Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
67. Keeping Fire Departments Equipment Compliant & Mission Ready - Kim Jolley, CEO, AOS Services, Inc.
1 Plays3 seconds ago
In this episode of The FireDawg Podcast, we sit down with Kim Jolly, CEO of AOS Services Inc., to discuss the critical role equipment testing, maintenance, and compliance play in keeping fire departments operational and mission ready.
With more than 30 years of experience, Kim shares how AOS supports fire departments and military installations worldwide through specialized services including SCBA testing, hose testing, hydrostatic testing, fire trainer inspections, and comprehensive equipment maintenance.
We dive into why proper certification matters, the value of expert technicians, how departments can maximize equipment lifespan, and what fire chiefs should know when balancing compliance, readiness, and budget constraints.
Whether you’re a firefighter, officer, or fire service leader, this conversation offers valuable insight into the systems and services working behind the scenes to ensure your equipment performs when it matters most.
In this episode, we cover:
• Fire equipment testing and NFPA compliance
• SCBA, hose, and hydrostatic testing requirements
• The importance of specialized technicians
• Fire trainer inspections and maintenance
• Extending equipment lifecycle and maximizing value
• Best practices for fire department readiness
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorships
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of the Fire Dog Podcast is supported by AOS Services, the one-stop shop for firefighting equipment compliance built for the DoD. At AOS Services, they help military fire departments stay mission-ready with customized programs that bundle everything from SCBAs and compressors to hoses, ladders, PPE care, rescue gear, and more. Their teams work worldwide, so whether you're stateside or overseas, they've got you covered.
00:00:21
Speaker
For all your firefighting equipment compliance needs, visit aosservicesinc.com to learn more.
00:00:30
Speaker
This episode of the Fire Dog Podcast is supported by Roll Call Coins, founded by a 24-year Air Force firefighter veteran. They understand that a coin represents more than just an event. It represents a story.
00:00:40
Speaker
Using 3D modeling and custom textures, Roll Call has moved beyond generic designs to create premium standout coins. Whether you're honoring a department or branding a business, they make the process effortless. Start your design today at rollcallcoins.com and let your coin stand out in the stack.
00:01:00
Speaker
This is the Fire Dog Podcast. The views and opinions presented on today's episode are those of the speaker and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense or the United States.
Meet Kim Jolly, CEO of AOS Services
00:01:13
Speaker
Welcome, my name is Matt Wilson and thank you for listening to episode 67 of the Fire Dog Podcast. Today's episode dives into a part of the job that often happens behind the scenes, but directly impacts firefighter safety and operational readiness.
00:01:24
Speaker
Joining us today is the CEO of AOS Services Inc. with more than 30 years of industry expertise. She shares how specialized fire equipment servicing plays a critical role in keeping fire departments compliant, efficient, and most importantly, safe. We talk about everything from s SCBA testing and host certification to fire trainer inspections, equipment lifecycle management, real-world challenges fire departments face when balancing readiness with limited resources.
00:01:47
Speaker
Kim also gives insight into why technician expertise matters and what fire chiefs need to know to maximize the life and performance of their equipment. If you've ever wondered what goes into ensuring the gear you trust performs when it matters most, this is the conversation you
The Founding and Success of AOS Services
00:02:02
Speaker
don't want to miss. It is my pleasure to welcome to the podcast, Kim Jolly.
00:02:06
Speaker
Well, Kim, good morning. Thanks for joining us. Good morning, Matt. Nice to be here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's been a long time coming. We've been trying to set this up for a while. So thanks for bearing with me on getting in. You know, the opportunity for recordings are seldom for me. I can only do it so often. So I'm happy that we could finally get you on.
00:02:28
Speaker
Well, I apologize. I've been traveling a lot and um I'm really, really honored to be here. Yeah. So today we're going to talk about you and AOS, what AOS does, what your perspective is from you know from the services that you provide, you know things that you see out there that maybe fire chiefs, fire departments, firefighters can pick up in listening to this podcast to apply to their departments and maybe give you a call if they need help with something.
00:02:58
Speaker
It's my honor. That's what we do. Before we get into that, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. like how you know Who are you? Where are you from? How did you get involved in the Federal Fire Service in this capacity?
AOS's Global Operations and Safety Initiatives
00:03:12
Speaker
ah Kind of a funny story. so um My name is Kim Jolly. I'm President and CEO of AOS. Back in 1996, we were living in Hawaii, and my my late husband and co-founder of AOS said, here, honey, bid on this. Don't worry about it. You won't get it. I just want you to work out how to do government contracts and I've got a background in marketing and strategic management and degrees and stuff. So I wrote a pretty nice presentation and three months later a manila envelope came in the mail, said we'd won an award for the air systems on all the military sea lift command ships worldwide.
00:03:46
Speaker
We still have that contract and that service is 157 of the MSE ships. It's got SCBAs, compressors, air testing, fit testing, and hydrostatic testing of cylinders.
00:03:57
Speaker
and And that's how we got into the business and Right now, you we're in our 30th year. our Our whole lives revolve around keeping firefighters safe through service.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah. that's That's pretty incredible. 30 years a long time and then having the same contract for that long. It's awesome. Yeah. We actually begun got people going on a ship on three ships um next month.
00:04:23
Speaker
um it's It's every month. There's a ship or two somewhere. And with 72 hours notice, we meet a ship anywhere in the world. Excellent. what did What was your husband's background? How did he get into the business of servicing air systems?
00:04:40
Speaker
Well, David's background was in um commercial diving. He was a saturation diver, which they they live on supplied air. And they were in, you Drager's mostly. And he understood the air systems. and And I'd worked with him on that prior to AOS. And it was it was actually a very easy transition. um Scuba, the U, is the same as s SCBA, but underwater.
00:05:04
Speaker
One keeps out water and one keeps out smoke. Right. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah, that makes sense. um And so I'm sure it expanded beyond. So he's in the scuba SCBA air compressor kind of business and you go that naturally takes you into fire departments, I imagine. And then once in fire departments, you see other needs. Is that kind of how the company evolved?
00:05:32
Speaker
Honestly, we get asked to do things. So every year there's there's a problem child, something that's been identified And it'll either be, you know someone from the Air Force or from the Navy. They'll say, hey, Kim, we need you to sort this out.
00:05:44
Speaker
We need to figure out how to take care of this. And um so quick, quick story. and There's lots of
Expansion Beyond the Department of Defense
00:05:49
Speaker
quick stories. But in January, the fire chief of the Antarctic program called me.
00:05:55
Speaker
And he had told me that one of their ultra high pressure hose reels on the um ribs exploded. It burst. And it very badly hurt a firefighter.
00:06:06
Speaker
It knocked it back, had lacerations, internal bleeding, broken bones. And it dawned on me really quickly that back in 2010, when they put a moratorium on the time and distance testing on the ARF trucks, that when it came back online, we were told just to plug it into the E1 cart, press the button and write down the number. Well, that took away all the other tests that we were doing.
00:06:29
Speaker
So the ultra high pressure hoses haven't been tested in 14 years plus. And so I'm working right now on bringing that back up online. And, you know, what we've discovered very quickly is that, one, the NFPA doesn't really address it directly. And two, there's the NFPA doesn't create equipment or procedures on how to do something. They just tell you what has to get done. and it and ah And it's like guideline on how to do it. These ultra high pressure hoses aren't like your regular firefighting hoses. They're ultra high pressure. If you think about an SCBA cylinder, when it's under pressure, it's under 4,500 PSI. Then when you test it, it's to one and a half percent. So 150% of it's it's a it's test it's so its operation values. So when you're checking at these 3,000 PSI ah hoses, they're at 4,500 PSI, which is the same as a ah cylinder.
00:07:24
Speaker
We fill our cylinders in a containment system on a compressor because they're dangerous if they burst. So this is something, you know, we're working on and we've got some articles for it. You know, we take it back to leadership from the Air Force.
00:07:34
Speaker
They're mostly in the Air Force and um see if we can't get these all tested. But it's it's not something that I recommend. you know It's one of those don't do this at home kids. um You know, if they burst, people can get hurt um and someone has gotten hurt. And I think that that's one of our major functions is when something that's discovered it's that's a gap or a deficiency is that we quickly identify a path forward for the Department of Defense. And then the other um municipalities and cities and airports, they slowly catch on.
00:08:07
Speaker
You know, it's it's the Department of Defense that really drives compliance. Okay. that Yeah, there's a lot there to unpack. I had a few questions as you were talking.
00:08:18
Speaker
So your business covers beyond the federal government. Absolutely. Beyond the Department of Defense. You know, they're our primary primary client. um They're our first client. so um But what happens is a fire chief will retire out of the um Air Force and he'll move sometimes to NASA, sometimes to the national parks, sometimes to a city. And then when he gets to his new location or even if he's just changing bases... He realizes, well, I haven't got a robust program. And then that has us coming in to do their equipment for them.
