Brian O. Primeau

Brian Primeau is the head of the Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS) Office at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. He joined the Laboratory in February 2012 as administrative staff in the EHS Office and was promoted to manager of the office in 2015, then to head in 2022.

Prior to joining the Laboratory, Primeau worked as an EHS consultant in the Los Angeles, California, area, focusing on property transactions, corporate mergers, environmental site investigations, and work safety at chemical-release cleanup sites. Returning to his home state of Massachusetts in 1999, Primeau worked for Textron Systems Corporation as a safety engineer before being promoted to unit manager in 2002. While at Textron, Primeau oversaw all aspects of EHS compliance for a 1,200-person facility that conducted radio-frequency (RF) research, manufactured air-to-ground anti-armor weapons, supported the strategic arsenal reentry-vehicle programs, and manufactured specialized semiconductor sensor devices. His responsibilities at Textron included environmental permitting and compliance, occupational safety, and the fire-protection program management. His fire protection efforts brought the facility to the coveted Highly Protected Risk (HPR) status under Factory Mutual (FM) Global’s property insurance program. Primeau also oversaw the significant effort needed post-9/11 to obtain Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives licenses and approvals for performing munitions manufacturing and foreign military sales. In 2005, NASA turned to Textron to provide the heat-shield material for what was then the Crew Exploration Vehicle because Textron’s predecessor AVCO owned the intellectual property for the AVCOAT material used on the Apollo crewed missions. Primeau oversaw the environmental and safety aspects of reproducing the formula, restoring the production process, and producing the first heat shield eventually flown on EFT-1 in 2014.

Primeau completed his undergraduate degree in physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with dual minors in astrophysics and geology. He later obtained a graduate certificate in fire-protection engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He is a 25-year member of the American Society of Safety Professionals and a long-standing member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), where he serves as a voting member of the committee on Classification and Properties of Hazardous Chemical Data that publishes NFPA Standard 704.