An intentionally lit fire in a Queensland backpackers’ hostel in 2000 killed 15 people and eventually led to an improved fire safety system across the state. “That was our genesis,” says Scott Jackson, CEO of the safety technology company Locatrix, which offers an integrated platform connecting geospatially accurate indoor floor plans, site-specific emergency training and critical building information for emergency workers, including firefighters and police officers.
“Our purpose is keeping people safe with the right plans at the right time, when it matters most.”
The horrifying deaths in Childers shocked the world, and new and more rigorous building fire safety regulations were eventually introduced in Queensland in 2008. The following year, the Queensland Fire Department established a group to help companies to comply with these new and tougher safety requirements.
Winner of the Financial Review’s Most Innovative Companies gold award in the property, construction and transport category, Locatrix evolved from the fire department group into a private sector organisation offering an integrated broad-based fire safety platform.
With headquarters in Queensland, Locatrix is expanding around the world, and a 2024 injection of capital from private equity firm Pemba Capital partners provided funds for product investment. “It’s capital to invest in our products and our go-to-market motions and really accelerate our growth, primarily through the addition of capability,” Jackson says.
More than 450 organisations, including about a third of the ASX top 50 companies, now use the Locatrix platform. “Our focus up till now has largely been on the Australian market,” Jackson says. “We’re now starting to see green shoots in the international markets. We have customers in the US, in the UK, and in Germany.”
The company has direct customers, such as the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas, and increasingly, partners, such as Chubb, which use the Locatrix products to support their own customers. About 160 partners, mainly in Australia, but also internationally, now use Locatrix products, and about 30 per cent of the company’s revenue is now derived from partners.
The company’s original product – PlanSafe – was built to help companies comply with the new Queensland fire regulations and train employees on site-specific fire safety on an annual basis, Jackson says. “It tells you all about what’s around your location of work, how to use the fire extinguishers, and then at the end of the training, it shows you how to get out of the building safely.”
Before the state’s new fire regulations were introduced, maintaining fire readiness was an old-fashioned business, he adds. Someone would walk through a building with a clipboard, then send the sketches off to be assembled into a scheme. It was slow and difficult to keep current.
“They’d draft it, and it would be inaccurate and inefficient,” Jackson says. “So we built a second product called PlanStudio, which is a mapping tool to accurately map the interior of buildings. Once you’ve got the floor plan, you have the opportunity to start layering other building information onto the floor plan and have it connected with other systems.”
PlanStudio uses AI to automatically map building interiors, but it’s not simply lines on a page. The plans can include a raft of relevant building and safety information – including the types of material used in various wall and floor construction and the location of fire extinguishers and defibrillators.
This is important information, Jackson says, because walls – particularly – can be fire-rated, so if people are trapped in a stairwell, fire officers understand the time frames available and the urgency required.
The Locatrix Emergency Services Platform is really a building safety information hub that draws on current floor plans and critical building data, created and maintained by PlanStudio. Fire and police departments around Australia are provided with the ESP platform at no cost so they can overlay it on their mapping systems.
“That gives them preparedness, situational awareness, not only for the building that they’re in, but for the buildings around the building that they’re in,” Jackson says.
“That can be instant; provided on the way to an event, and could be more than just an accurate indoor floor plan. It can include photos of what’s at the site, and information on the type and location of assets include fire extinguishers and defibrillators.”