00:08:52
Speaker
Gotcha. But we do we do all federal. Yeah, mostly. We don't really do a lot of marketing. It's it's our past customers who our best salespeople. Sure. That makes sense. Um, well, yeah, we're marketing a bit for you here in the fire department fire dog podcast. I hope that that helps, um, expand your business a little bit, maybe get into some of the doors that, you know, people don't understand maybe the complexities of what you handle. They know what AOS is, but, uh, maybe not the details of what services are provided. And hopefully this podcast can shed some light on that.
00:09:23
Speaker
Well, it's funny you say that because like when we talk to people back from like Hawaii, you know, Hickam was our our second customer and then Pearl Harbor was our third. They think of us as just doing SCBAs, compressors and hydros. We now cover everything that a firefighter uses that has an NFPA. compliance tests, all the way up through and including apparatus um inspections to refurbishments. Like yesterday, I was on the on the phone with one of our clients. We were putting together a statement of work to do a refurbishment, and he was late for our meeting.
00:09:54
Speaker
And you know I got him on the phone, and he's late to get onto the teams, and he says, well, I'm just coming from an accident. One of our probies wrecked a fire truck. And and i laughed because we were we were just talking about it before he got on.
00:10:08
Speaker
ah Stories. And I said, you know, not to worry. we went through the pictures of it on a team's meeting. We're flying a technician up in two, three days. soon as they can get approval for us to come we'll go over the the apparatus.
00:10:21
Speaker
And we should be you know but below $50,000, get that truck back up to 100%, you know, with a pretty decent paint job on it as well. So I think collisions is something that people don't really think of as being in our scope.
00:10:34
Speaker
But if we're doing refurbishments, the body work is just part of that. And, you know, there's, there I've looked at a lot of the stuff that we've done in the past on the refurbishments and the, and the, The collisions, and I've looked at pictures and stuff thinking, oh, that's just, that's a total wreck.
00:10:49
Speaker
It's not. They're just parts. Everything that we work with, they're just parts that are put together to create a whole unit that functions to do it to do it specific function. It's all just parts.
00:11:01
Speaker
But you have to draw line. like pretty wide scope of services you guys provide. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's grown, you know, it grows every year. So every year we'll take on one or two new things. We'll take on, you know, one or two new manufacturers. And it's it's all driven primarily from what the needs are pointed out to us from the Department of Defense.
The Role of Technicians in Equipment Maintenance
00:11:21
Speaker
Right. I think that example with the RIV is an excellent one and s SCBA is another excellent one. I mean, it's, we can maintain and test some of our stuff organically. You can ask firefighters to do things. Firefighters can go out and get certifications that many of your technicians, i imagine, have the same certifications, but there's some things that are too complex, maybe too dangerous.
00:11:41
Speaker
ah Testing SCBA cylinders is one great example, hydrostatic testing specifically. like you know You need the right equipment, right machine, the right expertise for something so complicated. Same with high-pressure hoses, I imagine. and so It sounds like the the gap that you all feel is, well, maybe I can take care of other stuff as a fire department. I can have my firefighters focus in other areas while, you know, we bring you all in with the certifications expertise know-how to kind of take care of it for me. And I can trust that it's done right and the equipment's not going to fail on me.
00:12:16
Speaker
Well, and it it goes a lot further than just certifications. So back when the Air Force was at Interspero, I was a train-the-trainer. And I would go from base to base, And they'd give me 20 airmen and say, make them an interspirotechnicians.
00:12:29
Speaker
First off, there may be two people in that 20 that had the aptitude for it. You know, there'd be 10 of them that wouldn't know straight edge from a Phillips head. They would then take the class and it would be six, nine, 12 months before they had to do it again, they would open back up their book and not have the recall to remember exactly what was discussed during during the class and not wanting to, don't know, embarrass themselves or say that they'd failed. They do the best job that they can do with the knowledge that they've retained.
00:13:01
Speaker
That's not what you want, taking care of your your life support equipment. And I'm not knocking it because there are a lot of really good SCBA programs out there and a lot of really good SCBA technicians out But a lot gets missed. I know when we'll say we're having a base for for five years, a new chief comes in and and says, well, I want to do it organically.
00:13:20
Speaker
We may come back an extra five years later and the program has completely gone to the wayside. It's the the the idiosyncrasies, the small the small details that keep people safe. you anybody Everybody should do their morning checks.
00:13:36
Speaker
Every firefighter team needs to take 100% responsibility for his own gear. But does that mean you want them testing your gear? One of the big ones that come to mind is hose testing. A lot of the older fire chief says, well, I i had to test hose. They're going to test hose too.
00:13:52
Speaker
We'll go to a base our first time doing their hose testing, and we'll have upwards of 30 to 40% failure rates. That says to me, they weren't testing them properly before. And that's that's routine.
00:14:03
Speaker
You know, we rarely go in and find nothing wrong. Actually, we've never gone and found nothing wrong. ah Wow, yeah, that is interesting. I think that that's a great point. I think that there's room for technicians, MSA technicians, interspural technicians for, ah you know, the head strap, if it breaks, I can now fix it, or I at least have some understanding of how to disassemble and reassemble for those kind of small parts. But I think you highlight a great point. And there's there's a depth in these programs, there's a depth in PPE program, there's a depth in SCBA, there's a depth
00:14:39
Speaker
in hose testing that I think firefighters can make things happen, but maybe it's not going to be as good as if you bring someone in who's been doing this for multiple years and whose only focus is taking care of this kind of equipment.
00:14:57
Speaker
Absolutely. And everyone can say the same thing. Firefighters fight fires every day and they're great at it. But they use the compressor when and they fill it. Does that mean they know how to take it apart?
00:15:08
Speaker
One of the biggest things we see, we call it finger trouble. Nine out of 10 compressors can be fixed by us over the phone if we've got someone in in the fire station that we've taught.
00:15:19
Speaker
Like we teach a ah compressor operations class. And one the first things we teach them during that class is, hey, during your inspection and your annual service on the compressor, we found these these following things that were done wrong.
00:15:32
Speaker
They're typically people with settings. And I don't know, I think it's firefighter specific, but they're very famous for it. They like to touch knobs. And one guy, the first guy will come in, he'll touch this knob, this knob, this knob. He'll he'll adjust this. And then it's not working properly.
00:15:46
Speaker
And rather than own up to it and say, hey, I made a mistake, which is what we teach them in our classes, just just raise your hand. People make mistakes. Raise your hand say, hey, I was messing with it. We'll walk you back out of it. step by step, walk you back out of it.
00:15:59
Speaker
But then the second guy comes in, he's like well, I figure if I could do this, I'll touch this, I'll do this, I'll turn on that. Well, then we've compounded the problem. By the time the third guy gets there, they'll turn on say, our compressor doesn't work and no one touched it.
00:16:10
Speaker
That happens about once a week for us. And it's it's just people messing with knobs that Now, there's a lot of knobs on compressors. like There's some new compressors that don't have as many knobs and I prefer those. and You know, it's it's much easier if you just press a button and it works than getting in there and messing with it.
00:16:30
Speaker
Not everybody needs to mess with the settings. No. I'm trying to think of other good examples. I mean, we wouldn't walk outside and service our HVAC system in a fire station or the emergency generator or, you know, yeah I would.
00:16:45
Speaker
I would say that an air compressor is just as complicated of a piece of equipment. And so really our role as firefighters is to fill SCBA cylinders and beyond that, we shouldn't be messing with that stuff.
00:16:58
Speaker
Probably. And the same thing when you go and take their class. Like I've taken the the Bauer class, for instance. they make They do a great class. But it's a three-day class and it's it's not very in-depth.
00:17:13
Speaker
You're into your third or fourth class before you're taking apart a block and putting it back together. yeah Our technicians are trained to where they can take the whole compressor apart and put it back together. Same with the SCBA. They go down to the the part level.
00:17:27
Speaker
and And honestly, every compressor, every breathing air ah system, they're all the same. They're just the parts are put together differently. Once you understand the concept of how they work,
00:17:40
Speaker
They're just like, you know, for a Chevrolet, a Dodge. They have different names on them and their parts are distributed a little bit differently in in the in the engine compartment.
00:17:52
Speaker
But they all do the same thing and the parts are just parts. You know, everything we work with is just parts. Lots and lots of parts. Right, right. Well, tell me, how many employees or technicians are out there? I mean, how what is the...
00:18:06
Speaker
I guess the your footprint, your geographical footprint. I'm sure I know that you cover all around the world. I think we've talked about that before. We're well over a thousand technicians with all our certified partners. We expanded a number of years ago into um having certified partners. So like in our ISP program, we have right now we have 28. We've got three that are onboarding right now.
00:18:28
Speaker
So we've got 28 ISPs across the country because we discovered very quickly, um we went to a base, they asked us to do PPE on site. And we discovered immediately that that's not a viable way to do it.
