Thirty years of enterprise expertise, built for the fire service.

Ian Andrews brings together more than three decades of professional experience in enterprise product design, solution architecture, and software deployment — combined with frontline operational fire service training. That rare blend of deep technical expertise and genuine operational understanding is what makes CommandGridTools different.

Ian's career began in telecommunications at Nortel, designing and deploying large-scale network solutions. From there he moved into enterprise technology at Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, where he spent years designing products, architecting data solutions, and leading complex deployments for organisations across the public and private sectors.

As CTO of a South African FinTech payments company, Ian led the build of high-availability payments infrastructure — high-stakes software where reliability and speed of delivery are non-negotiable. At NHS England, he applied that same rigour to health data systems, turning complex national datasets into clear, actionable insight at scale.

Today, Ian works with Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service, designing and delivering Incident Command training using XVR simulation technology. That frontline experience — standing on the drill ground, running exercises, seeing exactly where existing tools fall short — shapes every decision made in building CommandGridTools. These are not tools designed in the abstract. They are built by a practitioner, for practitioners.