Plan Guardian

Drawings in minutes.
Not days.

Drag-and-drop site planning for fire and security engineers. Zone plans, as-fitted drawings, and fire strategy plans in your browser — no CAD, no separate software, built directly into the EM8 Portal you already use.

Try free for 30 days → See how it works
PLAN GUARDIAN — RIVERSIDE OFFICE, GROUND FLOOR · REV B
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ZONE 1 · RECEPTION
ZONE 2 · OFFICES
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Fire Alarm Symbols
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As-Designed · Rev BSaved 2 mins ago
The right tool for the job

CAD is overkill. Drawing on paper is underkill.

Most fire and security engineers don't need AutoCAD. They need to take a customer's floor plan, mark up the design, and hand a clean drawing to the install team. Plan Guardian is the right tool for that job — built into the platform you already use.

🎨

Drag-and-drop drawing

Fire, intruder, CCTV, access and emergency lighting symbols on top of any PDF, image or sketch. Polygon room-fill, real-scale measurement, and proper zone marking. The drawing tool you'd build for yourself, if you had a year to build it.

🔗

Lives in your platform

Every drawing tied to the customer and site in EM8 Portal. Versioned (Rev A, B, C), audited, and visible to engineers on the EM8 HQ mobile app the moment they open the job. No more "which plan is the latest one?".

⚡

Connects everything

Symbols on the plan link to FireLog365 equipment. Push device counts and cable runs straight to an EM8 Core quote. Auto-populate Surveillance Guardian's live site map. Design once, use everywhere.

Everything you need

Built by engineers,
for engineers.

Engineers shouldn't need a CAD licence to draw a zone chart. They shouldn't need a separate subscription either, or a tool that has nothing to do with the rest of their business.

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Start with anything
Import a PDF, image, hand-drawn sketch, existing zone plan, or satellite screenshot. Crop it, scale it, lock it as a background, and design on top.
🧰
Discipline-aware symbol libraries
Smoke and heat detectors, call points, sounders, PIRs, magnetic contacts, dome and bullet cameras with field-of-view cones, readers, maglocks, emergency lighting — all professional, all ready to drag.
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Polygon room-fill tool
Click around an irregular room, hit enter, and the area fills with the colour you've chosen. Perfect for zone marking, mock-up shading, or highlighting protected areas.
📏
Real measurements
Set a scale by drawing a line over a known distance and Plan Guardian becomes a live measuring tool. Cable runs, room dimensions, sounder spacing — all in metres, all to scale.
📊
Zones as first-class data
A zone in Plan Guardian isn't just coloured paint. It's a real record — Zone 3, "Reception and Ground Floor Corridor", linked to the devices inside it. The zone chart writes itself.
📱
Mobile-ready for engineers
Engineers see the latest as-designed drawing on the EM8 HQ app the moment they open the job. They can mark as-fitted changes from the phone — no separate tool, no separate login.
🖨️
Print, export, share
A4 or A3 print layouts. PDF export with your company branding. Direct send to engineers and clients. No more emailing screenshots from someone else's tool.
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As-designed and as-fitted, separated
Design the system, hand it to the installer, then the installer marks the as-fitted version on the same plan. Both versions kept, both visible, no confusion.
Why Plan Guardian

You're not buying a drawing tool.
You're getting connected drawings.

Standalone drawing tools — including the well-known browser-based ones — solve one problem: drawing. Plan Guardian solves the whole job, because it lives inside the platform that already runs your business.

👤

Customer already there

No re-entering details. The site, address, contacts, and history are already on the record.

📦

Equipment register linked

Symbols on the plan link to real firelog_equipment records. NFC tags, certificates, faults — all flow back.

💷

Quotes auto-generate

47 smoke detectors, 12 call points, 230m of cable. Parts, labour and pricing flow into an EM8 Core quote in one click.

📲

Engineer workflow ready

The drawing flows straight to the engineer's phone via the EM8 HQ app. No emailing PDFs, no chasing the latest revision.

📜

Audit trail automatic

Who changed what, when, why. Versioned revisions, complete change history, no manual filing.

💸

No second subscription

A module of EM8 Portal — not yet another monthly bill from a separate vendor. One platform, one invoice.

Better together

Pairs with the rest of the Guardian range

📷

Surveillance Guardian

Cameras placed in Plan Guardian automatically appear on the Surveillance Guardian Site Map View, with live status indicators and current snapshots per camera.

EXPLORE →
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FireLog365

Devices placed in Plan Guardian link to real equipment records, NFC tags, and inspection certificates. Tap a symbol on site to see the full history.

EXPLORE →
⚙️

EM8 Core

Quotes and jobs auto-generate from the symbols placed on a plan. Parts, labour and pricing flow straight into a quote — no double-entry, no estimating from scratch.