00:18:42
Speaker
Sure, all of our people, and we're we're getting ready, everybody's getting ready to go do a research on on PPE so we understand it. um is working on on location doing it. You're relying on someone else's extractors that are, they're not high-powered ones. Usually there's ah a different size extractor in an ISP than there is in a fire station.
00:19:04
Speaker
It's the same thing like when you' your home washing machine versus going to the laundromat and they have the giant the giant washers for your comforters. That's what you give the ISPs. They're higher powered.
00:19:16
Speaker
They're more robust. they have They have layouts that are set up to take care of stains and decontamination. So we use ISPs. But we have learned, and I find it, that...
00:19:29
Speaker
a fire department, if they have the resources and the personnel, we can come in and teach them and certify them to do their own cleaning and inspections. So there's there's not always just one way to do something. um That's why our equipment compliance programs are tailored to every single base individually. We don't come in there and say, everyone has to do it this way. The AOS way is the only way.
00:19:51
Speaker
Our way is whatever fits best for that department. In cases where, you know, there's an ISP an hour or two down the road, I wouldn't bother. I would just have come pick it up.
00:20:03
Speaker
But say I'm in a remote area and I've only got one set of PPE for each of my firefighters and I've got the resources to do it in-house and you don't see a lot of incidences, then yeah, I would say do your own inspections and
Efficient Service Delivery and Cost Management
00:20:18
Speaker
cleaning. But that means that we'll set you up with an ISP That the moment you do your inspection, you find a ah failure on it, you mark it, you pack it up, and you ship it off the ISP to do the repair. Don't hand it back to the firefighter because that defeats the whole purpose.
00:20:35
Speaker
um So PPEs, I don't remember what we're talking about. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, i don't I sometimes forget the questions that I ask too. I forget. I forget what we're talking about. Oh, how many there are. um And every year we add two or three more manufacture manufacturers. And it's it's it's usually based off of, you know, we're having a problem with this product line.
00:20:57
Speaker
um Recently we started, we we brought in-house doing fire trainer inspections. We were relying on a couple different subcontractors and manufacturers and just wasn't happy with how the reporting was coming out and the pricing. So we went organically and we now have our own in-house um inspectors who hopefully are getting ready to go to one of the big manufacturers and um start helping them with their inspections because they're They have a contract to do all the Air Force bases worldwide.
00:21:27
Speaker
And that's a lot. You know, is when when when you get tasked with getting everybody online with one piece of equipment, it's all hands on deck.
00:21:38
Speaker
You know the fire trainers have been... They've been left to the wayside for a couple of years. Yeah. We're talking about the the big aircraft fire trainers. The big ones. The big ones, yeah. it's it's ah that That one's a complicated one because the way that the money works for those, it competes with other pretty important infrastructures. And so – A fire trainer is not going to compete well against a facility that houses workers or aircraft parts or military, you know, I don't know, mission sets that are very important. You know what I mean? so when to talk But they are very important. They're very important, absolutely, and they're especially important to us. But when talking to people in charge, that the stakeholders, the money, yeah.
00:22:25
Speaker
that they're not going to compete well against all the other compounding priorities. But, you know that's a conversation for another time, but that's excellent that you provide that service. So we're talking about ah something, again, you had mentioned this a couple times so far, if a part breaks, we replace it on this aircraft trainer, the servicing of the the plumbing for the fuel and and things of that sort.
00:22:52
Speaker
Well, we'll do minor repairs, a major repair, like an underground piping. That's going to require to bring in a structural engineer and, you know, heavy equipment moving.
00:23:04
Speaker
And then I would partner back with the manufacturer and bring them back in on board. And we we work pretty closely with all the manufacturers on that. So there's a little like subcontracting going on if if maybe it's outside of the scope of what you guys can handle. We're calling somebody else for for some help.
00:23:20
Speaker
first On the fire trainers, definitely. Because and the fire trainers... the The stuff that's under the ground, all the piping, is not unique to the fire trainer. That brings you into like CE because that is um utilities.
00:23:36
Speaker
i mean, those are big gas pipes. and when they're When they're digging it all up, they're coming in with earthmoothing equipment. And, you know, if there's underground leaks, and there are, um you know, a lot of the systems that are being tested now,
00:23:49
Speaker
need to be upgraded. And um ah we just came back. We were at the RF working group and part of our conference in Dallas, we got to go see the DFW training center. And wow, talk about new technology.
00:24:01
Speaker
If all of our aircraft fire trainers could be upgraded to that level, it would be something else. It would really be something else. And that's always my goal. Well, it's twofold that the DOD has the most up-to-date training and equipment, but they also, they can do it price that's within reason.
00:24:20
Speaker
um So we we concentrate on the minor repairs, like we can do sensors, we can do gas monitoring, we can do, you know, pipes above ground. um But, you know as far as bringing, we we would have to bring it in a structural engineer if we went underground.
00:24:36
Speaker
And the manufacturer, if it was anything major. Right. And there's some working with the local provider of the utilities and so on and so forth. There's a lot involved. it Yeah. It makes complete sense to me. I was just trying to kind of nail down the the scope of that particular service provided.
00:24:53
Speaker
ah to catch of them Yeah. Each of is supposed to get inspected and every year. Right. So that's a lot of inspections that need to get done. And if you look at our, you know worldwide for all the, all the, all the different branches, there's a lot of fire trainers and there's just not enough assets of people. mean, you're just, when you're traveling like we do worldwide, there's so many days that are spent traveling that there's only so many days left that you can spend working. Yeah. There's only so much time in the year.
00:25:22
Speaker
There is. And there's only so many resources. And when we bundle, so like that's what's really a big thing, we bundle. So if if if we were to have to send, say you're Okinawa, we've got guys going to Okinawa next week and out to go and do their their ladder testing.
00:25:38
Speaker
And they're just having us come to do that individually. So you're going to have two days of travel each direction for one day of work. So you're basically wasting four days of travel to do one day's worth of work. But if you were to bundle and say you did the ground ladders, the aerial ladders, and you did the Marine Corps base at the same time, and you did all the ARF booms at the same time, and you had five days of travel or five days of work for four days of travel, you're considerably increasing the productivity and efficiency of the team.
00:26:08
Speaker
um That's why it's nice to bundle everything together. Yeah, that's an excellent point. i I wonder, and you don't have to answer this necessarily, but would you as a business owner like push back? Like, ah I'm sorry, I would love to help you, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze. i have I have so many travel days. We have so many days a year to service all these things. And if I'm just testing ladders for one day and I'm traveling four, it's not worth it to me.
00:26:37
Speaker
I hate to say it, but you have to because there are only so many assets. But what I try to do, and we have something that we do, once we know we're going to a location, I'll open up what call on our route discount.
00:26:50
Speaker
And I will let all the people know that are along the way or in that close vicinity that we're going to be there. And they can then access services and and tag on at a much more reasonable price.
00:27:03
Speaker
It doesn't always work with timing and funding. But, you know, if I know a year in advance, like I know every year we're going to go to the north of Japan and Masawa, we can have someone like the aerial guy will be there. Someone will be there, does everything that we do. We're getting ready to go up to um Colorado Springs.
00:27:23
Speaker
We do Colorado Springs in July and August. And that's that's one of our incredible stories about about bundling. We had all of our assets there, and we had um Air Force Academy, Peterson, and Cheyenne Mountain.
00:27:36
Speaker
All the services that we provide, all of our technicians, and we ran them all through within less than two weeks. So we had we had two project managers on it, and We just boom, boom, boom three through each three the services.
00:27:49
Speaker
And this year, I think that we're also going to be adding a little bit of something for um for Carson, for Schriever, and for Buckley. Now, those other three, they're getting to tag on with no mobilization costs.
00:28:01
Speaker
You know, they can they can jump on with a GPC card on something. and get, you know, so they want a compressor service. They can, they need to have their rescue tools checked. They want to have their nozzles and appliances. That's, that's a big one. When what's missed a gap that I see it on every base, yeah ah most bases test their hose.
00:28:20
Speaker
Most bases test their hose themselves. In 2008,
00:28:26
Speaker
10, I think it was, maybe 10 or 13, somewhere around there, the NFPA added nozzles and appliances. There's 60% of the bases that aren't even aware of that and aren't doing it.
00:28:38
Speaker
um I did a special for a couple of the bases. I said, you know what? Just because we're already going to be there, you pay for the hoses, I'll throw in the nozzles and appliances because we do them at the same time. But when we're bundling and we're already there,
00:28:53
Speaker
you Essentially, it's just staying an extra day in a hotel to handle more clients. So that's that's why we do our on our route discount. It's because we know right now, mean, budgets are stupid tight.
00:29:05
Speaker
um And if we're already going to be in that location, we can add other other things and other clients at the same time. But we're doing, i think we have 26 line items that we do.
