Episode 301: Turning Complex Equipment Management Into Clear Peace of Mind with Rob Stirling

Episode notes

Ever picked up a piece of gear and wondered if you could trust it?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

In this episode, Scannable founder Rob Stirling shares how a simple idea grew into a powerful tool that helps firefighters and other responders manage mission critical gear with confidence. Rob explains how his background in climbing and equipment manufacturing opened his eyes to the risks, the paperwork, and the constant stress that crews face when they try to track inspections, lifespans, recalls, and usage.

He walks through the shift from spreadsheets to digital identities, the partnership with Fire and Emergency New Zealand, and the importance of connecting equipment owners with the data they need in the field. Rob also opens up about leadership, family, and the personal growth required to build a company that keeps responders safe. At the heart of it all is a simple goal: give people a clear way to trust the gear that protects their lives.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 1:06 Stupidly simple: what Scannable is
3. 2:17 How crews use it, from Fire and Emergency New Zealand
4. 5:05 From climbing and DMM to Scannable
5. 7:55 Retrofit versus OEM integration
6. 9:26 No more dumb ropes
7. 10:23 Buying peace of mind
8. 12:14 Digital identity for every asset
9. 13:08 Words to live by: do the next right thing

Questions answered in this episode

What is Scannable and what does it do?

Rob Stirling describes Scannable as a software and hardware solution to manage mission-critical equipment. It started with height safety equipment like carabiners, ropes, harnesses, and helmets, and is expanding to all mission-critical assets such as comms devices and power tools. The goal is to make safety checks and equipment management as simple as possible.

Hear it at 1:31

How does Scannable help firefighters track their equipment?

Fire departments upload their equipment spreadsheets to Scannable's software and fit NFC tags to assets. Firefighters can tap their phone against any piece of equipment to instantly see if it is safe to use, when it was last inspected, when the next inspection is due, which kit bag or vehicle it came from, and if there are any manufacturer recalls.

Hear it at 2:54

Why did Rob Stirling create Scannable?

Rob Stirling worked at a carabiner manufacturer in the UK where every asset had a serial number read manually across tens of thousands of assets. He saw this as a big problem and became obsessed with solving equipment traceability and inspection recording. After six years of customer feedback saying the system needed to work with mobile phones, he and his wife founded Scannable during COVID to incorporate that feedback.

Hear it at 5:20

Does Scannable only work with retrofitted tags or is it built into new equipment?

Rob Stirling says retrofit is a stopgap that lets departments digitize equipment they already own. Scannable is now working with more than 50 brands who build the technology directly into products, producing smart ropes, carabiners, helmets and other gear, which saves headache, time and equipment loss.

Hear it at 8:40

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 301 transcript

Turning Complex Equipment Management Into Clear Peace of Mind with Rob Stirling

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Rob Stirling

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series, recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers 2025 conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA, Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience conferences. With over 28 conversations, with fire chiefs. We explored how the fire and emergency community is adapting to a rapidly changing world. From climate resilience and community-led adapts to the rise of new technologies like satellites, AI, and simple tools designed for the field to the importance of mental health, diversity, and global collaboration. These episodes highlight the shared challenges and inspiring solutions shaping the future of safety. [inaudible 0:46]

[1:03] Rob Stirling: in the South Island of New Zealand.

[1:06] Kevin Sofen: So I was walking the show floor yesterday and I was impressed with the stupid simplicity, basic value of this unique little product that I'm seeing on the table and also the shirt was Scannable, what is it, why does it exist and how did it come to life?

[1:21] Rob Stirling: Well, first up, I'm going to steal that tagline stupidly simple.

[1:25] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, not in a degrading way possible. I was like, this is a kiss, keep it super simple.

