We enjoy impactful work and set out to do it with drive. We hope you will appreciate our results and more importantly, who we are as individuals.
Evan Thibaud, MS
Owner / Explosives Engineer
Evan (T-Bo)’s career began working in underground salt in Louisiana and has worked as the low man on the totem pole shoveling and hauling muck in underground limestone. Evan worked alongside drillers & blasters in the lead/zinc belt of Southeast Missouri and open pit mining in Nevada.
As an active member of the ISEE, he worked for a multi-national powder company in open pit metallurgical coal mines in Western Canada before becoming a consultant in Labrador’s iron belt, where working temperatures reached -60 degrees C. Evan moved back home to Tennessee as a product manager for North America regarding initiation systems and packaged products. That role took him from 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to the quarries in southern Florida, and trench blasting in Arkansas.
After graduating with his Master’s Degree in Explosives Engineering from Missouri Science and Technology, Evan created Pneu Wave Consulting for blast design and misfire management. His goal is to promote new technologies in the industry and improve safe practices and make a positive impact on the environmental effects of our industry and many like it.
Mick Fritz, MBA
Lead Trainer
Mick Fritz is a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War and has worked in the explosives industry ever since. His father was in the mining industry and Mick took his college degree and led a prosperous career in his father’s footsteps. His son is also well known in the industry and the Fritz name has influenced many decisions pushing the industry in a forward direction.
Mick has worked for nearly every aspect of the explosives industry from prill manufacturers, powder companies, to blasting companies. He has worked his way up to C-Level positions and has been operating his consulting and training company since 2009.
Projects have taken Mick to Korea, India, Canada, and to a borehole in nearly every state. He is a published author and has presented at many major explosives conferences while bringing a positive attitude and vigor to the industry over the years. His diverse background, people skills, encyclopedia of knowledge, and real-world applications are greatly appreciated as a mentor and educator in the field of explosives.
Anderson Cagle
Geographer / GIS Analyst
Andy’s career path is continuously expanding his environmental scientific knowledge base, and the GIS modeling, analysis, and visualization techniques required to turn environmental data into actionable information. Andy has accumulated over twenty years of spatial data analysis & visualization experience after earning his bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Montana in 1999. During these two decades, he has worked as a GIS Analyst for multiple levels of government and companies in two countries with a focus on ecology and environmental issues, often related to climate change impacts and extractive industries.
Much of Andy’s career has been focused on using Lidar for landscape analysis. Using lidar point cloud data and rasterized derivatives, Andy has developed several analytical models to resolve forestry, erosion, site suitability, volumetric calculations, and slope hazards.
In addition to the environmental focus, Andy has a wealth of GIS experience in support of human geography issues by training and developing specific ESRI operations dashboards to support smuggling and trade compliance programs at USDA to analyzing gaps in fire department infrastructure for the city of Calgary, Alberta.
Andy’s expertise in high-precision GPS mapping supported USGS glacial change program’s glacier terminus and depth mapping, to a team of geophysicists resolving the summit ice cap depth on Mount Rainier.
Andy has extensive knowledge in ESRI model builder, Spatial Analyst, 3d analyst, Lidar tools, Python and DBMS, which makes him an asset to any team of scientists and decision-makers.
Jack J. Nowotarski, MS
TEST ENGINEER | QUALITY ENGINEER | PROJECT ENGINEER
An award-winning graduate from the prestigious University of Tennessee Nuclear Engineer program who possesses a
breadth of experience in testing/manufacturing/production methodologies. His past work included test plan development, execution, and evaluation. Jack is trained in six sigma principles, grant/bid writing, corrective action response, chemical and materials analysis, process improvement, and R&D. Jack specializes in translating experience from D.O.E. nuclear security to into other fields seeking to improve their process control.
Known for an unbroken record of attaining results via innovation, successful project team management and interfacing with executives, colleagues, engineers, scientists, and clients, including the Departments of Defense and Energy.
PNEU WAVE CONSULTING 