, is–so we take inbound calls from hundreds of properties every day, every day. So when we send notices out or make calls, if they have a question, our number’s listed on it. So usually that inbound costs for us to answer FAQ-type stuff. And so we get a lot of data now from buildings saying, I didn’t even know I was supposed to do it, or I wasn’t aware. I didn’t even know I had that in my building. The assumption is that they’re as vested in this as we are, and that’s just not true.

They have so many other things. Who cuts the grass? Who shovels the snow? Who maintains the HVAC system? The roof’s leaking? Tenant rental disputes. So there’s a lot that goes on. And to think that the property manager or the building owners are as versed in code books that are this big, is just unrealistic. So yes, some people intentionally don’t do it because they’re trying to get by as cheap as possible. Right. But surprisingly, a good portion of them didn’t realize there was also, or they thought the contractor was taking care of it, and the contractor failed to call and set an appointment to do the inspection, and then it just fell to the wayside. And that happens all the time because they’re so busy. Or their scheduling department was using pen and paper, or not an efficient software or what have you. So I’ve learned over the years that it’s not just intentional that these systems just aren’t being–it’s not front of mind. It’s like, “Hey, the air conditioning’s not working. Somebody’s hot in here.”

We have to get stickers on our license plates every year. We have to pay to get a sticker to put on our license plate. I’m sure other states have this. And for years, they would send you a notice. And they stopped it. And I ended up for six months driving around with an old license plate sticker where my wife tells me, and I totally forgot about it because I didn’t get reminded of it. I didn’t put it on my own calendar. I didn’t even pay attention to the schedule. And I thought about that, and I thought, huh, our notices that we send help buildings that just don’t keep good schedules. And if the contractor doesn’t do it for them, most of them would just let it go. Let it go. A time goes by. I just had it inspected a year ago. Yeah, right.

Drew Slocum:
I’m interested, you brought up Austin, Texas and being before or after, and it’d be interesting to see the data. Now, you probably don’t have this of the actual fire incidents and how kind of deep dive, because that’s the end to end goal, and they might not have that. Obviously fires are still going to happen, but hey, the scale of fires, because of these fire protection systems, you’re going to have firefighters. They’re quicker due to fire alarm systems being properly operating. Obviously sprinklers, suppression systems, are going to put it out. So it’d be interesting to see the results down the line of that to see.

Bryan Schultz:
I haven’t seen a fire department tackle that yet. Yeah, they’ve done some in comparison to false alarms, but I haven’t seen…

Drew Slocum:
Oh, that’s interesting. See, there’s some data.

Bryan Schultz:
There’s some data on that. Seattle had done one, it’s been a few years now, Los Angeles had done one.

Drew Slocum:
That’s a cost if you’re rolling a truck, right?

Bryan Schultz:
Yeah. So Los Angeles took, they had some problematic buildings where sometimes they rolled trucks to some of these buildings like daily in some of these cities on some of these…

Drew Slocum:
In New York, it was like that all the time. You get a water flow. It was daily or every week.

Bryan Schultz:
So they took these buildings, and then after TCE had been implemented for a period of time, the theory was that if these fire alarms are now going to get repaired, we should see less of these triggers. And in both Seattle, Austin, they were Seattle and LA, they were able to see a decrease. Now, it’s still a question of causation. Was that in fact the only reason why they went down? So I think that there’s probably still, you probably want–

Drew Slocum:
More data.

Bryan Schultz:
More data and expand it out. But at least in those two instances, that is what happened. You did see decreases over time as we started to help them get these systems more in compliance. So I think that’s making an impact in terms of having more…

Drew Slocum:
It’s a cost to the city, a cost to the taxpayers.

Bryan Schultz:
And that was the thought, “Hey, how does this save a city money?” Because it’s expensive to put, it’s not only expensive–it’s unsafe. So every time they get in those trucks and have to drive somewhere, the chance of them getting into an accident is real.

Drew Slocum:
A certain percentage.

