The Fire Protection Research Foundation (Foundation), an affiliate of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), announced winners of the 2014 William M. Carey and Ronald K. Mengel awards.
The award winners were selected by participants at the Foundation’s 2014 Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Symposium (SUPDET). Awards will be presented to the winners at the 2015 SUPDET Symposium.
The 2014 Ronald K. Mengel Award for outstanding detection paper is “Reducing False Alarms – A Case Study of Selected European Countries” by Lance Rütimann.
Rütimann, who has been involved in the fire safety and electronic security industry for more than 27 years, has international experience ranging across service, product management, strategic sales, and marketing and management. He is currently an Industry Affairs’ senior manager at Siemens Building Technologies headquartered in Switzerland.
The late Mengel served for many years as the vice president of industry affairs of the system sensor division of Honeywell Corporation as part of his long and distinguished career in fire protection. He was instrumental in Honeywell’s efforts in industry-sponsored research and training.
Mengel contributed to a number of Foundation projects and served on the Foundation’s Fire Detection and Alarm Research Advisory Council.
The 2014 William M. Carey Award for best suppression paper was awarded to Tom Multer and Christina F. Francis for “Storage Protection Using Horizontal Barriers and Large K-Factor, Extended Coverage In-Rack Sprinklers”.
Francis, who serves as Fire Protection Engineer for Procter & Gamble, has international experience on a variety of industrial projects including design, construction management, and loss prevention.
Multer, responsible for new product development and the Technical Services Group at Reliable Automatic Sprinkler Company, Inc., has worked in the fire sprinkler industry for 42 years, including serving on numerous NFPA sprinkler-related technical committees.
The late Carey, a senior staff engineer at Underwriters Laboratories Inc., participated in many Foundation fire suppression projects, including the first The National Quick Response Sprinkler Project. Throughout his career, he was often known for being "the bridge" between research and application of new fire safety knowledge.
About the Fire Protection Research Foundation
The Fire Protection Research Foundation plans, manages, and communicates research on a broad range of fire safety issues in support of the NFPA mission. The Foundation is an affiliate of NFPA.
About the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) NFPA is a worldwide leader in fire, electrical, building, and life safety.
The mission of the international nonprofit organization founded in 1896 is to reduce the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education. NFPA develops more than 300 codes and standards to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other hazards.
All NFPA codes and standards can be viewed at no cost at www.nfpa.org/freeaccess.
