Mr. Fitz is a mechanical and civil engineer with 39 years of forensic experience specializing in fires, explosions, fire protection, civil, electrical, and mechanical failure analysis, with consultation in over 1000 projects.

He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) and a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator (CFEI) . He is well versed in fire origin and cause determination, examination, testing, and engineering analysis involving residential, commercial, industrial, marine, wildland, vehicles, appliances, equipment, and machinery. Specific examples include heaters and furnaces (propane, natural gas, electric, wood, gasoline, and oil), coffee makers, dryers, ranges, smoke and gas detectors, spontaneous heating of linseed oil and other materials, fireworks, automobiles, construction equipment, and boats. Mr. Fitz's failure analysis experience includes controlled atmosphere and cold storage, pumps, valves, pipes, HVAC equipment, fans, and insulation failures. His additional aspects of investigation include hazard analysis, explosion and blast analysis, fire spread, building construction, and code analysis.

Additionally, Mr. Fitz has worked on the design and development of machinery, testing of machine operation and product performance, explosive venting of hazardous materials, packaging systems, conveyors, material handling machinery, and presses, including concepts, mechanical design, hydraulic systems, logic and schematics, safety analysis, and constructability. He has also designed, constructed, and operated an explosive mining machine prototype.

His research interests include materials and their fire behavior and ignition properties, electrical arcing analysis, high-temperature accelerants, the development of explosives, and energetic materials.

Mr. Fitz moved from Montana to Everett, WA in 1972 to build boats and attend Everett Community College before transferring to the University of Washington, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1978.  He then worked as a plant engineer at the Bethlehem Steel Seattle Plant, where he gained enough experience to take and pass the professional engineering exams for Mechanical and Civil Engineering licenses.

He joined Machine Design Engineers, Inc., later MDE Inc., in January, 1985 where he specialized in machine design and forensic investigations related to fires and explosions.  He eventually rose to the position of President until he moved to his home office in Shelton when he became the Past President.

MDE, Inc.  was purchased in May 2016 by Engineering Systems, Inc., where Mr. Fitz’s title changed to a Senior Managing Consultant and specialized in mechanical, fire and explosion work.  He retired after 39 years of working for MDE and ESi in January, 2024 and is now providing detailed engineering and forensic analysis based in the Pacific Northwest as the President of MMFitzLLC.