Bryan Schultz:
And so you end up with injuries and vests, sometimes just on their way to what we call a false alarm, an alarm activation that shouldn’t or didn’t need to go off. And so that was actually the bigger question they wanted to see is, “Hey, is this going to reduce our risk from an injury standpoint?”

And sure, they could put some numbers against it and say, “Hey, our truck wear and tear and people, et cetera.” But I haven’t seen one yet. On the loss side of it, our loss, and that might even be simple, the insurance companies would be more interested in.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, I’m sure insurance companies are more worried about weather right now than anything. But fire’s still a big piece of the policy. I get my personal policy, it’s like, oh, do you have this system, this system? Do you get a discount? I’m like, well, are they really checking or is it maintained?

Bryan Schultz:
I can tell you that my policies have gone up recently. I don’t know.

Drew Slocum:
Interesting one. And it’d be interesting to deep dive into deficiencies because we’re about to come out with a study on just what the deficiency makeup looks like. We did this, I did this briefly for fire alarm a little bit. Like, “Hey, what are the number one deficiencies and why are those happening?” And that’s another question are like, do AHJs, they probably care about all deficiencies, but all deficiencies aren’t the same.

Bryan Schultz:
No, they’re not. So I touched on it. The places where they have standardization in their forms, whether it’s coming from company A or company B, they could start to make those comparisons. And what some cities have done in those cities. So in Los Angeles, there’s a standard form behind those deficiencies they’ve rated.

Drew Slocum:

Oh, interesting.

Bryan Schultz:
So, and TCE does this automatically. So, there’s a critical down to non-critical. So, contractor just answers pass/fail. But when it comes to LA, they’ve said, this one’s more important than this one.

Drew Slocum:
Interesting.

Bryan Schultz:
Because even with our tool, they still have to decide how they use their resources. And if there’s something that flags this critical, they may physically go to that building versus, “Hey, are you going to get this done in 30 days?” That type of stuff. So we actually have that in place on the backend. Seattle uses that. In fact, we track elevators and backflows. So, the whole state of Mississippi is one example where all elevators, escalators, chairlifts come through the compliance entry and they have a standard form, and they have certain deficiencies that get flagged that require a full reinspection, and those where they can just be.

Drew Slocum:
Oh, wow.

Bryan Schultz:
So it’s not something that the contractor submitting sees. It’s something that the fire department is doing for their resources and rating ’em based on their response to it.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s kind of their call. I know in NFPA, if you mark something deficient, right? Sure. NFPA is a guideline, but their guidelines in the code and the appendix and all that. A lot of the deficiency statuses are moved to the, they’re not in the code. So they’re a guideline because they’re different, it’s a gray area. And a lot of times the service providers and contractors, they don’t want to put them in that. So an AHJ can determine that.

Bryan Schultz:
And they’re more looking at it from a response, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to shut down the building right now because the fire alarms went off or something because there’s no water running to the sprinkler system versus I have a single painted head. Now, again, I don’t make that determination.

I couldn’t tell you which one is more important than the other. But they’ve made that determination and they’re basing it on, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to shut the building down? Are we going to put them on fire watch, or are we going to just sit back and be okay with it getting fixed in 30 days? And if it doesn’t get fixed in 30 days, then we’re going to step up our follow up. And they’re making that determination essentially on their own, with their own business processes. There’s not necessarily a perfect playbook that says down to an individual deficiency, what is the fire department’s response supposed to be?

Drew Slocum:
Gotcha.

Bryan Schultz:
Right? You must put them on fire watch. You must send them a letter. You must physically go knock on that door. So they have made it up their own follow up, what they’re going to do. And that may be different from department  to department. It may be different than what the contractor believes they should do.

Drew Slocum:
Sure.

