The Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) has defended spending almost $500,000 on developing and trialling a new uniform.

Documents obtained under right to information laws show the QAS spent $380,000 on designing a new uniform and $100,000 on a trial.

QAS executive manager for fleet and equipment Ian Tarr said Melbourne-based innovation consultancy Symplicit were contracted to design the uniform and run the trial.

• Q&A: ‘We must confront domestic violence’
• Anti-women group plans Australian meetings
• Planets, stars put on stellar show from outer space

“[We wanted] to engage our staff at a time when the Queensland Ambulance Service was reviewing its uniform, which it hadn’t done for a period of over 10 years,” he said.

“With a view that if we engage our staff now, we have a 10-year time span in the future that we want to make sure that the uniform is correct and any changes that needed to be made would be made.”

Mr Tarr said the QAS had been using the same uniform for more than a decade, and an upgrade was needed.

“[There was] a lot of development in fabric technologies and we just wanted to make sure that the uniform we moved to, if it needed changes, fitted our current operations,” he said.

“This is not just a pair of pants and a shirt. This is a specifically tailored uniform that is specific to what paramedics do.

“It takes into consideration what equipment do they need to carry.”

Reflective polo shirts were part of the trial. Supplied: RTI documents

But senior paramedics have told the ABC that the amount of money spent on the design and trial would have been better spent on employing new paramedics.

The ABC has also been told there was nothing wrong with the old uniform.

Some paramedics are also concerned that shorts will no longer be available when the new uniform is rolled out.

Mr Tarr said the new uniform would be suitable for use in all regions of Queensland.

“We work from cold environments in Stanthorpe all the way through to hot and humid environments in the Cape and Torres Strait,” he said.

“We’ve got a frontline workforce of approximately 3,500 people.

“They’re of all shapes, sizes, ages, demographics and the uniform needs to be that diverse and makes sure that it takes advantages of current fabrics, technologies, designs.

“Something as simple as a belt loop can have implications about how functional a web belt may be, or how dysfunctional it may be.”

Mr Tarr said the $100,000 trial included 720 individual items of clothing worn by 98 paramedics across 52 regions of Queensland.

“The feedback originally through Symplicit was that the current trends in technologies was that you layer fabrics in uniform,” he said.

“We adopted that in the trial so that there were layers from a wet weather layer through a fleece layer for warmth, through to the outer layer and then down into even under layers for thermal and for moisture whipping protections.

“It’s not just paramedics, this also includes our patient transport officers and our operations staff.”