The end of the year is a time that always welcomes a reflection of what’s been achieved and what is to come. 2022 has been a year of many challenges, and equally, many achievements.

In 2021 we celebrated the launch of our fire door services, a maintenance plan and a new software-based product, InSite. We also introduced our own events and created an environmental team. All of these things have massively shaped our activities for 2022!

Software focus

When we launched our device monitoring software in 2021 we knew this was going to be just the beginning! This year we now have a whole software suite, helping customers with building management and making compliance easy – what we do best. 

As well as Site Manager, we’ve also launched our own app (on Apple and Android) and we recently launched Roll Call. Our Roll Call software allows users to digitalise their fire safety evacuations and receive live updates on the whereabouts of building occupants.

We’ve been selling fire safety hardware for over 25 years, and we will continue to expand our hardware range. But we strongly believe that fire safety and building management software will be crucial in the coming years, especially with the implementation of the Golden Thread of Information.

Fire door installation carried out by Fireco Engineers.

Fire door success 

Our fire door services have taken off massively this year. We now have a dedicated fire door team, with 3 Engineers covering installation and inspections certified by FDIS, BlueSky and BMTRADA. 

We started offering our services to a select area and now offer them nationwide. We’re absolutely thrilled with the feedback we’ve received so far – the case studies speak for themselves! 

Charity drive

After the last couple of years, charities have become more important than ever, with people everywhere needing help in some way or another, whether it’s food banks, mental health support or financial advice. 

This is why, in 2021, we teamed up with Esteem and chose them to be our charity of the year and try to fundraise for them!

Over the course of 2022, we carried out a range of different activities to raise money, the main one being Jake’s skydive! We also had a bake-off, a bake sale, a sponsored cycle ride, joined in with their pub quiz and volunteered our time and some of our office items to help them refurbish.

Esteem is a local charity that helps 14-26 year-olds with emotional, social and vocational support.

Jake (in green) during his charity skydive for Esteem.

 It’s an age group where mental health can be at an all-time low as NHS waiting lists are at an all-time high. Esteem helps to integrate young people into society, helps them build confidence, gives them a place where they feel they belong and provides all important counselling and wellbeing services with a short waiting list.

If you or someone you know needs help with their mental health in the West Sussex area, we recommend taking a look at their website.

Environmental journey

Building on last year’s foundation, we had an extra focus on how we can run Fireco in a more sustainable way, reducing our impact on the environment.

We achieved so many great things in this endeavour, we wrote a whole blog about it! 

To summarise just a few changes, we introduced a new recycling area where we take scraps to licensed companies and they reuse them for something else, this includes PCBs, fire doors and metals. We also swapped out our marketing promo to reusable/recyclable or recycled materials. We started advertising which bits of our products can be recycled and where their parts are sourced from and have been replacing all packaging materials with alternatives that are virgin plastic free at the very least.

We’re super excited that in 2023 we will see the installation of solar panels on our roof. They will run our entire building’s electricity, with the aim of providing extra power back to the grid!

We’re also looking to start the process of achieving ISO14001 which is all focussed on ethical and sustainable business practices.

Videos, videos, videos

What a year we’ve had on the video front! We’ve loved creating them as much as everyone has loved watching them and the feedback we’ve received has been astounding.

We really had a push for case study videos this year and managed to get 5, including three with The City of London. You can watch all of our videos on YouTube.

Our TikTok account has also taken off in 2022. It’s not always easy thinking of light and fun ways to spread awareness of fire safety-related matters but we’ve somehow managed to capture an audience with 42,000 views across our account! 

Speaking of videos, here is a wrap of our year in video form…

What’s coming in 2023…

We’re already looking forward to 2023, the first year where we’re not affected so much by the dreaded C-word!

As mentioned previously, our software suite will be a big focus for 2023 and beyond. However, we do have a few other things up our sleeve. In Q1/Q2 we will be launching a new hardware product that’s completely different to what we already offer; one that has often been requested by our customers. 

Our environmental efforts will continue with the ISO and the solar panel installation.

We’ll be attending and hosting plenty of events in 2023 which we hope to see you at. But in the meantime, thank you for all the continued support over the year and we look forward to seeing you in 2023!