Submitted by: Lukasz Kasprzyk, C.F.E.I.
Fire Prevention Officer – Woodstock Fire Department
(This will be added to discussion forums as well in order that members may discuss).
Hello everyone! For those who use FireHouse software and may not be aware of this yet, the software will become obsolete end of 2021 because of MS Explorer security is ending its support for it. It will run it, but it will not be secure. ESO who bought FireHouse years ago is now promoting their own ESO Fire software which they just rolled out 6 months ago and are still working out the kinks. I watched a couple of their demo webinars and this new software actually looks pretty good and delivers mobile functionality and can run on an iPad or tablet. ESO will not make a specific app, the software is web based and is accessible from a browser and will run the same way on an iPad. Please copy and paste the following link https://www.eso.com/fire-rms-demo/ to see the features and you can watch this demo video if you are interested: https://vimeo.com/430539840/b48be9a240 .
This software looks interesting because any given department can purchase different modules based on their individual needs. Here is the list of modules that the software can handle: Incidents, Scheduling, Permits, Hydrants, Analytics, Checklists (Preplan or Home Smoke alarm program), Personnel Management (training), Activities (daily tasks), Asset Management (i.e.: checks of trucks, scba, equipment, tools), Education, Properties & Inspections. Also, the Hydrants module can be given to the municipality’s board of works department for hydrant maintenance and servicing purposes, which firefighters can view live in real time. As you can see this is a whole RMS system that will look after suppression, training and fire prevention divisions all in one software. Plus it can be operated on a PC in an office or out in a field via iPad in a fire truck or out on an inspection for doing a Preplan or a fire prevention inspection. This means that an expensive laptop tough-book is not needed anymore, and a relatively inexpensive $600 iPad can run it all. For fire prevention proposes, we would like to use the Inspection module to replace hand written notes during inspections when making observations in the field, which can be supported with photos taken with the iPad. From there, the notes are kept electronically in a cloud or an in-house server and then used to prepare an Inspection Order using MS Word upon return to the office.
We are planning to transition from the old FireHouse software which we currently use to this new ESO Fire RMS late 2021 or next year, whenever ESO establishes a Canadian based cloud server and establishes a proper Canadian representative, which they don’t have yet. Hopefully it will work like a charm and I will keep you posted. I encourage all departments to contact ESO directly for more details and to push for a Canadian based representative to be established sooner than later. Thank you
Let me know your thoughts?
Thanks
Lukasz Kasprzyk, C.F.E.I.
Fire Prevention Officer – Woodstock Fire Department
1203 Parkinson Road, P.O. Box 1539
Woodstock, Ontario N4S-0A7
Office: (519) 537-3412 Ext: 5205
Facsimile: (519) 537-0133
email: lkasprzyk@cityofwoodstock.ca