Ten Years in the Making: Why I Invented Reggie® Firedrill
It started with a piece of paper dissolving in the rain. It ends with a technology that the National Fire Chief says will save lives. This is the story I've been waiting a decade to tell.
Picture this. I’m standing outside my building in the pouring rain. A fire drill. The paper register in my hand – the official record of who is and isn’t accounted for – is disintegrating. Literally falling apart. And I’m thinking: this is a legal requirement. This is people’s lives. And we’re still doing it on paper.
That moment stayed with me. We had smartphones in our pockets. GPS on every device. 4G rolling out across the country. And yet the way we accounted for people during a fire drill hadn’t changed in generations. A clipboard. A roll call. Hope for the best.
As a CEO and entrepreneur with thirty years of experience building businesses and inventing products, I couldn’t let it go. So my company built a prototype of what would eventually become Reggie® Firedrill – an early digital solution to do what the clipboard could not: track people, verify presence, and give organisations genuine confidence that their people were safe.
It was, in hindsight, ahead of its time. The GPS wasn’t reliable enough. 5G didn’t exist. The tech wasn’t there yet to make it seamless. Reggie® Firedrill never got the traction it deserved.
But I never stopped believing in the idea.
Then, in December 2024, something changed. I sat down with a good friend of mine – Jon Crossley, MD of Bentley and Rolls-Royce. I showed him what Reggie® Firedrill could do. His response was immediate.
The rest, as they say, is history. Bentley trialled Reggie® Firedrill. McLaren followed. Rolls-Royce. Bugatti. Some of the most exacting organisations on the planet – places where precision is a founding principle – chose Reggie® Firedrill. Not because they had to. Because it worked.
But the moment that moved me most came through what I can only describe as serendipity.
I found myself face to face with Phil Garrigan, the National Fire Chief – the most senior fire safety leader in the country. As Chairman of ARCET Global and a Professor of Innovation, I have sat across the table from many remarkable people. But this was different. It was, for me, an emotional meeting. I showed him Reggie® Firedrill. I explained what it did. And he said something I will never forget:
I had to take a moment. Because that is exactly why I invented it.
I have spent thirty years as a designer, CEO, and entrepreneur. As a Professor at the University of Westminster, the University of Dundee I have spent my career at the intersection of innovation and real-world impact. As an inventor, I know what it feels like when an idea arrives that is bigger than you.
Reggie® Firedrill is that idea.
Looking back, I genuinely believe that everything – every project, every pitch, every invention, every lesson learned the hard way – was leading me here. To this invention. I was brought into the world to create Reggie® Firedrill.
Some things take time. Some ideas need the world to catch up with them. Reggie® Firedrill is now patent pending. It carries the full endorsement of the National Fire Chief. It is already being deployed at organisations that demand nothing less than excellence.
I was standing in the rain with a disintegrating piece of paper ten years ago. Today, Reggie® Firedrill means that no organisation ever has to face that moment again.
✦ UK Patent Pending ✦ NFCC Endorsed ✦ Bentley · McLaren · Rolls-Royce · Bugatti ✦ International Brilliance Award – Gold 2026 ✦ Security and Fire Awards 2026 Finalist
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