Your fire department has adopted The Compliance Engine. From the date your jurisdiction sets, inspection, testing and maintenance reports go to the department electronically through that portal instead of by email, fax or paper — and that includes passing reports, not just deficient ones. Registering your company is free. A filing fee is charged at the moment you submit a report, and in this model the service provider pays it, not the building owner. Nothing about the inspection itself changes; what changes is where the report has to land and who is on the hook for getting it there.
What The Compliance Engine is
The Compliance Engine (TCE) is a web-based compliance portal that fire departments and other authorities having jurisdiction use to collect and track third-party ITM reports for fire protection systems. It is operated by Brycer. When your AHJ adopts it, your reports are filed into that portal for the department's review, and the department works from the record there rather than from whatever arrived in an inbox.
For the company behind it and how the platform came together, see what Brycer is and how it relates to The Compliance Engine.
What the mandate requires of the contractor
Adoption notices vary in wording, but the obligations they place on the service provider are consistent across jurisdictions:
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1 Register your company — there is no charge to register
Licensed fire protection contractors working in the jurisdiction register with The Compliance Engine before submitting. Registration itself carries no fee; the cost sits on submittal.
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2 Submit every report — compliant as well as non-compliant
This is the requirement contractors most often get wrong. Adoption notices typically read that all compliant and non-compliant system test reports must be sent electronically. A clean annual gets filed the same as a failed one. "Nothing was wrong, so there was nothing to send" is not how the mandate is written.
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3 Submit on your jurisdiction's adopted testing schedule
Reports are due according to the testing schedule and requirements in the fire code your AHJ has adopted, not on a schedule TCE sets. Some jurisdictions add their own submission windows on top — tighter turnarounds for impaired or deficient systems, longer ones for compliant reports — so read your department's notice rather than assuming one universal deadline.
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4 Pay the filing fee at submittal — as the service provider
A filing fee is charged when the report is submitted, and it is the service provider who pays it. This is the part that surprises people: the mandate arrives from the fire department, the building owner is the one being inspected, and the per-report cost still lands on the contractor. If you bid work in an adopting jurisdiction, that cost belongs in the bid.
How the fees work
The model is straightforward, and it explains why the cost falls where it does. Brycer states that the platform is free for AHJs and building owners, and that it is funded through contractor filing fees — which is what lets a department adopt it without adding it to a municipal budget. The fee is charged per report submitted, and there is no charge to register your company.
Because the fee is set by the platform rather than by the municipality, it is generally outside the department's control. Los Angeles Fire Department states the point plainly in its own guidance: the participation fee is "neither regulated nor collected by the City of Los Angeles," which is why the department cannot waive it for any company.
We do not publish fee figures here on purpose. Pricing varies by jurisdiction and by system type, and it changes. A number copied from somewhere else would be secondhand the day it was written and wrong soon after — and you would be pricing a bid against it. Current pricing for your jurisdiction is shown in your own account after you register, and your AHJ's notice is the authority on what applies to you.
Is my jurisdiction in?
Two answers that work no matter where you operate, and both are faster than reading a list:
- Check the AHJs tab in your own Compliance Engine account. It shows the jurisdictions covering your service area and flags newly joined ones. If you are already registered anywhere, this is the quickest and most current answer available to you.
- Call the fire prevention bureau for the jurisdiction. One phone call settles it definitively, including the effective date and any local submission windows — which are the details most likely to be missing from a public web page.
Confirmed jurisdictions
Confirmed jurisdictions. This list is not exhaustive — Brycer reports 1,420+ AHJs nationally. Absence here means unconfirmed, not "not adopted." Every row below links to the jurisdiction's own public notice. Where a jurisdiction has not published an effective date, the cell says so rather than sitting empty. "How it was established" reflects what each jurisdiction's own notice states: a cited municipal ordinance, a section of the adopted fire code, or the department's own notice or regulation where no ordinance or code section is cited. Where the source states the requirement without indicating how it came about, the cell reads "Not stated" — we do not guess at it.
Roster last verified August 8, 2026.