Importance of Proper Equipment Testing
00:29:18
Speaker
Okay. Yeah, i was that was one of my follow-up questions. But to to kind of close the loop on what you've described, it's a complicated juggling act. servicing all these locations. And you'd mentioned Colorado. and When you mentioned Colorado, I thought about Northern tier bases that might have snow and ice where things can't be done in December or January. And then, you know, so yeah, having to, uh, having to line everything up and then maybe hit multiple locations in, in one or two weeks, uh, sounds like a complicated scheduling, um, the scheduling issue, but
00:29:55
Speaker
But we live with we live in logistics. um It's what we do. And you were talking about you know messing up with the wrong places. So years ago, we had a contract both for Manus and for Afghanistan. And the guys asked me, they're like, could we switch the two? Because you've got us in Manus when it's like freezing cold and we're having a pump test in a hangar. And then you have us in Afghanistan in their summer. Could we just switch the two? And yeah, we try to make sure that we hit we hit regions that have severe weather on their better time of year.
00:30:26
Speaker
like We're going to Alaska in August. We can hit you know all the bases in Alaska in August. And then we'll be in Hawaii in December when it's you know cold up north.
00:30:37
Speaker
yeah we try not to We try not to hit South Dakota past um September. We're in South Dakota in September. There's pretty much – we hit every single state at some point during a year.
00:30:50
Speaker
you know there's There's no state that's not hit. Some states we were where we're going back and forth, like you'll see oftentimes the area from like Florida to Texas, that'll be on our route discount. I know I've got one going right now. I guess it's Mississippi through Texas all the way up to Oklahoma where we've got a a crew on the road.
00:31:09
Speaker
in the next six weeks or so doing hydro testing. We decided this year, each year I try to take one area of service and talk about it. We called 2026 the year of the hydro because hydro is like this mystical thing. Oh, it's due for a hydro. Well, what is a hydro? So i' I'm spending this year doing education in our email campaigns on what a hydro is, um you know, why it's so important.
00:31:37
Speaker
When we first started doing this, we realized that a lot of people, especially overseas, were hydro. They're DOT, but they're not U.S. DOT. So you could you could go to Singapore and they've got a DOT because everyone's got a Department of Transportation.
00:31:52
Speaker
But For our equipment for the United States Department Defense, it has to be U.S. DOT certified. And there's nuances between DOT cylinder covers everything from like an oxygen bottle, a welding bottle, um a nitrogen bottle, every bottle is covered under the DOT, but our cylinders are covered under a special permit.
00:32:17
Speaker
And it's it's very important that you don't just pop it in the hydro machine, press the button. You have to know what bottle you're doing because you can damage the SCBA cylinder. You could get false um false failures. You can get false ah passes. They have specific O-rings that go on them, and each manufacturer makes their own O-ring.
00:32:37
Speaker
So you can look at an O-ring and go, oh, I recognize that O-ring. Let me just pop one off the shelf. It may not be the same one. And then you have leaking or you can have bursting.
00:32:48
Speaker
So it's it's hydros are hydros are very dear to me. so we yeah We are DOT certified for hydro. and um But, yeah, that's what we're doing right now. We're doing an honor route discount covering of that whole region. And we'll come on site and do the hydros, which people don't seem to think about how how much work goes into, you know, taking your cylinders downtown.
00:33:11
Speaker
So you've got to pull them out of service. You've got to empty them. You take them down there. You wait two weeks, you go back and pick them up. And then you have to fill them. Or you might even have to put your O-rings on. then you got to fill them and put them back in service. We do it as part of our package. It's like when we do, we have something we call our punchier service. So this would be at a base that we take care of a large amount of their equipment.
00:33:32
Speaker
We'll actually go and take the cylinders off the apparatus, put a spare set on there, take them hydro them, bring them back, put them back where they belong, and then update all the records.
00:33:43
Speaker
you it's it's It's much more than just doing the individual services. You know, when we do a large base and they've got, say, 200 cylinders, they're not even noticing that we're doing them.
00:33:56
Speaker
we'll come on to a ah fire station. We will put spares on an apparatus. We'll take those back to our shop on base. We'll service them. And our servicing, ah one of the things that irritates me is for SCBA services, a lot of people will write in the requirement, come and flow test our SCBAs.
00:34:18
Speaker
Now, a flow test is what's designated by an FPA, which is typically like a POSI check or Omni check. It's a quantitative piece of equipment you put the SCBA component onto. You press a button. It gives you a number. You write it down. And the POSI check, it prints it out.
00:34:36
Speaker
But it's just a piece of paper that says it does this specific thing at this specific time. That flow test gives a variable between this number and this number. So say you have your regulator set here on the between here and here.
00:34:53
Speaker
And then your second stage on your cylinder, so the one that connects your cylinder, it's set over here. You're not getting optimal breathing. You could take that same so SCBA unit and reset both parameters to center, which is what we do. And then you have optimal breathing.
00:35:08
Speaker
You could put two guys side by side, one that we've set properly, one that's not been set. And that second guy is going to be huffing and puffing, and he's going to breathe through his cylinder much faster. It's important in our opinion, or my opinion, always tell people as a subject matter ma expert, You do what you want.
00:35:24
Speaker
That you do an annual service. That you take each piece of equipment and take it back to what we call AOS Perfect. So those are the settings that come from the manufacturer so that it works perfectly.
00:35:36
Speaker
Not that it passes and a flow test.
00:35:41
Speaker
My thoughts. My my morning thought on SCBAs. That's some excellent, excellent detail and context. I mean, you, as a firefighter, don't think about those parameters, right? I have an SCBA and I put it on my, I put the mask on my face and I breathe air and, you know, hey, it's working for me. But the way that you described it, there's so much more detail and complexity that goes into it. And I've said the word complexity a lot, but that's really kind of the, uh,
00:36:06
Speaker
it's kind of really the expertise that you provide is is dialing in those complexities of these pieces of equipment again firefighters i think can take care of which firefighters are doers they're problem solvers and ah let's i mean let's be honest in most cases i guess beside maybe emergency medicine we're we're pretty we're brutal on scene right we're breaking things we're moving, throwing furniture out of the way. And we're just doing what we need to do to save what's left of property or to save life or to prevent fire from happening. Right. And so you can't, we're good at applying, we're we're good at, you know, maintaining our stations, but when it comes to being deep technicians or, you know, understanding the the complexities of these equipment, it's really not our wheelhouse. Maybe some of us, but certainly not all of us.
00:37:00
Speaker
Maybe like, I'd say like one out of a hundred. Right. Didn't find their calling because a firefighter has a calling. That's to fight the fire, save the baby, you know, go in it and and don't think about the consequences.
00:37:15
Speaker
That's very dynamically different from a technician who's focused on individual indiosyncrasies on a piece of equipment and, you know, detail-oriented, very data-oriented. It's a different animal. And by what we bring to the to the to the table, we
Efficient Equipment Management and Compliance
00:37:34
Speaker
allow fire chiefs the ability to take their people and focus their energies on the things that matter most to them and their careers. And I think that, you know the fire chiefs that that hire us in...
00:37:47
Speaker
They promote a really good culture in their fire department by bringing in someone to take care of the equipment. First, they tell their firefighters, we care about your health and safety. They tell them, we want you to focus on succeeding as a firefighter. We want to spend the time mentoring, training, yeah promoting, yeah doing things within the fire department. We want to focus on fire-related activities, not on inspecting equipment.
00:38:14
Speaker
You know, we come in, when we have it when we have a full service contract, we'll come in even the largest base, we can get done in a month. So we'll come in with a handful of guys, and in a month, we'll have everything done. Then you only have to focus on service once a year.
00:38:27
Speaker
mean, yes, every day you have to check your equipment. You're never going to stop doing that. And we can fly back in or come back in if something breaks and you need us. But when we do, for instance, when we do the the apparatus, the program that we, my favorite program, I think everyone else's favorite program too, we call it our apparatus program. We come in, it's hoses, nozzles, and appliances. It's ground letterss a ladders, area ladders.
00:38:49
Speaker
It's pump testing. It's RF testing. Now we're adding back in the ultra high pressure cylinders. I could take a truck out of service two to three hours and do everything on it. and put it back on the road.
00:39:00
Speaker
So say if you've got 10 apparatus, I'm in and out in two days. And I've done all of that stuff and you don't do it for another year. You've only got to, you know remove your reserve vehicle through the process for two days.
00:39:14
Speaker
And we work with you on it. We'll come in and say, you know, two to three hours, let's back these ones up. We'll, you know truck number three's out on a call. We'll give us truck number five. slot number five in there, we'll catch back up tomorrow.
00:39:27
Speaker
You know, we we we get in and out pretty quickly. And one of the things that we like to do when we're at a base or at ah at a municipality is what we call our mutual aid clinics. So you your mutual aid's only as strong as its weakest link.
