NEWS

Winner and Runner-up of the Vincent Tam Fire & Explosion Safety Award 2026

We are delighted to announce Andrew Garrison (Health and Safety Executive) as the Winner of the inaugural edition of the Vincent Tam Fire & Explosion Safety Award, and Karthik Nagendra (AkzoNobel) as this year’s Runner-up. Sponsored by FABIG and DNV Spadeadam Research & Development, this award celebrates excellence in fire and explosion safety among early-career practitioners and researchers. The winner’s prize is free attendance at one of DNV's training courses held at the Spadeadam Research & Development facility, where delegates experience live fire and explosion demonstrations, or registration for a relevant fire and explosion safety course or conference.

The trophies for the Winner and Runner-up were presented to Andrew Garrison and Karthik Nagendra by Vincent Tam on 10th September during the recent FABIG Technical Meeting held in London. In his opening speech, Vincent Tam reflected on the evolution of FABIG since the group’s formation in 1992 and throughout his more than 30 years as a Member of the FABIG Steering Committee. Following the Piper Alpha disaster, a large amount of research into fire & explosion hazards was carried out, and the role of FABIG at that time was to disseminate the outcomes of this research to the industry. Over the years, knowledge of fire & explosion hazards matured within the industry, and FABIG evolved into a community of practitioners that enables the sharing of the latest research and best practice in fire & explosion engineering. Vincent Tam concluded that FABIG has now become an institution comprising world-class experts within its Membership, with a regenerative collective memory sustained by an influx of younger practitioners, and covering technical issues relevant to today’s society.

Andrew Garrison presented an overview of the HyDeploy project, which formed the basis of his submission for the Award. A more detailed presentation of HyDeploy will be given in due course once the project is completed. On the previous day, Karthik Nagendra had presented his work on an experimental programme for the characterisation of jet fires from NMC battery thermal runaway.

The presentations from the Award Winner and Runner-up, as well as Vincent Tam’s speech, are accessible to FABIG Members from the Technical Presentations & Videos section of the FABIG Website. The Award will be presented annually, and we hope that it will give young engineers and scientists an extra nudge towards pursuing careers in fire and explosion safety.

Please note that you will need to be logged in to the Website to access the presentations. If you have not created an individual account on the Website yet, please do so here (using your corporate contact details). FABIG Members can access all FABIG resources free-of-charge and Non-Members are now able to purchase these online.

Take care and stay safe,

The FABIG Team