The Beginning

The history of FireServiceRota goes back to the year 2005 when the founder Cor Klaasse Bos was working in a music store in Amsterdam. His manager Richard asked him to help with planning the availability of the rest of the store employees and Cor made a special “availability schedule” with Excel. This schedule worked very well and soon Richard wanted a similar schedule for the fire station where Richard was a volunteer fire station manager.

Cor created an online planning system connected to a website which made it easy for volunteer firemen to indicate their availability themselves. This system was exactly what the fire station needed and soon other fire stations in the Netherlands started to use the same system too.

The Key to Success

In the year 2006, Cor and Richard founded the company Brandweerrooster that focussed on the development, improvement and implementation of the planning software. The key to success of the planning software is the unique combination of a station manager and software developer working together, connecting the end user directly with the software design.

After 7 years of combining his job at Deloitte and working on Brandweerrooster, Cor decided to quit his job at Deloitte and to dedicate himself fully to Brandweerrooster. His old school friend Ruben Stranders who was studying his PhD in Artificial Intelligence in Southampton joined the team. Cor and Ruben started to work together to improve the system and over time additional features were added to the system; sms notifications for understaffing, duty’s planning, team schedules, and of course a smartphone app.

FireServiceRota

In 2014 Cor and Ruben founded the company FireServiceRota for international expansion. During his studies in England, Ruben worked for the Search Rescue team and got in contact with station manager Mark Woods in Hampshire who immediately was enthusiastic about the possibilities of FireServiceRota.

Soon more fire stations from Jersey and Shropshire started to use FireServiceRota software and in 2015 Rebeca, who started initially as an intern joined the team full-time to assist in software development. Over the past year, FireServiceRota has won a number of important tenders in the UK and at this moment FireServiceRota is increasing its international expansion.

Our Mission

Our mission is to contribute to a safer world & happier first responders through world-class software and service by happy self-improving people.

Beyond this mission, we use our profits to fight poverty and climate change by investing in (Gold Standard) projects.

Our Values

People > Employees
We believe that the most important asset to the company is the people that collaborate in it. This is why we care more about people’s wellbeing than metrics. We understand that the former naturally leads to the latter.

Self improvement
The nature of the work will always take us to new heights. It is up to each individual to stand up to the challenge and learn from themselves as well as from others to continue improving on a technical, professional and personal level.

Communication > Processes
Open and flexible communication is always better than rigid processes. Sometimes it’s tempting to formalize a way of working to prevent mistakes from happening, and this is definitely not something we avoid. However, nothing is more effective than just asking for a quick chat with customers or teammates to discuss what happened, openly talk about the underlying feelings, and identify a better way forward.

Shared responsibility
We are a team. While each individual contributes with their own skills and strengths, the end result is crafted by everyone. Our success is achieved as a team, but so are our mistakes. We celebrate together, and we improve together.