TimeChainZ ‑ Catenae Uses ChainZy For Firedoor Inspections

Case Study: ChainZy Distributed Ledger Technology used by Catenae Innovation plc Product: OnSite

Catenae Innovation plc, a client of Z/Yen, uses ChainZy distributed ledger technology as part of their Onsite Product for their client FireDoor Guardian Ltd.

Industry Background

FireDoor Guardian was co-founded by Stuart Dickson (BSc Hons), a former Facilities Manager at the University of Brighton. Stuart saw a cross-sector need to provide a solution for fire door inspections that gave efficiencies to clients by moving from a paper-based process to a fully digital inspection regime. Not only has automation eliminated transcription errors, it provides a transparent audit trail of any record keeping. Stuart realised that the audit trail could be enhanced by writing records to an independent, immutable ledger with the latest distributed ledger (aka ‘blockchain’) technology.

The Grenfell disaster, and the subsequent enquiry into Building Regulations and Fire Safety led by Dame Judith Hackett (1) heightened the business proposition of FireDoor Guardian. Dame Judith identified in her enquiry the lack of governance that led to corners being cut as well as the lack of accountability across multiple sectors.

To quote Dame Judith: “Compliance and enforcement processes are too weak. This lack of meaningful sanctions does not drive the right behaviours.” Accountability can be enhanced with a transparent and permanent audit trail.

(1) Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety Chair - Dame Judith Hackett DBE, FREng, FIChemE, FCGI - Presented to the UK Parliament, May 2018

The Solution

Firedoor Guardian sought to offer their clients a way to drive the ‘right’ behaviours when it came to fire door inspections, motivated by the desire to help organisations and businesses that offer over-night accommodation to maintain compliance with current regulations. Often these organisations out-source their inspections to specialist providers. Universities across the UK & Ireland saw significant risks that their external providers could fall foul of the regulations through a rogue inspector not doing her/his job properly and falsifying an historical record. This put everyone at risk from the service provider right up to the leadership. This was particularly important given the high number of overseas students who tend to live on campus for the duration of their courses, as well first year students, most of whom also sleep on campus. A fire that was not compartmentalised due to the critical failure of a fire door could expose an organisation to significant consequences, not least the loss of life of people for whom they have a duty of care.

FireDoor Guardian helps mitigate these risks through the use of an immutable database to encrypt their inspection records and audit information that they are in turn contracted to provide for their clients. This goes beyond what is required under the BS9999 and The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and meets the recommendations in the independent review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety report led by Dame Judith Hackett following the Grenfell Tower fire.

FireDoor Guardian worked closely with Catenae to innovate their OnSite product for the purpose of fire door inspections. Onsite utilises the latest mobile, cloud and distributed ledger technologies including Sequestrum, its digital repository which integrates with the ChainZy platform to provide clients with the ability to store critical and regulatory reports in an immutable form. OnSite also provides the ability for companies to manage and schedule their workforce alongside its universal inspection and reporting tool that has been adapted to meet the regulatory reporting standards for Fire Life Safety sector.

ChainZy provides ‘proof of work’ by ensuring that inspection reports are stored in an immutable form directly from the mobile input device, recording the identity of the inspector, the geo-coordinates of the device, and providing a centralised timestamp as meta-data for full auditability.

FireDoor Guardian’s Stuart Dickson comments: “Catenae’s technology provides us with the perfect platform to manage our inspectors, for them to perform efficient fire door inspections, including uploading images and video for inclusion in a fire door report. It allows our clients to have instant access to their dedicated dashboards providing them estate-wide visualisation, reporting and a RAG status for every single asset. The ability to create immutable records using the blockchain is a significant value-add for our clients as it de-risks their inspection process and reduces their potential liability. The combined Catenae and ChainZy technologies also gives our clients a highly secure distributed ledger that they can access remotely.”

Tony Sanders, CEO of Catenae adds: “The strategic partnership with Z/Yen provides Catenae the ability to offer the ChainZy distributed ledger platform to our client base, integrating it with Sequestrum, our digital repository. The inherent immutability of the combined products provides our clients the perfect solution when it comes to providing proof of work, as in the case with the service that FireDoor Guardian offer their clients.”