EXPLORE →
Built for every role

One tool, five workflows

Plan Guardian works the way each part of your team works — from the surveyor pricing the job to the engineer marking the as-fitted on site.

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Surveyors & designers

  • Draw zone plans for fire alarm systems in minutes
  • Produce as-designed drawings to attach to quotes
  • Generate fire strategy plans for building control
  • Show CCTV coverage with field-of-view cones — prove dead zones don't exist
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Installers & engineers

  • See the latest drawing on the EM8 HQ mobile app on site
  • Mark up as-fitted changes against the as-designed plan
  • Tap a symbol to see the equipment record, NFC tag, last inspection
  • No more "which plan should I be working from?"
📋

Office staff & admins

  • Versioned, audited drawings tied to the customer and site
  • Send drawings to clients with company branding from one click
  • Maintain a proper drawing register without filing PDFs in folders
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Sales

  • Walk a prospect through your proposed system on their own site plan
  • Demonstrate coverage, sounder placement, camera angles visually
  • Generate as-designed documentation directly from the proposal
🤝

Monitoring stations & channel partners

  • Use a partner's branded site plan templates with minimal effort
  • White-label option means drawings carry the partner's branding
  • A drawing register that's visible across the partner's customer base
From sketch to signed drawing

Five minutes. Eight steps. One drawing.

01

Import the background

Drop in a PDF, image or sketch.

02

Drop in symbols

12 detectors, 3 call points, 2 sounders.

03

Mark zones

Polygon-fill an irregular room.

04

Set the scale

Measure cable runs in metres.

05

Add title block

Logo, A3 print preview, ready.

06

Save as Rev A

Tied to the customer's site.

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Engineer sees it

Open the EM8 HQ app on site.

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Push to quote

Symbol list → EM8 Core quote.

Simple pricing

Flat rate. No per-seat tax.

Plan Guardian is a module of EM8 Portal. Per-company pricing — your whole team uses it, one bill, no per-user surprises.

FREE TRIAL
£0
For 30 days, no card required
  • Full Plan Guardian feature set
  • Unlimited drawings during trial
  • All discipline symbol libraries
  • Mobile engineer view
  • Bundled with EM8 Portal trial
Start free trial →
PRO
£29 /month
Per company · billed monthly
  • Unlimited drawings & revisions
  • As-designed vs as-fitted dual workflow
  • Symbol → FireLog365 equipment linking
  • Auto-quote from drawing → EM8 Core
  • Engineer mobile mark-up via EM8 HQ
  • Field-of-view cones for CCTV
  • Auto-generated zone register
  • Full audit history per drawing
Get Plan Guardian →
🤖
Coming soon · AI-assisted design
Cortex AI will suggest detector placement to BS 5839 and flag coverage gaps automatically — included with Pro.

Channel partners receive 12% recurring revenue share. Talk to us →

Common questions

You might be wondering...

We already use Visio / AutoCAD / a draughtsman.
You can keep using them. Plan Guardian's pitch isn't "stop using your other tools" — it's "stop having a drawing tool that's disconnected from everything else you do". When the drawing lives on the customer's site record, the engineer sees it on his phone, the quote auto-generates from it, the equipment register links to it, and the audit trail is automatic — the value isn't the drawing itself, it's the connection. Standalone tools can't do that, no matter how good their canvas is.
Our engineers don't want to learn another tool.
Plan Guardian uses the same drag-and-drop pattern as every other browser-based drawing tool — your engineers already know how to use it. There's nothing to learn. And the read-only mobile view means most engineers never use the editor at all — they just see the drawing on their phone.
What about complex drawings? Can it handle a 20-storey building?
Yes. Multi-page drawings, multi-floor sites, and high symbol counts are all supported. For very large enterprise designs, AutoCAD will still beat us — but most fire and security designs aren't very large enterprise designs. They're a 4-storey office, a school, a warehouse, a care home. Plan Guardian is sized for that work.
Can I export to AutoCAD?
PDF export is supported on every tier. DWG/DXF export is on the roadmap. If a customer specifically needs DWG today, talk to us about it.
What if my customer sends me an existing CAD drawing?
Export it to PDF first, then import the PDF as a background in Plan Guardian. Use it as a tracing layer. Most engineers never need the CAD source files anyway — they need the drawing on top of the customer's plan.
Is it included with EM8 Portal or a separate add-on?
A 30-day full-feature trial is included with every EM8 Portal trial. After that, Plan Guardian Pro is a £29/month per-company bolt-on. One flat rate for your whole team — no per-seat charges.

From sketch to signed drawing
in five minutes.

Try Plan Guardian free for 30 days alongside any EM8 Portal trial. No card required, full feature set, your whole team gets access.

Start free trial → Book a demo