Fire inspection reports in some RI towns move online, but at added cost
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- Rhode Island businesses now pay a $20 fee per safety equipment inspection report filed through The Compliance Engine.
- The Compliance Engine, a third-party online platform, streamlines inspection reporting for fire departments but shifts costs to businesses.
- Fire chiefs cite improved compliance and efficiency, while some inspectors criticize the added expense.
- The fee goes to the private company that created The Compliance Engine, not the municipalities.
Businesses in a handful of Rhode Island communities are now paying an additional $20 filing fee for each inspection report of safety equipment like fire alarms and sprinklers – on top of the cost of having their devices examined regularly.
But the revenue from the fees isn’t going to the municipalities mandating use of the new online program to remain compliant with fire authorities – it’s going to the company that invented it.
Fire Departments in Cumberland, East Providence, North Smithfield, Smithfield and the Limerock Fire District in Lincoln have started using a web-based system called The Compliance Engine. The platform has relieved department personnel from cataloguing inspection reports, but it’s also shifted the cost for the work from the community onto the businesses, some of which have multiple devices that need to be inspected several times a year. The fire departments don’t pay for the service: instead, the company makes its money from the filing fees.
“I can keep track of my own testing, I don’t need someone else to tell me when to do it,” said Mark Petit, an electrician who averages 25 to 30 fire alarm box inspections a month.
Petit discovered the new system earlier this year when he went to file his reports in one of the communities that required he start using The Compliance Engine.
“They don’t want to call it a tax, but it is 100% a tax,” Petit added.
How did we get here?
For decades, fire departments have collected hand-written inspection reports and stored them in file cabinets. The opportunity to transfer to an online database and filing system appealed to the leaders of fire departments.
“We have tons and tons of paper in the basement. Let’s face it: no one is looking at them,” said Tim Walsh, chief of the Limerock Fire District in Lincoln. “We were doing a very poor job; our process is paper-based and reactionary and it’s inefficient for us. It’s as simple as that.”
Walsh’s comments were echoed by his fellow chiefs and fire marshals, who now use The Compliance Engine to collect and track inspections.
“We had to interpret the handwriting, and it made it very difficult to keep it in some kind of organized way,” said Smithfield Fire Marshal John O’Rourke.
“We have years of these reports in a filing cabinet,” said North Smithfield Fire Chief Dave Chartier, adding that a lot of businesses were behind on inspections or forgot to have them done.
Cumberland Fire Chief Nick Anderson said the system will generate an email to the business and the fire department if an inspection has not been done.
“That’s a huge benefit when you have minimum manning for this,” Anderson said. “The overall goal is to make sure we get these systems inspected according to code and we have a safe building, not only for the public but also the firefighters. We’re trying to be proactive in a reactive industry.”
Cumberland tacks on an extra $10 fee, so inspectors must spend $30 to file a form there. The rest of the districts do not charge any additional fee beyond the $20 fee required by the private company that runs the data collection website.
Anderson estimates Cumberland will receive $2,000 from the added $10 fee per inspection report – money the chief says will help offset overtime when the fire marshal has to work after hours.
Should the cities and towns be paying the fee instead?
Petit says he has no problem with The Compliance Engine system, adding that it makes the filing process easier and it’s a simple upload once he completes his reports.
“I love the idea, but if the cities and towns think it’s more cost effective, they should pick up the cost,” Petit said. “You can’t turn it into a revenue engine.”
And in this case, the revenue is going to a private company, with businesses shouldering the cost to take the workload off the fire departments.
Petit likened it to speed cameras that generate millions in revenue. But with the cameras, he said, at least motorists can slow down and avoid fines. In this case, inspectors don’t have a choice and need to use The Compliance Engine. Petit said he can’t absorb the fee as a cost of doing business and passes the $20 filing fee along to his customers.
What is The Compliance Engine and how does it work?
The Compliance Engine was created in 2011 by Brycer, an Illinois-based company that now serves more than 1,400 districts across the country. That includes five in Rhode Island, 46 in Massachusetts and 34 in Connecticut.
“It was invented to solve the critical challenges in fire and life safety,” the company’s vice president of operations, Peter Kiernan, told The Hummel Report in a phone interview last week. “There’s just a lack of compliance out there.”
