- Bridget Fitzpatrick
- Dr. Babatunde Ogunnaike
- Tom Burke
- John Rezabek
After finishing her bachelorās degree in chemical engineering at MIT, Bridget Fitzpatrick didnāt enter industry with a specific career path in mind. Rather, she tended to seek out and follow the most interesting and difficult problems she could find.
It was at times a circuitous path, but she solved a lot of thorny problems along the way as she followed her interests through a series of specializationsāfrom process engineering to controls engineering and middle management at Celanese. She jumped to Mustang Engineering (an embedded contractor, now Wood) where sheās gone through stints of technical practice leadership, systems optimization and consulting. Today, Fitzpatrick serves as Process Automation Authority for the global consultancy and engineering firm, Wood, where she also leads the Process Automation Systems domain of the Global Technical Expert Network.
āI will admit to being an engineer at heart, looking to solve problems,ā she says. āOr, as Peter Martin would say, āSave the World!ā ā
Along the way, Fitzpatrick also picked up an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Phoenix, which came in handy setting technology strategy at Celanese and in more recent efforts to help Woodās clients chart survival and leadership paths. Through workshops and other in-depth operational analyses, she focuses on unlocking solutions across the entire value chain.
Of late, sheās had a hand in the work of the Open Process Automation Forum, and has helped spread the word of the benefits of the IEC 61499 standard in enabling a new generation of open and interoperable distributed control systems. But her standards work with the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium was perhaps most formative.
āOne of the other things I found over time was that the science was relatively easy to solve, but that getting humans to do the right thing was a different matter entirely,ā she says. āSo, much of my career has focused on getting the right information to the right people at the right timeāa fair bit of focus on HMI, alarm management and human factors.ā
Fitzpatrick has derived considerable satisfaction in helping to make steady progress at improving operator response by providing better controls, better interfaces and better alarms. Indeed, it was her contributions to the āinnovative improvement of alarm management and HMI design practicesā for which she was named an ISA Fellow.
At Maineās Saint Croix Island, Bridget Fitzpatrick āstrolledā with this statue of a Passamaquoddy woman.
āAnd really, the relationships are what I remember most strongly,ā she adds. āWhen I think back, I think of the coworkers and clients that I value and had fun working with firstāand when I look closer, we were generally doing innovative things to solve challenging problems.ā
When sheās not solving industryās problems, Fitzpatrick clearly enjoys nature, and confesses to a bit of an obsession with National Parks. āIāve travelled extensively for work over the years, and anywhere I go, be prepared for āWait, waitāthereās a brown sign with white letters!āā She also enjoys āplaying with investmentsā and has led investment clubs designed to inspire younger generations to get started early.
āMy advice is that you should pursue things that you enjoy,ā she says, of her advice to those just getting started in industry. āWork hours are too much of your waking hours to not enjoy it. Find things you like and see what develops into a passion.ā
And donāt let accepted norms constrain innovation, she adds. āYou must break the current mold to create anything truly new. Incremental, slow improvement is a good thing. But also look for the breakthrough concept, then figure out how to engineer the pace of change to be safe."
