Jason Tielve’s journey in fire safety began not behind a desk, but in the field, starting as a fire sprinkler helper after serving in the US Army from 1999 to 2003. Over two decades, he mastered every facet of the trade, from foreman to project manager, eventually co-founding 24/7 Fire Protection Inc., which he grew from a $600K startup to a $20M industry leader employing 120 people.
Recognizing that fire design innovation had plateaued since the early 2000s, Jason founded FireDesign.ai to solve the industry’s critical bottleneck: a labor-intensive design process that typically takes weeks. By combining his deep field expertise with advanced AI, he has created a patent-pending solution that reduces manual design time by 80%, turning an eight-hour engineering task into a ten-minute automated process.
To start us off, could you share the common thread that connects your experience in the U.S. Army and the grit of the fire protection trade to your current executive leadership, and give our audience a bird’s-eye view of how FireDesign.ai is transforming a decades-old engineering landscape for professionals across the country?
Jason Tielve: In the Army, you don’t wait for ideal conditions, because you execute with what you have and solve what’s in front of you. That mindset carried directly into the fire protection industry, where I saw a critical bottleneck: demand for compliant, high-quality engineering far outpacing the available talent.
Fire protection design hasn’t meaningfully evolved in over two decades. We moved from hand drawings to CAD, then plateaued. Meanwhile, regulations increased, timelines compressed, and the talent pipeline shrank. That creates risk that’s not just in delays, but potential safety gaps.
FireDesign.ai is built to remove that bottleneck. We’re automating the most time-intensive parts of sprinkler system design while staying fully aligned with NFPA standards. What used to take weeks can now be turned around in a fraction of the time, with greater consistency and scalability including how fire protection systems are designed, validated, and delivered in a modern construction environment.
In your bio, you mentioned that fire design innovation essentially stopped in the early 2000s. When you were coming up through the ranks from helper to CEO, did you always feel like you were working with yesterday’s tools or was there a specific moment where you realized the industry was failing to keep up with the modern world?
Jason Tielve: When I was in the field, I could see constant evolution happening everywhere around me. We were moving from threading pipe to grooving pipe, and from manual pipe wrenches to more advanced mechanical tools.
But in fire protection design, that same level of innovation just didn’t exist. It felt like the rest of construction was moving forward while this one part of the process stayed relatively unchanged.
That gap really stood out to me over time. It made me realize that if we want the industry to keep pace with modern construction demands, we can’t just improve the physical or mechanical side—we have to evolve the entire design process itself.
There’s a lot of fear around AI replacing skilled labor. You’ve been very vocal that FireDesign.ai is about ‘reducing hand-on work by 80%’ rather than replacing engineers. How do you envision the role of the Fire Protection Engineer evolving over the next five years because of your tool?
Jason Tielve: I think the bigger risk isn’t AI replacing engineers. The real issue is that we don’t have enough qualified engineers entering the field.
Fire protection is a highly specialized field, and we’re already facing a talent shortage that’s only going to get worse. Fewer people are entering the trade, while demand is increasing due to stricter regulations and more complex builds. That gap is where projects get delayed, costs rise, and risk increases.
What FireDesign.ai does is shift the role of the engineer from production to oversight. Today, a lot of their time is spent on repetitive, manual design work. Over the next five years, that work becomes largely automated, and the engineer’s value moves upstream by reviewing systems, making judgment calls, and ensuring compliance at a higher level.
The best engineers won’t be replaced. They will be able to work with more consistency and less burnout.
In your industry, a design error isn’t just a software bug. It’s a potential life-safety failure. How did you approach the ‘Trust and Verification’ phase of building your AI to ensure that speed never compromises the rigorous NFPA safety standards?
Jason Tielve: In a life-safety environment, trust is the entire product and we built FireDesign.ai around three layers of control.
First, the system is trained on a closed set of verified inputs including NFPA codes, local jurisdiction requirements, and real-world plans that have already passed professional review. That ensures the foundation is grounded in proven, compliant design.
Second, we embedded constraint-based logic that mirrors how experienced fire protection engineers think. The system operates within strict parameters tied directly to code, so it’s executing within defined, compliant pathways.
Third, every design is structured for human validation. A licensed engineer remains the final authority, reviewing outputs, handling edge cases, and signing off. What we’re removing is the manual burden.
The goal is to create a system where every design meets a consistent, high standard, regardless of timeline pressure or resource constraints. In this industry, consistency is what ultimately drives safety.
You successfully scaled 24/7 Fire Protection from $600K to $20M. What is the biggest leadership lesson you’re carrying over from scaling a traditional service business into the fast-paced world of a tech SaaS company?
Jason Tielve: The biggest leadership lesson I’m carrying over is that my people are my greatest asset. Scaling a business, whether it’s a traditional service or a fast-paced SaaS company, requires letting your team know that you are human, too. I make it a point to show them that I fail sometimes and I make mistakes.
In our environment, we teach that it’s not failing—it’s learning. You have to keep moving forward and keep doing more. I’ve found that if your people see you fail and not quit, that is what makes your business whole. We also believe in maintaining a positive, low-stress environment. We even have an office puppy named Peaches who helps keep the stress levels down while we work.
Your patents cover “all mechanical trades.” While you are starting with fire sprinklers, how far does the FireDesign.ai vision go? Are we looking at a future where the entire architectural and engineering blueprint process is automated across the board?
Jason Tielve: The long-term vision is absolutely broader than fire sprinklers, but it’s important to be precise about what gets automated first and what doesn’t.
We’re starting with fire protection because it’s one of the most rule-driven, code-heavy, and repetitive parts of the built environment. That makes it ideal for structured automation, where accuracy and compliance can be clearly defined and validated. The goal is to solve one of the hardest parts of construction: ensuring that everything put into a building actually fits together.
Currently, a standard plan might cost $10,000, but if you need a coordinated drawing to ensure different systems don’t clash, that price can easily escalate to $70,000. With FireDesign, the AI finds its own problems, allowing us to maintain a much more accessible price point, around $30,000, while saving time and moving the entire project forward.
While I definitely see this automating the mechanical phase, architecture is a different story. Architecture requires a unique vision to see what a building should look like and how to make it beautiful, which is harder to automate.
Additionally, in terms of where this is going, FireDesign.ai is being built with a global foundation from the start. We’re launching in the U.S., expanding into Canada, and in parallel securing patent protection in the EU so we can scale internationally as the platform grows.
For the aspiring entrepreneur or the veteran looking to transition into the tech world, what is the one piece of advice you’d give them about turning a problem they see in their daily work into a scalable reality?
Jason Tielve: For the aspiring entrepreneur or the veteran looking to transition into the tech world, my main piece of advice is simply to know it’s possible. You have to truly believe that turning your idea into a reality can be done.
Beyond that belief, I suggest you surround yourself with people that may be smarter than you. It is an asset to have that level of expertise around you. Finally, you have to be prepared to make decisions quickly to keep the momentum going and move your vision forward.
Where can readers find out more about FireDesign?
Jason Tielve: The best place to learn more about FireDesign.ai is our website at FireDesign.ai, where we’re actively sharing updates as we continue building and expanding the platform.
We’re also preparing to showcase the technology in person at the 2026 NFPA Conference & Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we’ll be meeting with industry professionals, engineers, and partners who are shaping the future of fire protection and life-safety design.
