Locatrix Wins Australian Financial Review's Most Innovative Companies Award

BRISBANE, 22 October 2026 – Locatrix was named the winner of the property, construction and transport category in the 2026 AFR BOSS Most Innovative Companies awards in Sydney last night, recognising its work to transform fragmented, analogue emergency-preparedness processes into connected digital safety infrastructure.

The annual awards, run by The Australian Financial Review in partnership with KPMG Australia, recognise organisations turning ideas into innovation with measurable impact.

Established in 2008, Locatrix has spent 18 years rethinking how organisations prepare for emergencies. Today, its technology connects accurate building information, site-specific emergency training, compliance records and first-responder access across complex environments including healthcare, aged care, education, government, retail and fire safety.

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Locatrix Chief Executive Officer Scott Jackson said the award was significant recognition for the people behind that journey.

This recognition makes me incredibly proud, because innovation at Locatrix has never belonged to one person or one product. It comes from a team that keeps asking how we can make emergency preparedness simpler, smarter and more useful.

I'm particularly proud of Matt Henry and our Product and Engineering teams, who have taken some ambitious ideas and turned them into technology that is making a measurable difference for customers and first responders. But this award also belongs to our customers, partners and people across Locatrix who continually challenge us to make what we do better.

Innovation for us has never been about technology for technology's sake. It is about giving people the right information, in the right place, at the moment it matters.

Scott Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, Locatrix

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Innovation in the DNA

Locatrix's roots stretch back to the Queensland Fire Department, where the team was originally established to find a better way to deliver emergency-management information and training.

Its innovation philosophy has remained consistent: identify the analogue or fragmented process making safety harder than it should be, then redesign it for greater accuracy, scale and usefulness.

That philosophy can be seen across three core innovations:

• PlanStudio® replaces slow, static drafting processes with geospatially accurate digital building plans and evacuation diagrams. Plans can be created and updated up to seven times faster than traditional approaches, giving organisations greater control over information that constantly changes.
• PlanSafe® connects building information to site- and role-specific online emergency training. At Children's Health Queensland, PlanSafe® helped lift training compliance from around 30–40% to approximately 86%, while substantially reducing training and reporting time.
• ESP, the Emergency Services Platform, extends digital building information beyond individual organisations, making relevant building intelligence available to authorised first responders through the systems they use. Locatrix provides ESP to emergency services at no cost.

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Locatrix Chief Technology Officer Matthew Henry, who joined the company in 2014, said Locatrix's approach to innovation has always started by questioning accepted ways of working.

Some of the best innovation starts with something that looks obvious in hindsight. Why redraw the same plan every time a building changes? Why train people generically when the information can reflect the building they're actually in? And why shouldn't first responders have access to accurate building information when they need it most?

Our job has been to turn those questions into technology that is repeatable, scalable and increasingly connected. Every plan, building and organisation we connect has the potential to make the wider system more useful.

Matthew Henry, Chief Technology Officer, Locatrix

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Locatrix now supports more than 450 organisations. More than 1.9 million PlanSafe® training assessments have been completed, while PlanStudio® has mapped more than 186.5 million square metres. Its customers span some of Australia's most safety-critical and complex environments.

Jackson said innovation was particularly important in emergency preparedness because buildings, workforces and risks never stand still.

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Buildings change. People move. Risks evolve. Emergency preparedness cannot afford to remain static.

Australia has the talent to build technology that makes safety simpler, more current and more useful – and then take that thinking to the world.

Our ambition is to help 100 million people stay safe by 2035. This award is an incredible honour, but more importantly it gives our team even greater belief in what is possible.

Scott Jackson, Chief Executive Officer, Locatrix

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About Locatrix

Locatrix exists to ensure that people inside buildings – and those responsible for keeping them safe – have the right information at the right time. Across many organisations, fire safety compliance and emergency preparedness still rely on manual or fragmented processes. Floor plans often live in static files, evacuation diagrams are difficult to maintain, and safety training sits in disconnected systems.

This creates risk for organisations and uncertainty for the people responsible for safety and compliance. Locatrix was created to solve this problem. Its integrated software suite is emergency preparedness software built on digital building data, connecting floor plans, compliance training and first responder access in one system.

Locatrix technology supports more than 144,000 active building floor plans, more than 1.9 million PlanSafe® training assessments have been completed, and PlanStudio® has mapped more than 186.5 million square metres.

For further information, visit www.locatrix.com

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Media contact

Josh Littler
Marketing Manager
Josh.Littler@locatrix.com.au