​We’ve got plenty to share with you this week, including news of our latest team appointment, an update on our Auckland office move, new functionality coming to Solomon and the AFAM AlarmTech App, and a reminder about some of the reports already available to you.

We’re delighted to announce that Tim Ritchie will be joining AFAM as our Technical Services Manager, starting with our Auckland team on the 19th of October.

Tim will be a familiar face to many across the industry, having spent a considerable number of years at JCI Monitoring. During that time, he’s become a well-known and respected figure across the monitoring industry, and we’re very pleased to welcome him to the AFAM team.

The Technical Services Manager is a new role for AFAM, created to strengthen our relationships across the industry and provide additional support to our customers and service agents.

Tim’s role will include:

• Building and strengthening industry relationships
• Providing technical support for service agents and our sales team
• Representing AFAM at industry and marketing events
• Identifying new features and services that would provide value to our customers
• Bringing those ideas back into our development process so we can continue to improve the AFAM platform

If you’d like to get in touch with Tim once he’s started, his mobile phone number remains unchanged and his AFAM email address will be tim.ritchie@afam.co.nz.

Once he’s settled in, Tim will also be reaching out to service agents across the Northern region, with plans to connect with agents further afield after that.

Welcome to the team, Tim!

​As we mentioned in our last update, we’ve moved offices in Auckland. And in what may be one of the shortest office moves ever, we’ve moved literally next door to our old office.

The move itself went smoothly, apart from one small challenge: getting our sign off the old door, where it had been attached with a considerable amount of extremely strong double-sided tape.

For anyone who ever finds themselves in a similar situation, we can confirm that persistence, dental floss, and a citric-based cleaner are surprisingly effective at removing stubborn, overly adhered signs!

You may have already seen our office move video on LinkedIn, but if not, you can check it out here:

Over the next couple of weeks, you’ll start to see new functionality appearing in Solomon and the AFAM AlarmTech App that will allow you to create shutdown forms directly in editable PDF format.

The forms will be pre-populated with information we already have, meaning there should be minimal additional information required from you.

For example, using the AFAM AlarmTech App, you’ll be able to create a shutdown form directly from your mobile, complete any remaining details, and send it to the relevant parties — all without having to start from scratch.

We’re starting with the shutdown form, but we’ll look at introducing additional forms in the future if there’s demand for this functionality.

If there are particular forms you’d like to see added, we’d love to hear from you.

​Rebecka Andersson, Tim Ritchie and Kieron Telford from the AFAM team will be attending FM Summit Aotearoa 2026 in Auckland on Tuesday 20 October.

If you’re attending too and would like to catch up, let us know. We’d be happy to grab a coffee, have a chat and hear what’s happening in your part of the industry.

As a reminder, we currently have more than 80 reports available in our report library, including a number of variations to suit different requirements.

Some of the commonly used reports include:

• Recent PFA state changes
• Enhanced / IoT detector-level messages and state changes
• PFAs pending monthly tests
• Off-normal events for PFAs and CTUs
• CTUs awaiting connection or return
• Battery test failures

If you’re not currently receiving these reports and would like to, simply contact our Support Team and they can get them set up for you.

Spark kindly invited us to participate in their annual corporate golf tournament this year, held at Clearwater Golf Club in Christchurch.

Anastasia, a keen golfer, represented AFAM and did us proud! You can see some photos from the tournament below.

Over the next fortnight, members of the AFAM team will be out and about in Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch, with a possible trip to Wellington as well.

If you’d like to arrange a meeting, grab a coffee, book a demonstration, or simply talk about how AFAM can provide greater visibility across your fire alarm portfolio, we’d love to catch up.

​In our next newsletter, we’ll show you the new shutdown forms in action, share some news from FM Summit Aotearoa, and bring you a few more updates from around the AFAM team.

Until then, thanks for reading!

​This week we’re sharing another round of news and updates from the past fortnight. Looking back, it’s been another busy couple of weeks, with plenty happening across the business. Here are some of the highlights.

​Last week, several members of our team visited Fire Security Services in Hamilton for training on sprinkler and gas flood systems.

While we’ve been monitoring these systems for the past 20 years and are well versed in connecting them for monitoring, our understanding of how the systems themselves operate, how they’re constructed, and the differences between the various sprinkler system types hasn’t been quite as strong.

With our new CTU able to monitor and report on a much wider range of information, including things such as sprinkler pressures and ambient temperature, having a better understanding of these systems is increasingly important for us.

Thanks to Sheldon and Brendan for organising and putting our team through the training, and to Adam for arranging it. It was an excellent session that gave us a really useful overview of the different systems, as well as a few ideas for new features and services we may be able to make available to the industry.

The Fire Security Services dedicated training room is also very impressive, with examples of different sprinkler types, gas flood systems, fire panels and other fire detection and protection equipment. You can see some photos from the facility below.

Last week we also had the opportunity to meet with the team at Bensan.

We already monitor the wide range of panels that Bensan sells, both for conventional and IoT detector-level information. If you look at our Compatibility Guide here you’ll see which panels are supported and what’s required to monitor IoT detector-level information where the panel supports it.

The purpose of our conversation with Bensan was to explore what additional information we might be able to make available to fire alarm service agents remotely through our monitoring platform.

