A UK fire safety consultancy approached us with a familiar problem: the tools they relied on every day no longer matched the way they actually worked. Their assessment software was an ageing Windows application, sub-licensed from a third party — leaving them dependent on someone else's product, with no control over its direction and no way to tailor it to their own workflow.
Our relationship spanned two phases. First we built a modern Django web application with API endpoints, packaged as a desktop app. It freed them from the legacy tool and served them well for a time — but the architecture carried more weight than the job required, and over time it became heavy to maintain. So we went back to the drawing board and rebuilt the platform from the ground up as Fire Risk Assessment Pro: a lean, fully offline desktop application for comprehensive building inspections, photographic evidence, and polished, client-ready PDF reports — all without ever needing to be online.
A workflow that mirrors real practice
The challenge
- Offline by necessity. Assessments happen on-site, often with no usable connection.
- Genuinely complex compliance logic. A fire risk assessment isn't a flat questionnaire — the regulations branch on building height, with different questions for buildings over 11 metres versus over 18 metres.
- Consistency every time. Findings, risk levels and remedial deadlines all need to follow the same rules on every assessment.
- Reports that look the part. Life-safety documents presented to building owners, carrying the consultant's own branding.
The solution
A self-contained desktop application built in Flutter and Dart, backed by a local SQLite database so every piece of data lives securely on the user's own machine. We implemented the full conditional logic of the 2022 regulations across 137 questions in 26 sections — including a pair of "logic gate" questions that detect the over-11m and over-18m provisions and reveal or hide the relevant sub-questions automatically. The assessor only ever sees the questions that apply to the building in front of them.
schedule Automated risk handling
Mark a question "No" and the app surfaces a significant-findings field, requires a risk level, and sets the remedial target date automatically: High → 30 days, Medium → 60 days, Low → 120 days. No guesswork, consistent every time.
The app generates commercial-grade PDF reports with a branded cover page, building hero image, a colour-coded summary of every response, and a detailed significant-findings section with embedded photographs attached directly to the relevant questions.
Cross-platform expansion
Delivered first as a Windows desktop product. As the relationship developed, the client requested a macOS version to suit their hardware — and because we'd built on Flutter from the start, we extended the same codebase to ship a native Mac build, giving a consistent experience across both operating systems without maintaining two separate products.
Results
- A fully offline assessment tool that works anywhere, with no connectivity required.
- Faithful implementation of the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 conditional logic.
- Consistent, automated risk grading and remedial deadlines on every report.
- Polished, branded PDF reports ready to hand to clients and building owners.
- A single codebase running natively on both Windows and macOS.
verified_user A note on responsibility
Fire risk assessments are life-safety documents. The software was designed purely to support the assessor's workflow and presentation — capturing, organising and reporting their findings. All professional judgement and risk decisions remain entirely in the hands of the qualified assessor.