00:39:41
Speaker
The department that's got the The least amount of resources is the department that's going to hold you back when you're needing them most. So what we provide, we call it our mutual aid clinic. Either we get done at a base or a large fire department. You host us.
00:39:56
Speaker
We do all of your equipment. We give you a nice big fat discount. And we also allow your municipalities to come in. So that way, so ah say one municipality's only got three trucks. They could bring in one Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Doesn't put a huge drain on them for personnel.
00:40:12
Speaker
And we we slip in all the vehicles for your municipal aid through that week. um We can do it off basis too. um We do it at it at fire stations. And while we're there, um we can have our other technicians. So we have one group of technicians that do the stuff on the apparatus. And then when our program... um program managers and our project managers, they take care of the SCBAs, the compressors, the rescue tools, um you know, that the fire trainers. They're not doing pumps, ladders, hoses, and appliances, except for when they go OCONUS. So our same guys that do your SCBAs, when they go to an OCONUS base, they're doing your hoses, ladders,
00:40:51
Speaker
pump testing. it's it's It's challenging to travel and do those things overseas, but we do. And that used to be our core fun our core focus was OCONUS. um But then, you know Chiefs would get back to OCONUS and they'd be like, well, how am I getting this level of service in Iraq and I'm not getting it in Detroit?
00:41:12
Speaker
There is someone in each big city that does each of the things that we do, but they do one, they do two. And what really sets us apart from the competition, we don't really have competition, the other people who do services is they're typically a distributor for that manufacturer.
00:41:29
Speaker
And in order to become a distributor, you have to provide service. Most of the equipment, if not 99% of the equipment that's owned by the Department of Defense is not bought from a local distributor.
00:41:42
Speaker
It's bought through GSA, DLA, or directly from the manufacturer in a bulk buy. So those local distributors, they don't make any money off the Department of Defense.
00:41:52
Speaker
And I won't say they get offended, but it's a chore for them to go out and serve us. You know, they didn't get credit for selling it. They're never going to get credit for selling it. And they're tasked with going out and doing service. Service is all we do.
00:42:05
Speaker
um They make their money by selling equipment. We make our money by making sure your equipment lasts as long as possible. I feel like there's a conflict of interest with a distributor.
00:42:19
Speaker
Their main focus always has to be the next dollar, the next piece of equipment, the new unit. Ours is keeping you in what you have as long as possible, as economically as possible. And we're going to tell you, I have an algorithm that we've done where we plug in, you know, cost of a new unit, cost of old unit, age, options that are on it, you know, and how much it's going to cost to repair it. And I'll come in and say, i wouldn't spend the money on it. We have a probability. So it's like anything over 50% probability of replace, we're going to have a conversation that says, there's this new unit that does more than what this unit does.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yours is, you know, either obsolete, then we can't fix it, or it's in the process of becoming in like in their last year of when they're going to support it. Don't put any more money into it.
00:43:08
Speaker
But we don't ever get involved in buy this brand or buy that brand. There are so many great manufacturers out there and we work with all of them. You know, we don't get involved in and the different brands. We stay brand neutral because there are so many great options. And there's there's so many small companies out there that make the same products that just haven't had the traction in the Department of Defense yet.
00:43:33
Speaker
That, you know, we just try to stay impartial.
00:43:38
Speaker
yeah And we work for the Department of Defense or for the fire department, not for the manufacturer. We work with the manufacturer. Your largest customer base, they are in a position where they can't buy the same manufactured piece all the time. I mean, means in some instances, maybe they can, let's say a compressor.
00:43:59
Speaker
ah But we in the Department of Defense are kind of in a position where you gotta spread the wealth for lack of a better term, right? And and sometimes- it's just working true it's sent Yeah, it's important and it's important it's for the taxpayer, right? like There's so much taxpayer funding that goes towards defense. it would It makes sense for what we spend money on in defense to be spread you know throughout the United States and all those different companies right so that everybody can um benefit in some way. i mean, I hate to say the word benefit, but i mean you know you want to make sure that that money goes not to the same level
00:44:36
Speaker
place every time, not to the same company every time. So that's kind of the way that the defense is structured. Uh, so, but yeah, it seems to me like AOS, it, it, it meets that need for being that most of your customers are in defense. Um, and I think that it sounds like it's a great approach, um, not being loyal to any one manufacturer and just kind of servicing everything and saying, seeing the great and most in in all of them.
00:45:03
Speaker
Well, and there are some manufacturers that I don't enjoy. we look at We look at the same things you look at. Quality of product, price, customer service, and their culture.
00:45:13
Speaker
You know, we want to work with manufacturers that are dedicated to aftermarket service. And if that means using us, that's fine. If they have their own system, we bring them in. It's important that they that they focus on this health and safety of our firefighters like we do. You know, you can't just keep selling products and then waiting for the next sale as fast as you can get it. Like I, whore, planned obsolescence. Yeah.
00:45:47
Speaker
There was a time when we first started 30 years ago that a compressor would last 20 to 30 years. Now we're getting 7 to 10. um But that's just kind of the way things are going.
00:45:59
Speaker
You know, we could all work really hard to help make the system work better. And competition is one of the things that makes it work better. You know, if you you have competition... It requires manufacturers and us and all the service providers to, you know, give a better price, to give better service, to give better equipment to new innovations.
00:46:26
Speaker
Competition's good. Competition's very good. And there are so many great manufacturers out there, and I tell them all the time, because when we first started doing this, they said, well, you have to be a distributor to service our equipment. and we said wet We don't want to be your distributor.
00:46:39
Speaker
We only want to work on service. And it took a number of years for manufacturers to get it. The pie is massive. The fire industry throughout the United States and the world is massive.
00:46:51
Speaker
It doesn't need to have one person gobbling up all the pie. There's enough for everything to go around. And we like working with the small businesses. Like if I pick up a new client in a region that we haven't worked before and they tell us, hey, we really like our compressor service provider.
00:47:08
Speaker
I'll go and i'll I'll work with that compressor service provider. We'll put them through our certified partner program. And as long as they're following, one, what's in our contract, because that's that's that's how everything's based, is what our contract says.
00:47:21
Speaker
Two, they're certified for the manufacturer. And they can provide good service. We'll bring them into our certified partner program. There's no reason why you can't get people that are local under our contract.
00:47:32
Speaker
It just means that they would have to subcontract through us. And then we're an overreaching and overbearing
00:47:39
Speaker
managing what products and services that they're providing, almost like a mini contracting office in between. you know, we're taking responsibility that they're doing a good job. And, you know, nine out of 10 people, they do a great job.
00:47:52
Speaker
It's just that, you it's a lot of work for ah for a department to keep 26 different contracts running when we could do one contract and get it all done at once.
00:48:04
Speaker
And I think it's important that, you know, if you have an ISP that's just down the road, that you'd be able to use them, especially if it's a small woman-owned one. i I like working with women-owned businesses. Yeah, absolutely.
00:48:16
Speaker
um well And that's one of the things, there's a FAR, and I probably couldn't tell you here right now off the number what it is, but there's a FAR that covers all the NIACS codes that we work under that says that a contracting officer will consider a sole source award to a woman-owned small business before it she even considers a small business.
00:48:36
Speaker
or an open source. So there there's a far that says they're supposed to give it to the women-owned small business. And that also helps streamline contracting. You getting contracts through contracting is a challenge. and we have, we call them our da chiefs, like da bears. We have right now, we have three retired fire chiefs who are customers and they're now, um they now work with AOS and they help move base's contracts through the process. They'll come and hold their hand. They can come out and do a precursor evaluation. They can come and inventory everything. They can come and look at what you were doing in the past, service contracts you had, old service records. We can audit those and tell you where your gaps and deficiencies are. And then they'll hold their hand through like the unfunded requirement, doing the market research, helping them put together all the paperwork through contracting because we know how hard it is.
00:49:30
Speaker
You know, it's it's a challenge, but you do it once. We usually do a base with four option years. You do it once every five years. And if you bundle everything together, you get to do other things instead of sit with contracting all the time.
00:49:43
Speaker
you know, the option year just comes up. It's pre-funded. You say, yes, I want to continue. And it's a breeze.
00:49:51
Speaker
Let me, before we, before I forget, so you've mentioned a lot of services provided and it's, there's there's a few things that you've mentioned that it, like that, that one you just mentioned kind of walking um fire chiefs through maybe the complicated process of contracting and renewing and things of that sort. What you mentioned the number 27. don't know if that was specific to something you mentioned apparatus testing, host testing, ladder testing, aircraft, fire trainer, servicing, what other services that maybe you haven't mentioned, do you provide?
00:50:21
Speaker
ah So there's like calibrations. So everything that you get calibrated, you can just throw on there. And what that means is we'll do your um RMA and we'll send you a shipping label to send it off. um We've also do SCBAs, confined space. Don't forget them. They're important too. Compressors, rescue tools, the hoses and nozzles. So rope rescue, rope testing, things of that sort. All that stuff. All that has to be inventory and cleaned and check to make sure it's still functioning properly. Then you've got the hoses, nozzles, appliances, ground and aerial. Aeroladders are something very important. Aeroladders, in addition to the aeroladders, any of the HRETs or booms or snozzles, whatever want to call them on the ARF trucks, they have the same kind of test that aeroladder has.