| AHJ | State | In effect since | How it was established | What's required | Source | Verified on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raleigh | NC | November 1, 2015 | Codified ordinance — Ordinance No. 2015-492 | All compliant and non-compliant fire protection system reports submitted electronically via TCE. | raleighnc.gov | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Belvidere | IL | November 15, 2019 | Department directive — fire department notice; no ordinance cited | All compliant and non-compliant reports for nine listed system types. Registration free; service provider pays a filing fee at submittal. | belvidereil.gov | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Smyrna | GA | January 15, 2021 | Codified ordinance — City Code Ch. 50, Sec. 50-82 | Service providers register and submit all test, inspection and service reports, compliant and non-compliant, on the adopted fire code's testing schedule. | smyrnaga.gov | Aug 8, 2026 |
| East Lake Tarpon Special Fire Control District |
FL | May 1, 2025 | Department directive — district notice; no ordinance cited | Registration and third-party reporting required, with tiered submission windows by system condition — same day for systems impaired over four hours, longer for deficient and compliant reports. Late submissions may incur late fees. | elfr.org | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Irving | TX | March 5, 2026 | Department directive — fire department letter to service providers | Effective immediately on the department's notice. All compliant and non-compliant test reports electronically via TCE; service providers register and submit all test, inspection, deficiency and service reports, on the testing schedules in the adopted Fire Code and applicable NFPA standards. | irvingtx.gov (PDF) | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Castle Rock | CO | Date not published | Code adoption — 2024 International Fire Code, Sec. 110.3 | Compliance reports submitted to TCE under the adopted fire code rather than a department directive. | crgov.com | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Hartford | WI | Date not published | Department directive — fire department notice; adopted fire code referenced for schedule only | All compliant and non-compliant reports, on the adopted fire code's testing schedule. Registration free; service provider pays a filing fee at submittal. | ci.hartford.wi.us | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Los Angeles | CA | Date not published | Department directive — Chief's Regulation 4 | Commercial high-rise buildings 75 feet and over. The certified tester submits test, retest and unable-to-test results electronically within 7 days. LAFD states the fee is neither regulated nor collected by the City. | lafd.org | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Moline | IL | Date not published | Not stated | All compliant and non-compliant fire and life safety system test reports submitted electronically by the service provider. | moline.il.us | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Palatine | IL | Date not published | Codified ordinance — Village Code Ch. 14 (Fire Prevention and Protection); no section given | All compliant and non-compliant fire and life safety system test reports submitted electronically by the service provider. | palatine.il.us | Aug 8, 2026 |
| Woodstock Fire/Rescue District |
IL | Date not published | Codified ordinance — city ordinance referenced, not numbered | All service providers testing systems in the district must register and submit all test, inspection and service reports, on the adopted fire code's testing schedule. | wfrd.org | Aug 8, 2026 |
Rows are ordered by published effective date, then by jurisdictions that have not published one. Each entry summarises the jurisdiction's own public notice; follow the source link for the authoritative wording. Requirements change — confirm with the fire prevention bureau before relying on any row.
Worth keeping in perspective: this is not a new development. Raleigh and Los Angeles have been running third-party electronic reporting since 2015, Belvidere since 2019, Smyrna by ordinance since 2021, and jurisdictions are still joining — East Lake Tarpon in 2025, Irving in 2026. It is an established practice that keeps expanding, so the useful question is not whether this is coming, but whether it has reached yours yet.
What changes about your workflow
The inspection does not change. What changes is that one inspection now has two destinations. The department wants the report in the portal, on their schedule, in their format. The building owner still wants a report they can file and act on. Those are two different deliverables from one visit.
If those two deliverables are two separate typing jobs, every inspection now costs a second pass — and that cost recurs on every job, in every adopting jurisdiction, for as long as you hold the account. That is the part worth looking at before it compounds: not the filing fee, which is fixed and visible, but the re-keying, which is neither.
Fire Inspect Hub captures the inspection once and produces the customer's report from that same record, which cuts the re-keying between the two. We cover the shape of that problem in more detail in the double-entry problem, and the formatting issues that cause resubmissions in why uploads get rejected.
Common questions
Both. Adoption notices are typically explicit that all compliant and non-compliant system test reports must be submitted electronically. A system that passed its annual gets filed exactly like one that failed. The portal is the department's record that the inspection happened at all — so a clean result is still information they require, and skipping it reads to the AHJ as a missed inspection rather than a passed one.
The service provider pays it, at the time of submittal. Brycer states the platform is free for AHJs and building owners and is funded through contractor filing fees, which is what allows a fire department to adopt it without a budget increase. Registration is free; the cost is per report submitted. Contractors working in adopting jurisdictions generally treat it as a cost of service and price it into the work, since it recurs on every submitted report. Whether you itemise it or absorb it is a business decision, not a rule set by the department.
Then you file into the portal for that jurisdiction and continue with whatever each of the others requires — email, a paper submission, or a different portal entirely. Requirements are set jurisdiction by jurisdiction, not statewide, so operating across a metro area commonly means running more than one submission process at once. Your Compliance Engine account shows which AHJs in your service area participate, which is the practical way to keep track as more jurisdictions join.
The reports are not on file with the department, which means that from the AHJ's records the inspection did not happen. Consequences are set locally and vary — some jurisdictions state that failure to comply may result in enforcement action under the adopted fire code, and some add late fees for reports submitted outside the required window. The exposure is not only yours: your customer is the one holding a building the department has no current compliance record for, and that surfaces at the least convenient moment.