[1:31] Rob Stirling: Keep it super simple. especially if you want thousands of firies to use it or rope access technicians. So basically what is Scannable. We are a software and a hardware solution to manage mission-critical equipment. We started with height safety equipment like carabiners, ropes, harnesses, and helmets, and we're moving into all mission-critical assets. So that could be comms devices or power tools or any of the plant assets. And yeah, we try and keep it as simple as possible. Nobody got into rope access or height safety or being a fiery because of a love for data entry and recording inspections and things like that. And these all just went too hard, so our job is to make it as super simple as we can and actually increase the likelihood of safety checks getting done.

[2:17] Kevin Sofen: So one thing that I was impressed by among many things with the product was just the consumer facing the facing side of this product where I took my phone and he scanned it and it just gave me the origin of the, where was it last checked. So I assumed there was sort of a back end of the platform and also front end of the platform. But from that front end, give me an example of how a, whether it's a firefighter or an EMT or a public safety member, of how they are kind of a interfacing with being like, I don't know what this product necessarily it is. I don't know the last time I was checked. I don't know where it's been. How is it something that is used and ultimately helping them, you know, save time and reduce headaches?

[2:54] Rob Stirling: Well, yeah, so I guess it starts more department-wide level than at an individual or consumer level. So, for example, a big customer for us is Fire and Emergency New Zealand. They've decided to manage all of their line safety and fast water rescue assets, and they're looking at expanding that. And so, the way it starts with them is they've sent us their spreadsheets that they typically run for their equipment. We upload that into our software. They then choose one of the different tags, NFC tags that we sell, and they fit that to many of the assets. We're currently onboarding thousands of their employees so that they've all got logins to our software, and we've built out a really structured folder structure of all of their sites and vehicles and So ultimately we now have response teams around New Zealand. And they know what equipment they have, they know what it's been issued to them and the and then the head office and the overarching managers can see at any level, whether that's by team member, by kit bag, by vehicle location, what the status of the equipment is. The status includes things like has it passed its last inspection, when is it due for its next inspection, so they're managing their risk and their compliance, things like the lifespan of the equipment, if it's a textile fiber, it probably has a five to ten year lifespan, so they want to know where are they across that lifespan and they want to know things like how many times each rope has been used, how many drops they've done. What they also need to be aware of is if the manufacturer is recalling any of those assets and that can be a quite a painful process. And not every fiery is watching Instagram to see if one of the brands is having a recall which is their current method of communication. So we try and automate all of that into that consumer experience that you describe, So that anyone fiery can pick up a piece of equipment and answer a question and that could be, is it safe to use? It could be which kit bag did this come out of? Which appliance did this come out of? Can I use it in this way, etc. And you can answer all of that by tapping your phone against it.

[5:05] Kevin Sofen: So I'm curious to dive a little bit deeper into, ultimately, you, Rob, and how this came to life. Like, why did you create this? I mean, did you wake up one day and you were just thinking about the challenges of managing assets? Or what was the pain point where you're like, wow, this really needs to exist in the world.

[5:20] Rob Stirling: Yeah, sometimes you don't get a choice in some of these decisions it seems and this is turned into my life's work. My background is in Alpine climbing and rock climbing and I've been lucky enough to do that in lots of beautiful places around the world. That led me to work at a carabiner company manufacturer in the UK and North Wales called DMM. We supplied lots of different fire departments with height, safety line, safety equipment from there and it was actually in the first week of working for them, that I could see every asset as given a serial number. And those serial numbers were read manually across tens of thousands of assets in an organization. And I just thought that's a really big problem. And they employed me to design textile products because that was my previous job. But ultimately, making the next climbing harness lighter and a nicer colour is not solving a giant problem. And the traceability and equipment management and inspection recording seemed like a much more interesting problem and I just got obsessed with that, dived into RFID and research barcodes and all of the options that might solve that. And I had the benefit of first sight in a sense where you don't know what's possible or not possible and I was able to ignore a lot of clever people than me who said this thing wouldn't be possible and we launched the world's first his first RFID-tagged carabiner at DMM. And that was pretty cool, but you had to spend a lot of US$600 on a device to scan the carabiner. And I spent six years trying to sell that. Every single person I spoke to the phone, told me, it needs to work with your phone. And I tried to tell them they were wrong for six years. And then I gave up telling them they're wrong so I listened to them. And COVID offered myself and my wife a chance to was the nudge to say, okay, there's a bunch of user feedback here. I should listen to that. And I'm probably going to change my work, my employment anyway. So let's try and incorporate all of that feedback into the next attempt at solving the problem. That was also kind of critical to solving the problem because fire departments buy equipment from hundreds of brands. And it's rare that one brand would launch a management platform that would and cater for all of the equipment that they buy. And so, as well as it needing to be mobile phone compatible, they also said, you know, we don't want an app from one supplier, we want a third party solution to manage all the assets. And so, yeah, moving back to New Zealand, we were able to formulate the business and raise a couple of rounds of investment and build a talented team to execute on it.