00:51:07
Speaker
Same certification so they can be done at the same time. That gets missed by a lot of bases. They forget that they forget the articulating boom on their ARF trucks. um The ultra-high-pressure hoses, rescue tools,
00:51:24
Speaker
fire truck inspections, repairs all the way to refurbishments. Oh, and fire trainers. Don't forget the fire trainers. Yep, yep. And with fire trainers, you've got not just your ah aircraft fire trainers. You've got your masks. You've got your structural fire trainers. And then all your props.
00:51:39
Speaker
So each of those have to be annually inspected as well. Sure. And then they have a structural a structural engineer required at at different intervals depending on what piece of equipment it is. And what happens then when we finish a report, so all the individual pieces of the report come together. It all gets put into one PDF file.
00:51:58
Speaker
So you could go in, how you have like the little bookmarks on a PDF? You just open your file and go, oh, aerial ladder. And there's your aerial ladder. We go through the entire report. So every piece that's been inspected, we audit the report, make sure everything's correct first. And then we extrapolate out everything that's got a failure. And we take all those out and we put those in a a separate failure report. Because it's not just inspecting it.
00:52:23
Speaker
When we get to that point, it's like, okay, now no what's the next step to get it repaired? Okay. Yeah. So here's how you get it right. here's how Here's how we make it 100% again. We want 100% compliancy. So we can go through and say, okay, these are SEBAs that failed.
00:52:36
Speaker
If you're still under warranty, we're going to run your warranty paperwork. We ship your parts back that are that are that are broken. They ship us new parts. Once we have everything taken care of that needs to be addressed for the year, if you're on a long-term contract, we typically get a mod or there's a set-aside amount for a line item for for parts and repairs, and we come back and fix them.
00:52:59
Speaker
So it's not done until it's all fixed. Then we come back and re-inspect it, and then you're at 100% compliancy. And that's what we want. We want everyone at 100% compliance. It's it's wrought really enough to just fail stuff.
00:53:13
Speaker
And that brings me kind to one of my favorite points. know, in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, they have the Island of Lost Toys. okay Every fire department's got a room of lost toys. Right.
00:53:26
Speaker
There's ah a room. Sometimes it's a closet. Sometimes it's a room. Sometimes it's a warehouse. We can't figure it out. We just, it didn't, it stopped working. We shoved it in there. We closed the door. We pushed the door against it.
00:53:36
Speaker
By going through that equipment, There's a lot of things that we can we can take care of and get fixed. I like to see at the end of a contract, period, that the fire chief goes, well, we just spent $100,000 on all these inspections, but I was able to salvage $100,000 of equipment. I thought I was going to buy new.
00:53:55
Speaker
At a minimum, I want to see the cost of our contract recaptured in equipment they thought they were going to throw away. Right. It's really helping prevent waste. Absolutely. And that's that's one of our biggest things. We don't want waste.
00:54:09
Speaker
But it also gives the opportunity to the stuff that's in there, it's still on your inventory. If it can't be fixed, you've got you've got justification for derma. If it can't be fixed, and there's i mean we find scraps of parts.
00:54:23
Speaker
You know, it's like that's not that's that's not an SCBA, that's an SCBA part. But you can take those and some of it can be salvaged and you put it into your spares and you reuse it the next time you need to repair a unit.
00:54:35
Speaker
So you can take what they don't have working and tell them this is what it takes to make it right or you make it right or you provide the justification necessary to go disposition, put it, you know, take it somewhere else to the organization that disposes.
00:54:51
Speaker
yeah And it's important for – Some listeners might not understand DERMO, DRMO. DRMO. So when you have all that equipment on your inventory and you're responsible for it, it creates extra work.
00:55:04
Speaker
And someone looks at it and goes, well, you've got you've got, you know, six tigs here. You don't need another tig. Well, what if three of those tigs don't work? Then you've actually only got three tigs.
00:55:18
Speaker
Wouldn't it be helpful to know what it would cost to repair them and to know, you know, where they are in their life cycle? You know, what what are our options for new equipment? I mean, on tigs now, there's some tigs like the Sikhs.
00:55:33
Speaker
They're pretty much just like disposable. There are some that are $10,000 to buy anyone. You know, some equipment, it gets smaller and and just like our phones, gets smaller and cheaper to manufacture as time goes on.
00:55:48
Speaker
Where is the point where you put money into something and when you let it go? And we want to all be good stewards of our taxpayer dollars. Sure.
00:55:58
Speaker
And that's what we are. We're good stewards the taxpayer dollars. You know, everything that we do, we keep in mind, you know, is this the best use of the government's money? Mm-hmm. And we advise on that. I mean, obviously, if someone says to us, well, I want to fix it anyway...
00:56:13
Speaker
It's not our choice. That's their prerogative. Yeah. It's not our choice. We just make recommendations. and But I would heavily not recommend something that I felt was too old. And it's also very important. like we keep a We keep a thumb on the manufacturers as model numbers are going out of being supported.
00:56:34
Speaker
If there's a product that's only going to support it for another year, don't put a lot of money into it. You know, if we're having to go and search down parts for something this year, that means the next time something breaks, we're likely not going to find any parts for it. Right. You know, and manufacturers go out of business.
00:56:54
Speaker
So recently, Eagle Compressors stopped making compressors. And there's hundreds of them on our inventory. And we can so we can search down and find... from the original manufacturer that part, a replacement part, most times. But it takes a lot of effort.
00:57:11
Speaker
Contracts usually say OEM parts only. If a company goes out of business, you're just putting band-aids on it until something bad happens. We let the client know, hey, this piece of equipment is on its way out. It's on its way you know to not being supported or is already not supported. Now would be a good time to start thinking about a replacement.
00:57:31
Speaker
at least yet At least get a quote in your drawer that you know, this is what I want. Because manufacturers of compressors, and you can wait six months to get a new one. What going to for six months with no air?
00:57:46
Speaker
And that's six months once you put the order in. It takes time to fund It takes time to source it. I always have people, especially on manufacturers of of of the compressors, and we work with a compressor company that I just adore.
00:57:59
Speaker
But they've got, and they've done it for me, you know, if i've got ah if I've got a base that's in an emergency, they'll slip in one of my orders ahead of everybody else's because I'll let them know, hey, I've got a i got a department that doesn't have any source of air.
00:58:13
Speaker
Can you slip this in for me? And they'll slip it in for me. um and And I think that's very important to have that relationship with the manufacturers that will support my clients um because it's important. I mean, we're here to serve.
00:58:26
Speaker
And if you can't have air, you can't put out fires. There's three things you need to put out a fire. It's a firefighter, water, and air. There's so much more than just the services that you provide. There's the relationships with those manufacturers, the understanding and know-how of the network, even the contracting – the Department of Defense contracting ways and the – disposition, disposal processes, recommendations for that kind of stuff. There's just so much more than I come in and I test your cylinders, I test your SAB, I test your hose, and I tell you whether or not it's good on report. um but And that's why we're not just testers. So we provide equipment compliance programs.
00:59:10
Speaker
We work on the whole thing with you. i mean, I love that we're considered part of the DOD. You know, Most fire chiefs don't look at us as vendors. They look at us as partners.
00:59:21
Speaker
And I love being in that position because we're not we're not part of the them, the vendors, the people who want your money. We're part of the we want to keep you safe and keep your equipment running. We come and we stay at your fire department. Like when we were in the Middle East um and all AORs, We would stay on at the fire department in the tents with everybody. We'd eat there with them. You know, we'd become part of the part of the program.
00:59:45
Speaker
Like when we were doing all thes um we were the we were the constant. you know people were rotating in and out. We were the constant. And we've got bases that go back, i mean, like military seat of command, 30 years. You know, we've got bases that we've done, you know, 10, 12, 18, 20 years. that they don't have to worry about their equipment.
01:00:06
Speaker
They want to know where something is, they call us. You know they want to know where the reports are from 10 years ago, they call us and we keep them. You know, they get an inspection, an MRI comes in, and they haven't got their paperwork in the right place. They call us and we resend it all.
01:00:20
Speaker
Right, right, right. You these are long-term places. Interestingly enough, i was ah I was a core for, at one point, it's been over 10 years now, at one of those overseas locations so for AOS. Oh, nice. Which one?