Bryan Schultz:
I think that over time, we’re going to start to see some of that maybe shake out a little bit. And I think what would help that is more standardization and analyzing the data. And I think we’re in an interesting position where it’s possible actually whether or not NFPA or the associations create standardization of, here are the questions get answered, here’s the forms, here’s how it looks. Right. And this kind of goes along with some of the data codes that have come out is, I could see, because the fire departments, we have some fire departments. Raleigh says, “Nope, you need to use this form now.” So we create those questions in TCE, and every contractor now has to use those. That’s determined at the fire department. So essentially we could, once we have all the fire departments using TCE, essentially, you could roll out more standard. 

Drew Slocum:
You could. But then are you getting into the, I almost think you need a consortium of all your AHJs to kind of come up with one, because they’re all going to think differently. Yeah. New York’s going to think different than Chicago. It’s going to think differently.

Bryan Schultz:
I still think we’re seeing it on a regional level, and it’s the fire departments there are wanting it. We’ve seen it in the Seattle area, and they get together with the industry stakeholders. So they’ll hold meetings and they do a really good job of this, maybe some of the best I’ve seen in the country where they’ll get together, they’ll get people from the fire alarm industry and the Sprint Corps industry, and they’ll get together and they’ll hold meetings and say, what should these forms look like? And we’re going to use them though for this whole area.

Drew Slocum:
That’s great.

Bryan Schultz:
And we just basically build ’em. We don’t actually have any insight as to what those questions should look like. They basically say, here’s what we want it to be. And we say, oh, but once that happens, the data now is powerful. It is very powerful and usable in a way that it wasn’t before. So I don’t think you’re going to see it just nationally play out.

Drew Slocum:
No, I don’t think so.

Bryan Schultz:
And at least not anytime soon.

Drew Slocum:
And just NFPA works–the whole standards and codes process works pretty slow. And I’ve said this before, it’s just it from time. I’m on NFPA 25. We’re working on 2026 version right now, working on it now, that’s not going to get adopted for probably eight years in most jurisdictions. So that time in between, there’s a lot of stuff going on that we’re finding out, whether it’s from data, new technology, whatever. So it’d be nice to standardize speed that up a little bit, and I’m not going to solve it here.

Bryan Schultz:
And our focus isn’t on standard data, honestly. Ours is right now, what our roadmap looks like is more fire departments using us, getting the data quicker. And that’s really what we’re spending our time on. And on the backend, it’s beefing up those services of notifying buildings when things aren’t the way they should be. And that’s where we’ve increased most of our resources is on that administrative push. And that just is to give the fire departments that team of people that they just can’t build internally.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah. Yeah. And that team turns into the contractors too, right? Absolutely. They’re resolving those deficiencies out.

Bryan Schultz:
Absolutely.

Drew Slocum:
Almost. I don’t want to say instantly, but I mean, they’re able to do it with the integration. Now, the technicians, they can write it up and almost resolve it, so they’re documenting it and resolving it at the same time

Bryan Schultz:
Potentially. I think that when I look at the integration, and we’ve been talking about, I mean, before we actually had it, I mean, it had been a year, two years, maybe longer.

Drew Slocum:
I haven’t run it for four years. That’s my vision. With the vision. It’s just putting–and I have to give a shout out to Robbie and Lee for working on this.

Bryan Schultz:
Our teams, there were a lot of things we didn’t have answers to. We had to bring certain things and put the data in format. So we had a lot of work to do to get it to where it would work for us. Same with your treatment. So neither one of us did the development. Here’s what we wanted to do, make it happen, actually. Right. And so they spent a considerable amount of time and resources in the investment we made. I mean, it still hasn’t paid off. I mean, it’s still in its infancy. It’s going to be, we’re talking months where we’re going to start to see large adoption of it. And I think the deficiency closure though, part of it is going to be one of the best features where you close it out and Inspect Point, closes it out so that we don’t have false data chasing something that may have already been fixed. And what we’re talking about is just time. Right? Less time spent, right?

