About
Software written by someone who had to live with the paperwork.
Sentinel did not start as a product idea. It started as a list of the ways an FLS program goes wrong between the inspection and the invoice.
Who builds it
Sentinel is built by Will Stevie through ClearLine FLS Consulting, an independent fire, life and safety consulting firm.
Before the software there were twenty years in the fire service: firefighter, paramedic and certified fire inspector, then years on the facilities and consulting side running FLS programs, reviewing proposals, holding inspection and testing vendors to their scope, and standing in front of the authority having jurisdiction with whatever record existed.
That last part is the reason this platform exists. The record was almost never good enough, and it was nobody's job to make it so.
Credentials
- Kentucky Certified Fire Inspector II
- IFSAC Firefighter I and II
- National Fire Academy Certified Safety Officer
- Hazardous Materials Technician
- Structural Collapse Technician
Why it is independent
ClearLine works as the owner's representative. It does not sell inspections, testing, repairs or parts, and it does not take a margin on the work it reviews. The whole value of the role is that it has no reason to prefer one answer over another.
Sentinel inherits that stance. The platform records what happened and what it cost. It does not quietly favour the provider, the owner or the program manager, and the access rules that keep each party's figures separate are written into the database rather than promised in a sales conversation.
What we are trying to build
A record of fire and life safety compliance that is current because keeping it current is how the work gets done, rather than a report somebody assembles the week before a renewal.
Most of this trade still runs on email, PDF attachments and memory. That is not a failure of the people doing it. It is what happens when the available tools are built for one side of a transaction that has three sides.
Where it stands
Sentinel is in active development and in use. We are working with a small number of early customers and providers deliberately, because the fastest way to build the wrong thing is to scale before the first program runs cleanly end to end.
If you run an FLS program, service one, or manage one on somebody else's behalf, we would like to hear how yours actually works. Including the parts that are held together with a spreadsheet.