01:00:34
Speaker
Yeah. It's been a long time. Qatar, indeed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so there's a, yeah, I worked with those guys. I mean, it six-month stint. You know, it' it's a rotation back in the day. But, yeah. I didn't realize that, Matt. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, i I didn't think to bring it up, but, you know, so i say that to say that I have literally experience on that end of being deployed a handful of times and then seeing and working with either directly or indirectly, because there's been times I've been deployed, I haven't been directly connected with the service contractor, but... Yeah, that continuity is a great point. you just
01:01:11
Speaker
when And when they come into town, however many times they they come into town, you can have conversations about them. Well, the last rotation said or did this. The fire chief had planned for this. This is ordered. This is ordered. Exactly. Don't order that again. we ordered that. A long time yeah whole new department.
01:01:31
Speaker
changing out there's just you know whole 60 you know i don't i just say 60 i throw the number out there's 60 different firefighters coming in than who were here six months ago it's just yep continuity is always a struggle and that's just the nature of the business but well and and doing the aors was it was a was a great blessing because we were able to be that constant and it also gave us the opportunity to meet so many airmen you know our For instance, a couple of years ago, right after David died, um I went to Vegas with one of my girlfriends for her 40th birthday.
Supporting Fire Departments and Safety Culture
01:02:05
Speaker
And um the fire chief at Nellis invited me to come in and speak. I think it was actually Creech. It was a... No, was Nellis. was Bob Ward. And you know he picked me up at the gate and he's like, you know, my PTSD was stupid bad and I was really struggling to...
01:02:20
Speaker
to talk to people. And he says, well, just come in, come and sit with us. it'll it'll It'll be casual. He's like, but I can't go in there and tell him how great you are because I'd work with him at many bases. He said, just, you know, come in and tell you, tell them what you do and we'll take it from there.
01:02:34
Speaker
And I walked in, sat down And there were three guys in uniform. The first guy goes, well, when I was at Oman, AOS did this, this, and this. And the other guy goes, well, when I was at Qatar, they did this, this, this, and this. And the other guy goes, well, I got you. And they were at Manus, they did this this, this, this, and this. And I was like, well, there's my presentation. And I laughed.
01:02:52
Speaker
and literally, the people that we work with and work for are our biggest cheerleaders. Sometimes it can be ah a challenge when you come due to a base. There'll be firefighters that think you're getting in their business. and there's an educational process that explains to them, you know, we're herere not we're not here to take your job.
01:03:11
Speaker
We're here to make your job easier. We're not reporting to anybody. we're not having on working for you. Right. Yeah. You know, we're not going to tattle on you that your equipment's not working right. Yeah. We're going to make your equipment safe. We're go to make your job easier, make your job safer. And there will always be that one or two that are naysayers. But then the other 10 guys that have worked us before will say, no no, just let them do their job. And this is great. And stand back, stand down. And, you know, the the people who support what we do.
01:03:38
Speaker
about four orf Far out, you know, shouts the people who aren't happy about it. And by the second year that we're there, everyone's grateful that we're there. And, you know, they they realize how much easier their job is.
01:03:52
Speaker
you know, what takes them, like, we'll go to a fire department to do their hose testing. and they'll say, well, gosh, we spend like two months doing our hose testing. Sure. And we do it two days. Yeah.
01:04:02
Speaker
That was the point I was going to bring up earlier is just the time suck that some of this stuff is pump testing, hose testing, whatever. I mean, yeah, I think it's important firefighters get out there and understand their hose, maybe understand the process here and there, work alongside whoever's servicing it.
01:04:18
Speaker
But just if you calculate it, and I don't know, departments may do this, some may do this out there, but if you calculate the amount of time and manpower that something like that takes, versus the time I could be spending on training or other things.
01:04:31
Speaker
You know, it's just that right there to me is it makes it worth it Well, we like to have the firefighters come and watch so they understand the process and the importance of what we're doing.
01:04:43
Speaker
mean, they have to stay with the rig anyway, um or they might go on the reserve rig. But we offer um what we call client assist. So if you've got the old fire chief that says, well, dang it, I did hose testing. They're going to do hose testing. Well, we offer a discount if the firefighters take the gear off and on the apparatus.
01:05:03
Speaker
That makes them be completely involved with what we're doing. We're ensuring that it's done correctly. We're looking at the numbers that are coming off the machine. We're observing to make sure each piece gets done. We're observing to make sure the failed units get pulled off. Can't tell you how often I find stuff that was on the report the year before that was failed before we got there back on the rig. Because it's is it it's a simple mistake.
01:05:26
Speaker
But if you're paying attention and you're pulling it to one side, and you're marking out a service, it shouldn't find its way back onto a truck. um But we offer this client assist because it is important that each firefighter understand the importance of what we do.
01:05:41
Speaker
They shouldn't just take it for granted. You know, they shouldn't just take for granted that someone's going to come and do this for you and keep you safe. They need to know that it's their responsibility every single day to check their gear, you know and pull it out of service if it's not working right.
01:05:56
Speaker
Right.
01:05:59
Speaker
Well, Kim, I wanted to ask two more questions before we wrap it up. The first one is, i don't know, just feel like maybe I'd be interested in this if I were a listener, but, you know, what do you see or does you do your technicians see out there for the fire departments that do good, quote unquote, versus those that don't?
01:06:17
Speaker
And I know that' that could be, there could be a multitude of answers for that question, but i figured I'd ask that. All right. There are a lot of fire departments that do it do it well. For instance, I i went and did a um precursor evaluation at Fort Carson a couple years ago.
01:06:33
Speaker
And I walked away and they did not have one single gap or deficiency. They were on top of it. um So that's happened once. That's happened once in 30 years. i guess um But they're – so – If we've come and set up a base that they follow through throughout the year, you know that if we come in and we do a base that they don't neglect the repairs,
01:06:58
Speaker
that they ensure, you know, that what we've done stays current. That means that, you know they're filling out their compressor logs. They're doing their daily checks.
01:07:09
Speaker
If something breaks, that we've shown them, you know, like we've given them for their SCBAs, we've given them, you know, a stack of regulators that are certified and all they have to do is pop them onto to that SCBA, that they keep they follow through.
01:07:21
Speaker
So there's good program management. They're doing their homework. They're doing what they've been of recommended to do. Yeah, and that they keep their fingers out of the compressors. the knobs. Keep your hands off the knobs. But they do make compressors with locks. So they have compressors, but you can't get the knobs. Childproof. Childproof. Firefighter proof. Firefighter proof. There's nothing firefighter proof. But really that they follow through. that they don't just take it for granted that everything works properly. Because when we're testing it, we're giving you a result of that specific moment.
01:07:56
Speaker
When we test something and there's a number, we put it onto a sheet, it's that moment. Three weeks later, for instance, I had a guy one time, I handed him back his mask. I did his fit test, handed back his mask. He came back five minutes later and he dropped his bag. And I gave him a bag because he didn't have a bag. Dropped his bag on my desk and he says, can you fix it?
01:08:15
Speaker
And I heard it clink when it hit the ground. So I opened it and poured it out. And it was just parts. said what the hell did you do to it? I just gave you a perfectly working cra mask. He said, well, I put it on the floor and the firetruck ran over it.
01:08:27
Speaker
um Is respecting your gear. you know If each individual firefighter could look at the the tools that he's given as his life support equipment and respect it and take good care of it throughout the year, I think that would be the biggest takeaway, that every single firefighter take responsibility for their own equipment, their own safety. you know if you If you finish a fire, take off your PPE.
01:08:52
Speaker
Take a shower. Right. Put your pee-pee in the extractor. Don't put it in your truck. You know don't sleep with it. You know, get it clean. be disciplined and have ownership for the things that you're responsible for and just be Every single person.
01:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, every single person. That would be my biggest takeaway. You know, if if it's broken, don't wear it. Don't use it. Test it. Check it every morning. If there's a rip in your gear, don't use it. Don't use it. Hand it in.
01:09:19
Speaker
It may look cool, but. Yeah. And I see, I mean, surprisingly, I was at a ah fire department the other day and there was, you know, lockers for 50 firefighters.
01:09:30
Speaker
49 of them had immaculately clean PPE in it. And one was just sooted and grungy. And the fire chief looked at me and I looked back at him. he was, he's a municipal firefighter now. He was a, he was a Navy firefighter before that. And he says, yeah, he goes, this one and this one, they're the exact same age, but look at the state of it. it's like, he says he won't, he won't even wash it.
01:09:52
Speaker
And what I saw was a firefighter that's involved in each incident, but I saw a firefighter that's going to be a future cancer patient.
01:10:04
Speaker
You know We have the resources. We have the knowledge now that says get no peep clean your PPE. Clean it after every every time you get and into an incident. Clean it.
01:10:17
Speaker
Don't just leave it. It's your life. Yep. That's something I'm passionate about as well, particularly the PPE stuff. It's just something that I dug into in my undergraduate studies. and But the instances of cancer for firefighters is just astronomical. Astronomical, yeah.
01:10:35
Speaker
To the civilian population, and it's – really attributed largely to byproducts of combustion and our exposure to those, not just on a scene, but outside of a scene. And then your gear off gassing days, weeks after, and, you know, God forbid you put it into your personal vehicle if you need to switch stations or whatever, and you're putting your children to that same vehicle. um Yeah, I think it's... And you're taking it home on your skin into your bed.
