Walt Frank is President of Frank Risk Solutions, Inc. and is a Fellow of both the AIChE and the AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS). He received his BSChE from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 1973 and has worked in the process industries in various capacities for over 45 years, beginning as a lab technician for Pfizer while working his way through college. After graduation, he joined DuPont where, over 14 years, he held positions in plant technical support, manufacturing supervision, R&D, project design, and project start-up. He subsequently moved to the DuPont Process Safety and Fire Protection Consulting group where for ten years he worked with DuPont sites to evaluate and control fire and explosion hazards. After leaving DuPont, he spent ten years with a consulting firm before founding Frank Risk Solutions in 2007.
Walt is a registered professional engineer (Delaware) and a CCPS Certified Process Safety Professional (CCPSC). His consulting practice focuses on process safety management, with primary emphasis on evaluating and improving company process safety management systems and the organizational culture supporting them. A considerable portion of his practice also addresses combustible dust fire and explosion safety issues.
Walt joined AIChE in 1973 and has been an active participant in the programs of the AIChE Safety and Health Division and CCPS for nearly three decades. He also has been a member of the National Fire Protection Association for 25 years working on a number of combustible dust safety standards. During this time he and several associates (not coincidentally, AIChE members) initiated the gradual incorporation of AIChE process safety management principles into the NFPA combustible dust safety standards.
Walt has authored/co-authored approximately 25 technical papers and journal articles and six books on process safety management topics, and has assisted in the development of approximately 20 CCPS process safety guidelines books.