[7:55] Kevin Sofen: Sometimes you gotta hit a little bit of a brick wall or a that to kind of maybe hit that moment to think, okay, well, maybe you should be listening to what the market is saying and ultimately now creating something that is stupidly, simple, hashtag Scannable to a point where now it's just easy. And what I liked about it too is the dynamic of its working directly with the OEMs and having it built in or the ability to have something retrofitted. And I'm curious in terms of where you're seeing this going in the next one, five years. So from an integration standpoint, retrofit standpoint, and then ultimately how this just becomes a commonplace, simple tool that allows people to kind of really not stress about something that was used to be something that people would spend a lot of time, money, and anxiety on.

[8:40] Rob Stirling: Absolutely. Yeah. We don't believe that retrofit is the solution. It's the stock app. It allows people to digitize the equipment they already own and probably the equipment that they'll need to buy for the next year or two. But I've been really surprised by the response that we have from the OEM manufacturers. The momentum on this topic of traceability and inspections has just built over the last 10 years and we're now working with more than 50 brands who build our technology into the products. And that means they're producing smart ropes or smart carabiners, smart helmets, etc. And ultimately, that saves just a bunch of headache and time and loss of equipment,

[9:25] Kevin Sofen: smart ropes only. That's my kind of campaign line.

[9:28] Rob Stirling: Yeah, we actually went to the, in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is a kind of a hub of

[9:33] Kevin Sofen: Dumb rope.

[9:34] Rob Stirling: Dumb ropes, yeah, hub of dumb ropes. There was a tree care trade show there, TCI, and that was actually the first trade show that we went to at Scannable. I was just planning on walking the show myself. And one of our investors said, you got to do something else, kind of hustle, you know, your way into something else. Gave me some inspiration on the day before the event. And the next morning we picked up a whole range of t-shirts that were printed with the Ghostbusters symbol saying no more dumb ropes. We'd recruited a mob from Craigslist, and had placards printed. And we had people campaigning outside the safety trade show saying no more dumb ropes.

[10:15] Kevin Sofen: Are there photos or a video of this?

[10:16] Rob Stirling: I can show you.

[10:19] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, once this is done, Tim Tams R. and want to watch that video.

[10:21] Rob Stirling: Sure.

[10:23] Kevin Sofen: Well, kudos to you and then again, I kind of had mentioned that we're, it's August and now you're kind of looking at this not only the retrofit market, but the OEM market. I myself want to touch on that, but then I'm curious and you mentioned earlier about this to help kind of say time helps kind of reduces the burden on kind of understanding when this maintenance Again, I know look at the analogy often of you're not buying the hammer, you're not buying the nail, you're buying the hung painting on the wall. And when you're thinking about scanning the wall, it's like, you're not buying an RFID tag, you're not buying the fact that it integrates with iPhone. Like you're buying this peace of mind. You're buying this quick ability to know when was the last maintained, when was the last used, you know, when's it up for replacement. That's sort of my hot take of knowing you for less than 24 hours in that what it is ultimately that an end user is buying or getting from Sk How would you phrase that in your words?

