Mr. Tom Pfitzer, Founder of A-P-T Research Inc., was awarded the Professional Development Award and the President’s Award at the International System Safety Society Conference in Vancouver, Canada, on 28 August 2008. The Professional Development award is the highest award given annually by the Society, and the Presidents Award is given for unusual contributions to the purposes of the Society as selected by the Society president. The awards read: “Mr. Pfitzer is a true innovator who leads by example. He continually seeks ways to bring discipline to the discipline of System Safety — discipline as to both the engineering aspects and the underlying ethical principles of practice. He pushes the envelope and promotes development of leading edge system safety approaches to practical problem solving. He contributes to the good of the System Safety profession by unselfishly volunteering use of company facilities and resources. He fosters and nurtures perpetual growth and professional advancement among his employees, whom he genuinely considers to be colleagues in practice. They, in turn, reward him with an extraordinarily low turnover rate. In addition, he seeks to promote change and initiatives that enhance the technical aspects of the system safety discipline — for example, tailoring of the risk assessment matrix, developing and promoting risk-based explosives safety applications, identifying System Safety management “Goodness” measures, visualizing risk, and innovative techniques for risk summation.”
Providing Safe Solutions.