One of the founders of the company was a fire inspector, who identified the problem of filing paper forms. The current $20 fee was lower when the program began nearly 15 years ago, but has increased with inflation and other costs. Brycer does not charge the communities using it anything: the company makes its money from the per-form upload fee.
“In reality, because this was an analog process, it wasn’t well tracked,” Kiernan said. “Our system ensures that fire alarms, sprinklers, backflow, all of these things are tested, inspected and maintained and that the jurisdictions who are responsible for regulating them have visibility and data.”
Has there been improvement?
The company says The Compliance Engine has resulted in better compliance rates. A fire department, or district, can log into the system and see every building in its jurisdiction, status of compliance, when it was last inspected, deficiencies and if they were resolved.
Some states mandate that a local ordinance be passed to give the fire department the ability to require that inspection reports (and an associated fee) be done digitally through a third-party platform.
The fire chiefs in each of the departments using the system told the Hummel Report they made the decision administratively, with no permission sought from a governing body (Cumberland answers to a fire district board and commissioner, which approved using The Compliance Engine).
The fire chiefs also said they had heard about the online program from their counterparts in Massachusetts, and at meetings of other departments in Rhode Island – most have begun using the system over the past 12 to 24 months.
However, Michael Kelleher, chief of the Foxboro Fire Department and president of the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts, said he is not a fan of The Compliance Engine because of the cost to local businesses.
“We try to embrace technology, in a cost-effective manner,” Kelleher told The Hummel Report. “With the increase in property taxes, you’re passing on a cost to the business owner. It can be controversial.”
Kelleher added: “It’s just another unfunded mandate from the government. People want less government, less cost, less waste. I think implementing something like that would cause political blowback.”
Other inspection costs are increasing as well
Petit said the filing fee is not the only increased cost for inspections. He is required to buy the inspection form he files (called a Uniform Testing Report) from the Rhode Island Fire Marshal’s office. They include the sticker that he attached to a fire alarm box after it is inspected, and the form is uploaded to the departments using The Compliance Engine (other fire departments are still using paper copies).
When the state first started charging for the UTR forms, they cost $1 each. The forms are now $6, and Petit has absorbed the increased cost.
“I’ve made my peace with it,” Petit said. “At the end of the day, I don’t like that [the state of Rhode Island is] making money off it. The $20 fee, I have problems with.”
But obtaining the forms became a challenge. Several months ago, the fire marshal’s office sharply reduced the hours inspectors could purchase the forms at its office in Cranston, after the secretary who sold them retired.
Petit adjusted his schedule to swing by during the restricted hours and found out that the state had run out of the forms.
“They make us get these forms, then they won’t sell them to us. And they waste my time by making me go down there, to the state fire marshal’s office, to buy them,” he said.
A spokesman for Fire Marshal Tim McLaughlin told The Hummel Report that the revenue from the forms goes into a restricted account to help offset costs for the Rhode Island Fire Training Academy. The price increased from $3 to $6 in 2015.
He added that an influx of purchases by the fire inspectors resulted in the office running out of forms for a short time last spring.
“During that timeframe, fire alarm companies were advised to use (a National Fire Protection Association) form as an alternative option and to document the inspection date on the current inspection sticker to ensure no disruptions until new forms arrived,” the spokesman wrote.
Last year the state fire marshal’s office sold 65,482 forms, which generated $386,697 in revenue after expenses for the training academy.
The cost of doing business?
The Rhode Island fire chiefs using the online filing system acknowledge they are passing along costs to inspectors and ultimately private businesses.
“I get it that they’re absorbing the costs, or at some point have to pass it along to their customers,” said Chartier, the chief in North Smithfield. “I’ve got to think somewhere along the line they’re going to save money. I could be wrong, but I think there would be some cost savings.”
And O’Rourke, the fire marshal in Smithfield, said he believes the added value of the online system will ultimately outweigh inspector and business concerns over the cost.
“It’s kind of like everything,” O’Rourke said. “We’ve all been blaming (increased costs) on COVID. There seems to be an administrative fee for everything now, from restaurants to third party vendors. This is the cost of doing business.”
The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org.
This story has been updated with new information and to correct and inaccuracy.