[11:22] Rob Stirling: Yeah, well, I like your phrasing again, hung picture on the wall. That's a good one, end to end is a phrase that comes out of our customers lips often. Ultimately, the manufacturers in this expo are producing assets and shipping them around, they don't have visibility of the end users using them and the end users don't have visibility of the data and the information that they need actually from the manufacturers. So we're connecting the supply chain in a way that hasn't been done before and it's seamless. It streamlines everything like every time, every time you buy a range of equipment and whether that's a turn-out suit or line safety equipment or SCBAs, someone's got a spreadsheet asset has a digital identity, that they have the power of technology and AI backing that meant, and that they're not spending their evenings and weekends doing paperwork and inventorying equipment and away from home and away from their loved ones, but they're ultimately doing the primary thing that they need to do and having a streamlined experience to a get a home, a get home at the end of the day. We know that we're at a streamlining administration work. But we also see that there are still deaths in the industry from using equipment that's still people falling from high in work environments are due to unfit equipment. And so we really believe that by connecting the supply chain end to end improving the ability to do best practice and inspect your equipment and ultimately knowing whether your equipment's safe to use or not will get people home but also keep people alive at the end of the day as well.

[13:08] Kevin Sofen: Rob, I love it. And now, to kind of round this out here, I'm curious, the question I've been asking everyone today is within the business that you've built with Scannable, or your daily life, or your life in New Zealand, and you mentioned your wife, is there any quote or words of wisdom that you live by that you've built on, that you've used to. Kind of drive your leadership and your team within Scannable or something that you use as kind of a general daily life?

[13:31] Rob Stirling: Yeah, great question. Putting me on the spot here. I'm a bit of a podcast fan and I'm always leaning on other people's wisdom because this is a steep learning curve for me. And personally, I know that I'm not the leader that this business needs in 12 months. And so my job is to keep up with the growth of the business and the industry and to continue to become the CEO and candidly the dad and the father and husband that I need to be at home as well. So I'm leaning on a lot of much more experience and smart people's wisdom than I have. That said, I'm probably not gonna hit you with much wisdom here, but the quote that comes to mind is very simple. things can be very complex. You're making complex decisions with team members and company decisions, et cetera, and trying to be strategic. And sometimes you just need to do the right next thing. So yeah, seeing around all these corners is a tough one. And just knowing what the right, the next right thing is simplifies life sometimes..

[14:26] Kevin Sofen: Rob, speaking like a true stoic here. One, on the dad part, I just became a dad five months ago, I mentioned to you.

[14:31] Rob Stirling: Congratulations.

[14:32] Kevin Sofen: Thank you. But yeah, balancing how to be the best, while balancing the fact that I love the work that I do, I want to continue to double down the work that I do, but I also know I need to continue to be a student of the game and work my face off, comma, I want to be as present as possible with my wife and son.

[14:52] Rob Stirling: Yeah, I think it's, it's a, I don't want to say it's an impossible balance, but it's a hard balance.

[14:57] Kevin Sofen: The message to both of us is can't beat ourselves up, continue to just be that, be the best we can day in and day out. That's a coach K from Duke team USA basketball to he as well as coach John Wooden. I feel like it's a very common college basketball thing of just do the next right thing, right? There's a thousand little things you could do. But if you just focus on that next little one step at a time doing it right, it's all going to shake out.

[15:26] Rob Stirling: Yeah, sometimes it's nice to think. You could be strategic and see around corners and plan it out. And sometimes you just need to do the next thing, right?

[15:33] Kevin Sofen: It simplifies a little bit, even it's stupidly simple. That's all we're trying to do here at Scannable, That's it.

[15:39] Rob Stirling: Let's make it easy.

[15:41] Kevin Sofen: Rob, it was a pleasure learning and talking with you, and keep up the good work.

[15:44] Rob Stirling: Thank you, Kevin. Cheers, mate.

[15:49] Kevin Sofen: And that's a wrap this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast.