Alumni Spotlight: Christine Pongratz ’13, M.S. ’14
When Christine Pongratz ’13, M.S. ’14 entered the fire protection engineering industry with a master’s degree on her résumé, one of her first major opportunities was to consult on the design of the 2022 FIFA World Cup stadium in Qatar, where Lionel Messi would claim his first World Cup victory. A decade later, Pongratz has established herself as a smoke management expert, advising clients on advanced safety technologies that protect complex built environments. Fresh out of graduate school, Pongratz moved to London in her early twenties for her first role as a fire engineering consultant with Arup—a multidisciplinary engineering firm that won the bid to design the Lusail Stadium where the final match took place. There, she worked on critical life safety challenges, including designing egress strategies for over 80,000 occupants and developing smoke control systems for the stadium’s concourse and bowl. “As one of many fire protection engineers on the team, I had to balance requirements from multiple jurisdictions and standards: local Qatari codes, British standards for sports grounds, and the U.S.-based NFPA 5000,” said Pongratz. “At the same time, we had to integrate these fire safety principles into the unique and ever-evolving architectural concepts, with design iterations happening at lightning speed.” To meet these challenges, the team relied on performance-based design approaches such as smoke and egress modeling, as well as extensive research on fire spread, human behavior, and material performance. She credits the collaborative working environment, as well as two courses—ENFP425: “Enclosure Fire Modeling” with Professor and Chair Arnaud Trouvé, and ENFP627: “Smoke Management” with Professor Emeritus James Milke—for preparing her for the project’s complexity. “Those courses were incredibly relevant,” Pongratz said. “We studied how smoke moves through enclosures and openings, and we learned to use a fire dynamics simulator to capture the unique aspects of architectural design, exactly the kind of tools I used on the stadium.” After a decade specializing in smoke control, Pongratz transitioned into her current role with Siemens in Los Angeles. Today, she leverages her technical background in a sales capacity, working with clients to implement fire alarm systems, mass notification technologies, and smoke control solutions. Now on the contractor side, her focus is ensuring that the strategies written by engineers are successfully executed in the field. “I used to write the fire protection reports that defined a building’s performance requirements. Now, I figure out how Siemens’ equipment can meet those requirements through design, cost, and innovative applications,” said Pongratz. From shaping life safety strategies on one of the world’s most iconic stages to ensuring their execution in everyday buildings, Pongratz’s career reflects the lasting impact of bringing fire protection engineering from concept to reality.
August 25, 2025 Prev Next |
