News & INSIGHTS

During my time at Shorrock Fire in the late 1990s, it became apparent that a designated CAD department for a fire alarm company was fairly unique with only a handful of companies investing in such a resource. Fire alarm zone plans were good practice, but not mandatory at the time, so smaller companies didn’t always create them. We were good at what we did and were widely considered the best fire alarm zone plan producers in the business. The drive to start my own business came from noticing the gap in the market. I wanted to produce industry-leading quality drawings and zone plans for every fire alarm company but also, to do this with the drawings displaying their company logo and details. The idea was that as well as being a cost-effective service, to only pay for drawings when they needed them, would enhance their value offering by having drawings that look like they’ve come from their very own in-house CAD department. Traditionally, general CAD bureaus would display their name for advertising purposes on all drawings and I wanted to work differently. And with the fire drawing and design experience I’d built up, I could launch as a specialist CAD provider just for this industry, something which didn’t exist at the time. So, I started QDOS from the garage of my home!

Where to begin! The first milestone has to be the founding of the business in 2009! Later that year I had my first key project win to create zone plans and fire alarm drawings for the entire county council. That really gave me confidence that my garage enterprise was going to grow into something bigger!

In 2012, only three years later, QDOS moved to our first office in Oldham which was almost as great a moment as meeting my (now) wife! 

Many people in the industry will be able to suspect what my 2013 moment was. The revision of BS 5839-1 came into play, making fire alarm zone plans mandatory! This changed the game for businesses like mine! Not long after I made my first hire in Craig as a trainee CAD Operator and my brother, Gavin joined as a co-director. Gavin is now the Managing Director of QDOS so truly part of the furniture which has given me the space to grow the business and develop new products and offerings further!

In 2015, the business took on another trainee, Joe Turner, our now Operations Manager. And in 2017, we outgrew that office and moved to a larger space in the area, where we stayed until 2021 when we moved to our custom-designed office in Rochdale! Since then, we have taken on new staff, and new projects and grown at a great rate, even having our best year on record just last year.

Recency bias may be coming into play, but my biggest milestone so far has to be the launch of dynamicZM earlier this year. After 4 years of hard work and development, I have launched a brand new product to the market which is unlike anything currently available! dynamicZM is a dynamic zone mimic which functions as a digital signage screen until a fire is present, when it switches to a clear fire zone mimic. I am pretty proud of this one.

As a truly independent supplier to the fire alarm industry, we don’t install, commission or maintain fire alarms so there’s never any conflict of interest. Our natural progression has led us to supply equipment to our loyal national customer base. 

I’m very proud of the innovation we’ve created, dynamicZM. We’re taking fire alarm zone plans into the digital age while ensuring their suitability as part of a life safety system. With many uses from retail to hospitality to industrial sites means dynamicZM has real potential to be a significant addition to fire alarm equipment available today.

And the next 15 years? We’ll continue to participate in changes to fire safety standards in the UK and will endeavour to maintain our place as the leader in compliant fire safety drawings and zone plans, shaping the way critical information is displayed.