Innovator of the Year 2024

He spent the next three years creating a programme that will revolutionise training for his trade and could potentially be picked up by air forces around the world. Corporal (CPL) Daly’s work has earned him this year’s Innovation of the Year award. 

“There are products on the market that can be used, but it’s very expensive and we were never going to get. So I thought, why not make it myself? I’ve spent about 5000 hours on it and with the help of the Innovation team we made a prototype into a fully working simulator.

“When I was given the Innovation of the Year Award I was extremely happy. I wasn’t sure if I was going to win as there were a couple of other really amazing innovations.”

The computer programme covers all three types of firefighting – command and control, for the people who make decisions; drivers, sitting in a cockpit with a steering wheel, pedals and a joystick driving around the airfield, and applying water or foam to a burning aircraft; and the work done by the firefighters.

“Once the scenario is set up in the programme you can drive to the location where the fire is, park and then apply the water or foam to try to extinguish the fire. You’re talking with your team and using tactics and teamwork to try to put the fire out as quickly as possible,” CPL Daly said.

“It’s similar to the flying simulator, but a much cheaper version. The beauty of it is it’s multi-user, so you can have multiple cockpits where you can have multiple trucks and people training at the same time.”

Keeping the project a secret for the first 18 months, CPL Daly said when he revealed what he was working on, his bosses were “blown away”.

“Some Warrant Officers caught wind of it and introduced me to the Innovation team and with them we built it up to where it is now, at a much faster rate. They helped provide the hardware, they helped fund it to where it needed to be.

“It’s going to revolutionise the fire trade dramatically. We do have an old Seasprite on the airfield that we practice with, but you can’t light it on fire, it’s old and you can’t really do much with it. With this, you can simulate real fire as close as possible and it’s a much better training aid than what we currently have.”

CPL Daly worked on the project in his spare time and realised he needed to learn how to do the work from scratch – “I YouTubed a bunch of tutorials”.

“There’s still a way to go before it’s properly finished, but it’s at a level where it can be used to train. It should be fully developed in two years.”

The programme can also be adjusted for other trades to use, such as for gaining airfield driving permits. Trainees can gain confidence on the airfield and its layout, so when they take the test, they have a better chance of passing, he said.

“The simulator training means removing the chance of incursions like hitting an aircraft, or cutting an aircraft off or driving in the wrong area.

“A lot of Air Forces don’t use simulators because of the high costs involved. An example of a driving simulator that is on the market, it’s over $1,000,000 and mine costs a fraction of that. The simulation I’m building isn’t on the market – nobody has done it before."

“The world needs this. I went to Fiji earlier this year for a firefighting course and thought this kind of simulation would dramatically help our training and jobs. I’m hoping this simulator will help save lives.”