It’s early days, but the initial conversation was promising and suggests there may be some interesting opportunities in this area.

It was great to meet the team and we’re looking forward to seeing what we might be able to achieve together.

We’ve mentioned in previous newsletters some of the many benefits the new CTU, which is currently in development, will bring when it launches.

One thing we haven’t mentioned is that the new CTU will also be able to support more SGDs per loop than the current CTU.

For new installations, we generally don’t recommend monitoring a large number of PFAs from a single monitoring device. The main reasons are the additional cabling required, often run over long distances with long term maintenance implications, and the risk that an issue or outage affecting the monitoring device could result in a large number of systems becoming unmonitored.

Transfers are a different story. It’s not unusual for us to inherit a ‘legacy’ monitoring architecture from another provider, particularly when there is an ASE16 involved.

When we encounter this situation, we’ll generally transfer the site ‘as is’ and then work with the building owner and fire alarm service agent to design a more modern and resilient monitoring architecture. This can also unlock IoT detector-level information where it’s available.

We have a defined process for doing this, and it works well.

If you have a site with a large number of secondary systems, or one where legacy wiring is causing reliability issues, get in touch and we can talk you through the options including migrating the monitoring to us at no cost.

Thanks to the great work of our Auckland team, they’ve already outgrown their current office.

We’ve secured another office and, in what may be one of the shortest office moves in history, the team will be moving into the office directly next door — in the same building and on the same floor — over the next couple of weeks.

We’ve also started recruiting for a new Auckland-based role to add further capability to the Auckland team and the company as a whole. We’ll share more details about the role soon.

​Rebecka Andersson and Kieron Telford from our team will be attending the Facility Management Summit Aotearoa 2026 conference in Auckland on Tuesday 20 October.

If you’re also attending and would like to catch up, let us know.

A few months ago, we were asked about the split between conventional and analogue addressable panels that we monitor.

As a reminder, conventional panels aren’t capable of providing IoT detector-level information, whereas analogue addressable panels can.

Across all of the fire alarm panels we currently monitor, 26% are analogue addressable. Looking only at the panels we’ve started monitoring since the beginning of last year, that figure increases to 38%.

This suggests that the proportion of new panels being installed that are analogue addressable is increasing.

From a building owner, manager, and fire alarm service agent perspective, this is a positive development. Having access to IoT detector-level information remotely through our portals, floor plans and apps provides significantly greater visibility into what’s happening within a fire alarm system.

​We’ve been travelling a lot over the past couple of weeks, with members of the team visiting Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton, Cambridge, Wellington, and Tauranga.

Anastasia and Rebecka put together the short video below during the couple of days they spent in the Bay of Plenty.

​Over the next fortnight, members of the AFAM team will be in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.

If you’d like to arrange a meeting, grab a coffee, book a demonstration, or talk about how AFAM can provide greater visibility across your fire alarm portfolio, we’d love to catch up.

This week we’re sharing another round of news and updates from the past fortnight.

The newsletter is a little shorter than usual this time, but that’s not because there’s not much happening, quite the opposite. It’s been a very busy few weeks for the AFAM team.

A couple of weeks ago, we were invited to attend a joint meeting between Invercargill City Council, FENZ, and Southern Region IQPs. The meetings are held regularly and provide an opportunity to discuss what’s happening across the region from a fire, compliance, and IQP perspective.

We were invited to present some of the solutions we provide, including live floorplan and detector-level views, reporting, the AlarmTech App, and other tools available to IQPs and their customers. We also demonstrated the AFAM Property Portfolio Portal, showing how it can give property owners and managers a simple overview of the status of their buildings.

Thanks to everyone involved for the invitation. It was great to attend, and we came away with some valuable feedback and a couple of new ideas that we’ll look to incorporate into what we offer.

​We received the first pre-production units of our new CTU yesterday.

There’s still plenty of work to do, including testing and field trials, before it’s ready for launch, but it’s coming together nicely and we’re excited to see it starting to take shape.

You can see a photo of the new unit below.

Fire NZ 2026 was held at Te Pae, the Christchurch Convention Centre, this week. While the event was a little smaller than previous shows, there was still a good range of exhibitors and some excellent talks and presentations.

A big thanks to Pertronic for the coffee and chocolates that helped keep everyone refreshed throughout the event!

As always, it was great to meet new people from across the industry and catch up with plenty of familiar faces. We’ve included a couple of photos from the event below.

​As a reminder, the AFAM AlarmTech App isn’t just for technicians. We’re seeing a growing number of building owners and managers using it to maintain visibility across their properties and keep on top of what’s happening.

If you think it could be useful for you or one of your customers, feel free to share our quick overview video. It’s available on our Resources page, along with our product brochures and other training videos.

Alternatively, simply forward them this newsletter and ask them to click on the image below.

Over the next fortnight, members of the AFAM team will be visiting Hamilton, Wellington, Cambridge, Tauranga, and Christchurch.

If you’d like to arrange a meeting, grab a coffee, book a demonstration, or talk about how AFAM can provide greater visibility across your fire alarm portfolio, we’d love to catch up.

​In our next newsletter, we’ll introduce a couple of new pieces of functionality and share some more company news with you.