Drew Slocum:
Because a month now, or whatever that is, it’s weeks to a month of…

Bryan Schultz:
Or people are having to do duplicate work. And we’re just trying to say, look, that’s not the goal here. I mean, when we put our business plan together, we’re talking 15 years ago, we always envisioned that TCE was this hub, central hub, kind of a glue that connected contractors to fire departments, but there are other softwares playing in this marketplace. We’re not saying that we were going to be this full suite to the contractors and to the fire departments and to insurance companies, et cetera. But we were going to play a critical role in that process in the exchange. And so it was always the vision that we were going to be connecting to those back points. And to finally see that really start to be realistic has been…

Drew Slocum:
It’s exciting. Yeah.

Bryan Schultz:
It’s really cool. And so the more, as your business grows, we’re going to start to see more reports coming in that way. And saving time. Saving time, saving time, saving time. Those resources get refocused on other things. And that benefits the industry as a whole. Yeah. Right? Yep. At least that’s what it’s supposed to do.

Drew Slocum:
That’s the hope, right? Yeah. Hopefully soften a little bit of a labor issue, too.

Bryan Schultz:
Yeah. And saves cost. I mean, it cuts down on some other call. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:
Well, this has been great, Bryan. This is awesome. Thanks for having me out on a cold winter day here. 

Bryan Schultz:
That’s why this is something–we needed a warm background.

Drew Slocum:
I always end with–this is something called a quick response round where I asked the–I think I did it with Matt as well when he was on with Andreas a couple years ago. Just quick off the top of your head. Favorite Chicago food?

Bryan Schultz:
We love Lou Malnati’s Pizza. Yeah.

Drew Slocum:
All right. So it’s deep dish.

Bryan Schultz:
Yeah. I’m not only a deep dish guy. I mean, I like thin pizzas from your neck of the woods as well, but that’s still a great one. We have a great location, right? Naperville by our house. Nice.

Drew Slocum:
I have to go with Italian beef. That’s my favorite. And the Chicago hot dog. It’s probably between those two.

Bryan Schultz:
Okay.

Drew Slocum:
I can’t do deep dish.

Bryan Schultz:
Doesn’t sit well.

Drew Slocum:
From New York. Lived in New York City for a while, now I’m in Connecticut. So you got the Connecticut pizza. 

Bryan Schultz:
My favorite pizza, I had Grimaldi’s Pizza, which is from New York, coal-fired pizza. And when I lived down at Fort Myers for close to two years, when I started this business, we went down there and I was searching for a pizza place down there, when we lived down there, to find that I would eat and tried several and found this Aldi’s Pizza place. And they had one down–they had one down in Fort Myers, and we ordered it, and me and my wife eat this pizza, and it’s thin. And so we ate it quick and we kind of look at each other. I’m like, that’s amazing. We ordered another one. I went back and picked up a second one. We ate it. They don’t have one up here though. But it’s from New York.

Drew Slocum:
It’s New York from New York. Brooklyn Bridge. 

Bryan Schultz:
I think there’s some up of Wisconsin.

Drew Slocum:
I didn’t know that.

Bryan Schultz:
That’s funny. Not a deep-dish-only guy. I’ll venture out.

Drew Slocum:
It’s good. It’s a casserole, in my opinion, but it’s a good casserole. It’s just different.

Bryan Schultz:
It’s still pizza. Still pizza. You don’t fold it down the same way.

Drew Slocum:
Well, no. Cool. Yeah. This has been great, man. Thank you. I guess for listenership and viewership, we know where we can find you, but you want to give a plug, too.

Bryan Schultz:
Sure. www.thecomplianceengine.com is our website. And yeah, visit it. We’ve got phone numbers on there. We’re ready to serve you. So, we look forward to our partnership integration and to growing compliance.

Drew Slocum:
Yeah, it’s exciting. I think the industry has changed, seen the change. I think it’s finally flipped to digital, right? I think it’s predominantly digital now. I hope. Oh, there’s still some spanglers. It depends on what section of the industry you’re in. But yeah, there’s good stuff coming forward. Awesome. Thanks again. Yeah, take care.