At the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) Conference & Expo in San Antonio on Sunday, the association presented a series of awards that recognize outstanding achievements in fire and life safety.
Harry C. Bigglestone Award
The Harry C. Bigglestone Award is given annually to a paper appearing in Fire Technology that best represents excellence in the communication of fire protection concepts. This award honors the memory of Harry C. Bigglestone, who served as a trustee of the Fire Protection Research Foundation, and was a fellow and past president of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. The award is accompanied by a $5,000 cash prize from NFPA.
The 2019 Harry C. Bigglestone winning paper is “Wind and Fire Coupled Modelling” by Dr. Wojciech Wegrzyński, assistant professor and deputy head of the Fire Research Department of the Polish Building Research Institute (ITB) in Warsaw and Tomasz Lipecki, a head of Smoke Control, Detection and Fire Automation, Fire Research department of the ITB.
Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal
The Fire Safety Challenges of Tall Wood Buildings (Phase 2) project was chosen winner of Research Foundation Medal
The Research Foundation Medal recognizes the Fire Protection Research Foundation (Foundation) project completed in the previous year that best exemplifies the Foundation’s fire safety mission, technical challenges that have been overcome, and a collaborative approach to execution (the hallmark of all Foundation projects). An awards committee consisting of representatives from the Research Foundation Board, Research Advisory Committee, and NFPA technical staff reviewed summaries of the projects and conducted staff assessments of how they meet each of the criteria.
The Fire Safety Challenges of Tall Wood Buildings (Phase 2) project was chosen as the winner of the 2019 Research Foundation Medal. The project aimed to quantify the contribution of cross laminated timber (CLT) building elements (wall and/or floor-ceiling assemblies) in compartment fires and evaluate the relative performance of CLT systems compared to other building systems commonly used in tall buildings.
Foundation Medal Winners
As with all Research Foundation projects, the work was guided by a project technical panel. National Research Council (NRC) Canada and Research Institute of Sweden (RISE) were contracted for technical services, and full-scale testing was conducted at the National Fire Research Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The Foundation Medal will be presented to Daniel Brandon, a researcher within the fire research division at the Research Institutes of Sweden; Matthew Hoehler, a research structural engineer at NIST; Birgit A.-L. Östman, affiliated with Linnaeus University in Växjö, Sweden; and Joseph Su, a principal research officer at the National Research Council of Canada, Fire Safety Unit.
Industrial Fire Protection
Stone was instrumental in creating a fire safety program, resulting in 30 percent drop in fire calls
Robbie Stone is the winner of the 2018 Industrial Fire Protection Section Fire Prevention award. Prior to becoming fire chief in 2006 of Atkinson County (Ga.) Fire Department, Stone was the director of the Emergency Management Agency (EMA). He is also a Georgia Certified Volunteer Fire Chief through the Georgia Chiefs Association. He served as a volunteer in the fire service for more than 15 years.
Stone was instrumental in creating a new fire safety program, resulting in a 30 percent drop in fire calls, when two towns consolidated their fire services. He and his department have stepped up their fire prevention efforts, even as they are dealing with reduced staffing. In particular, Stone spends a great deal of time in the schools educating the next generation of fire safety advocates and raising awareness of Fire Prevention Week messaging.
Standards Medal
The 2019 recipient of the Standards Medal is Stephen J. King, III, whose 30-year career began with the Fire Department of New York, where he rose through the ranks to eventually become commander for Battalion 54. King was the city-wide safety chief on September 11, 2001, when the World Trade Center buildings were struck. He suffered injuries from the incident and subsequently retired but has remained actively involved in the fire service, serving as chairman of the NFPA Technical Committee on Structural and Proximity Fire Fighting Protective Clothing and Equipment.
The Standards Medal is the most distinguished award given by the NFPA Standards Council, recognizing and honoring outstanding contributions to fire safety.