Edwards Service renamed Carter Brothers Fire & Life Safety

ATLANTA—National systems integrator Carter Brothers announced March 4 it has changed the name of its Edwards Service Division to Carter Brothers Fire & Life Safety.

Carter Brothers, which specializes in commercial fire alarm, life safety and electronic security systems, acquired Edwards Service from GE Security in 2007. This announcement came just days after UTC announced it had closed on its GE Security acquisition. Asked about this, Carter Brothers executives said the timing was a coincidence.

“We had a license on the name for a period of time, and that was going to expire. Our announcement happened to coincide with the UTC/GE deal closing, but it had nothing to do with that,” said Brad Williams, VP and general manager of Carter Brothers Fire & Life Safety.

Over the next year, the new name will be apparent on company vehicles, uniforms, business cards and marketing materials. The company also has a new web site: www.carterbrothersfire.com.

Since Carter Brothers acquired Edwards from GE, it has continued to grow the division into one of the nation's largest providers of EST fire products. “We look forward to working with UTC, and we have decades of experience working with EST and we plan to continue that going forward,” Williams said.

Noting that he has been with the same group for 19 years, and many people who came to Carter Brothers with the Edwards acquisition have similarly long tenures with the company, Williams said very little will change internally. “Over the last three years, we've used the trade name Edwards, but we're now known in the market as Carter Brothers more than Edwards,” he said.

Williams said the long history of low turnover at Carter Brothers is the result of investment in employee education and promoting from within. He said the company is committed to expanding these kinds of investments in personnel (NICET certification, for example) and will also expand product offerings: “You'll see expanded product offerings, more and more engineer-designed systems to bolt on to what we do with fire alarm, more nurse call, high-end access control and more mass notification.”