01:11:04
Speaker
And then yeah, so showering is an important. It's important. You should shower. so Shower and change your clothes. I read somewhere that it takes it takes a few decades for a culture to shift, particularly in the fire service. And we could see that with like seatbelts is another great example of a health and safety initiative that firefighters aren't great at. But the culture is shifting in a direction toward us putting them on. There's departments and there's firefighters that still don't put their seatbelts on. And we still see firefighter fatalities ah responding to or coming back from incidents.
01:11:37
Speaker
But it it just takes so long for something to set in, in the, in the fire service culture. And, you know, PPE is one of those things in clean gear, but don't be that person. You know, that's kind of what my commitment is individually, but also something that I try to impose on firefighters that I may have an influence over. It's just like you said, you could be a cancer patient. And then you could spread it to other people, you know, if you leave it in the cab or whatever the case. So, no, that's great advice. Well, and I think that now we're seeing it. The kids at the academy are are being started out on the right foot.
01:12:09
Speaker
and And we didn't know. 30 years ago, we didn't know. But what you don't know can kill you.
01:12:16
Speaker
And, you know, once you know it, it's changing it's changing behaviors. Sure. Yeah, there's so much that we've done in the past. And there's things that we've done in the past that are good and that are still relevant. But there's other things. I mean, using asbestos or having asbestos made protective ensembles, you know, that was a thing. Yeah. We've learned and corrected that. And then, of course, the foam thing that we're kind of still evolving through, particularly in the Department of Defense or just any area, any place that had a triple F firefighting foam. So, yeah, there's. Well, think about it. We used to we used to do the time and distance testing and we would wallow in it.
01:12:52
Speaker
Right. Yeah. i Literally. did that myself. yeah Yeah. Personally. We were swimming in it. Right. And now, yeah. And now look. But those, these are all things that we've learned.
Advice for Fire Chiefs and Future Directions
01:13:05
Speaker
Kim, I wanted to give you an opportunity also. So, of course, or eventually I want you to, you know, let people know where they can find you, how they can reach out to you. But before that, like advice for fire chiefs. I mean, I i think you probably covered it in the last question, but, um you know, a fire chief that wants fewer surprises, a fire chief that wants a a safe and healthy fire department. um What would you say to that fire chief?
01:13:28
Speaker
I would say yeah considering consider equipment compliance program and then you can put that whole subject to bed and concentrate on your other priorities. um It just really improves the culture of your fire department with, you we'll come in we'll help educate them. You know, yeah it's not all on you. We come in, they see what we're doing. We instill in them how important it is for them to do their daily checks.
01:13:55
Speaker
It makes them, it makes them work
01:14:00
Speaker
proud to be a firefighter, you know, then you can concentrate on all the other things that you want to mentor and teach them. You know, give them safe equipment and then they can do their jobs.
01:14:12
Speaker
And you don't have to worry about it. It's it's a literally once a year. And all those resources that you're spending throughout the year, cumulatively, you'll save money in the long run.
01:14:24
Speaker
yeah Yeah. And it's done in just a short period of time. And then repair. you know The biggest one, I think, would be to repair. When we point out things that are broken, get them repaired.
01:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, follow through. Follow through. And it's hard, especially with ah DOD funding, is getting quickly, a quick turnaround for a modification for repairs. It's a slow-diving train, yeah. Yeah. i mean, there's money. there's there's There's only so much money. But I've never found...
01:14:51
Speaker
a base commander that wouldn't fund it. You go in, you can say, we could do a precursor evaluation and you could say, I've got gaps. I'm not following through these things. As long as you have that objective data, which I think you all provide too. Well, here's this report.
01:15:06
Speaker
yeah um You go to the base commander. This is why it's unsafe for me. You know, and I've prioritized my needs. This is what I want to replace first. Yep. And you go there. i mean, we've never had a base commander say no.
01:15:18
Speaker
It may may may not be yes this year. But it's never been outright no. But if you let them know, I mean, my personnel are at risk. The base personnel are at risk. The facilities on the base are at risk.
01:15:30
Speaker
The flight line's at risk. you know, those are your your your priorities. And if they're if you're not able to meet those requirements, and mean, they give you the requirements that you're supposed to meet. We don't.
01:15:42
Speaker
We just help you meet those requirements.
01:15:46
Speaker
Well, Kim, I want to give you an opportunity to Tell the listeners where they can find you. Do they email you, call you? You have a website I know. yes Where is it best to look for you? anywhere. You can find me all over the place. So our website is aosservicesinc.com. You can get a hold of me through my Facebook, through my LinkedIn. You can call our office. The number is 361-727-1645. You can email me or, you know, you can email office. You can email me. I'm the only one that has the Kim at deeperthanthat.com email from 30 years ago. That gets you directly to me.
01:16:21
Speaker
um You can reach out to our office through info at aoservicesinc.com. They'll get it to the right person. You know, just just drop me a note. You know we'll get to the right person at the at the at the company to help you get what you need done. And we don't just do equipment compliance programs. If you've got ah an urgent need, like a compressor down, we can fly someone to your base and we do take GPC cards. There's, you know, a bunch of stuff we can do on GPC.
01:16:48
Speaker
Look at first year, like this year, what are your needs? And then you look at your wants. So we help you to determine, you know, these are the needs that you need right now. We can take care of them on a microcontract or on a GPC. Then we look at your wants long-term.
01:17:04
Speaker
you know, that might take us six months to help you get through contracting. But by by starting it now, you could get into your next year cycle for funding. ah You know, I've never had a base commander say no on our funding.
01:17:16
Speaker
if You go in there with the right with the with the right data to tell them why you need help, they're going to give it to you. yeah we And we go everywhere in the world. you know Whether you're in Texas just down the road from us or we're you know getting ready to go to the Antarctic program. Okinawa.
01:17:33
Speaker
Okinawa. Yeah. We love Okinawa. That's one of my favorite places. I'm sure you do. I love Okinawa. Yeah. Well, Kim, it was great to have you on You covered a lot and a lot more than I realized, and I'm sure some other listeners realize that you all do. And really the the tertiary benefit of a service like what AOS provides and having objective data to show your bosses that you need something and to get it prioritized and taking time or giving time back to firefighters and making sure that things are done properly. Not that firefighters can't do it properly, but maybe they don't do it as well as...
01:18:08
Speaker
you know, a service company such as yourself. So thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing all of that. Well, next place is to see me. I'll be at FDIC. I don't know if this is going to air before FDIC. Then um we'll be at SFO. We will. Well, that's next week, right? That's two weeks from now. Two weeks from now.
01:18:25
Speaker
Is FDIC, right? And I'll get to see John Jay, which I'm very excited that we're sponsors together with John Jay. We'll give him a plug, too. We love his we love his products. And we love John. We love John Jay.
01:18:36
Speaker
We love John. Great coins. The guy is a master. He's an incredible artist. you know Yes. so And good friend. Yeah, good friend of the good friend of the Air Force, too. But yeah, I'll be at FDIC. I'll be walking. And then after that, um I'll be in D.C. the first week in May. So if anybody's in D.C., I can come and visit there and all that metroperiton area around there. And we'll be at SFO end of July, all hands.
01:19:00
Speaker
And then FRI. we I think I probably hit 10 conferences a year. Wow. and You know, now we've got we've got both Hunter and Journey working with the company. They just are both vice presidents now. And, you know, they're they're really coming into their own as far as, you know, taking over the services and the and the management of the company. And, you know, I'm trying to spend more time in teaching and mentoring and no speaking.
01:19:26
Speaker
The natural progression towards retirement. So the company will carry on. That's awesome. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely with those two. they're They're ready to take on the reins and let me do let me do more fun things.
01:19:39
Speaker
It's time. It is time. Well, thank you, Matt. really appreciate you having me. Yeah, my pleasure. And you have a good one. You too. God bless. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Fire Dog Podcast. If you found value in today's conversation, please take a moment to rate and review the show on your podcast platform of choice. It's one of the best ways to help us reach more firefighters and leaders across the fire service.
01:20:01
Speaker
This episode was supported by Roll Call Coins, telling the stories of fire departments and teams through premium custom challenge coins. Learn more at rollcallcoins.com. It was also supported by AOS Services, helping the fire department stay mission ready with worldwide firefighting equipment compliance. Find out more at aosservicesinc.com.
01:20:20
Speaker
You can find more episodes at firedog.us or wherever you listen to podcasts. And be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn at the Fire Dog Podcast. That is the Fire DAWG Podcast. Sharing this episode with a friend, co-worker, or someone in your firehouse helps these conversations reach the people who would benefit most.
01:20:38
Speaker
This is Matt Wilson with Kim Jolly. Until next time, stay safe.