South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service has awarded a £497,660 contract, excluding VAT, to iTrackPPE Ltd for RFID and QR code based asset tracking software covering every item of personal protective equipment, breathing apparatus set and operational asset the service holds. The three year contract runs from 16 February 2026 to 15 March 2029 and is being delivered for the service from its headquarters at 197 Eyre Street, Sheffield.
The award, published on Contracts Finder and confirmed by Emergency Services Times, UK Fire Magazine and the International Fire & Safety Journal, puts item level RFID PPE tracking at the centre of how SYFRS manages kit. The platform pairs Zebra RFID hardware with what iTrackPPE calls digital PPE passports, aligned to the relevant British Standards, so each garment, helmet and BA set carries a permanent digital record from issue to disposal.
How the technology works
This is standard UHF RAIN RFID practice applied to a difficult environment. Passive RAIN tags are sewn or heat sealed into turnout gear and attached to BA sets and cylinders, then read in bulk by Zebra handheld readers. That bulk read capability is the point. A crew member can sweep a locker, a cage of returned kit or a delivery back from the cleaning contractor and capture dozens of unique tag identifiers in seconds, rather than scanning item by item. QR codes sit alongside the tags as a secondary identifier, for single item lookups on a phone and as a fallback where a tag has failed.
What the RFID layer really delivers is a low effort way of keeping the database honest. Every read updates an item’s location and status, which drives wash and decontamination cycle counts, inspection and test due dates, repair history, and the association between an item and either a named wearer or a shared pool. Fire kit has hard service limits, and a garment that has reached its laundering count or inspection date needs to come out of circulation. Counting that by hand across thousands of items is where paper systems break down.
Contamination control and pooled stock
The driver behind the investment is contamination control. National Fire Chiefs Council guidance on firefighter exposure to carcinogens has pushed services to treat used PPE as contaminated until cleaned, and to demonstrate that the cleaning happened. Tracking usage, cleaning events and condition at item level gives SYFRS an auditable record rather than an estimate.
It also underpins the shift away from individually issued PPE towards a shared, pooled inventory. Pooling is efficient, because kit sitting in a locker while its owner is off duty could instead be in use, but it only works if the service knows where every item is, its size, how many cycles it has left and when it was last cleaned. Without item level fire service asset tracking, pooled stock becomes untraceable stock.
Andy Strelczenie, Deputy Chief Fire Officer at SYFRS, said that “firefighter safety is central to every decision we make”, framing the contract as part of strengthening how the service manages PPE contamination. Steve McLinden, founder and chief executive of iTrackPPE, said the company was “extremely proud to partner with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service”.
Across the three year term the service expects real time visibility of asset location, better long term resource planning and more efficient use of the inventory it already owns.
Read more at https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/51665b54-50c1-40f5-8714-20643d756db5
