We investigate a\u00a0considerable variety of accidents and engineering failures.\u00a0 No two are\u00a0exactly alike.<\/p>\n
Also,\u00a0our work is ‘small’ and\u00a0‘medium’-sized as\u00a0opposed to\u00a0‘big’ and\u00a0newsworthy.\u00a0 Not\u00a0like the collapse of the Elliot Lake Mall\u00a0in\u00a0June 2012. \u00a0Nor like\u00a0the landslide in Oso, Washington in March of this year.\u00a0 We investigate tragedies like these but fortunately infrequently.<\/p>\n
The various failures and accidents\u00a0also stretch across different\u00a0engineering disciplines.\u00a0 For example, civil engineering and related specialities like foundation, geotechnical, and environmental engineering, and also structural, electrical, and mechanical engineering.<\/p>\n
Similar\u00a0for civil litigators and insurance personnel?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I can easily imagine that this variation is not too much different from the\u00a0mostly no-two-are-alike, small and medium size cases civil litigators\u00a0handle in Atlantic Canada.\u00a0 Also those files handled by insurance claims managers, consultants, and adjusters.<\/p>\n (If you are quite busy<\/span>\u00a0you can get a quick\u00a0idea\u00a0of the variety – just in the forensic civil engineering field alone –\u00a0by scanning\u00a0the 16 thumbnail sketches in the\u00a0list below.\u00a0 There are links in the References<\/strong> to detailed descriptions of\u00a0four cases)<\/p>\n I thought to blog on this question when I was recently asked by counsel to\u00a0briefly describe some of the engineering failures and accidents that I’ve investigated.\u00a0 I\u00a0noted\u00a022 individual cases including a couple\u00a0that were\u00a0newsworthy.\u00a0 I was struck by the variety.<\/p>\n Getting an idea of the magnitude of the variation in forensic work<\/strong><\/p>\n To get some idea of the magnitude of the variation in forensic engineering investigation you might first<\/em><\/span> look at a blog I posted a few weeks ago on the different ways buildings can fail –\u00a034 and counting. (Ref. 1)\u00a0The author of the book that prompted the earlier blog missed\u00a0a good number\u00a0involving the structural and foundation failure of buildings.<\/p>\n Then<\/em><\/span> think about the fact that\u00a0a building\u00a0is just one type of structure in the built environment\u00a0that can have a problem.<\/p>\n Our built environment comprises hundreds of different structures.\u00a0 For example, bridges, dams, wharves, roads, railways, embankments, transmission towers, power stations, drainage systems, retaining walls, and all the attendant infra structure and mechanical and\u00a0electrical services.\u00a0 All have\u00a0their long list of different ways of failing.<\/p>\n A step ladder is a structure to an engineer.\u00a0 Also a pile of salt on the road, particularly if it’s a factor in\u00a0a fatal motor vehicle accident.<\/p>\n Risk of personal injury accidents<\/strong><\/p>\n It’s not difficult to imagine with such an elaborate and complex built environment that there\u00a0is\u00a0also considerable risk\u00a0for different types of personal injury accidents to occur, as distinct from failures.<\/p>\n For example, there is an extensive literature just on slip, trip and fall accidents alone – many thousands of these types of accidents occur every year in North America,\u00a0with\u00a0a number of these in\u00a0Atlantic Canada.<\/p>\n Questioning a forensic engineer<\/strong><\/p>\n All this variation might beg the question, “How can any one forensic engineer know how to investigate so many different types of failures and accidents?”\u00a0 Well, if we stay within our respective disciplines and specialties – civil engineering for me –\u00a0we can do it.\u00a0 The basic investigative principles are\u00a0the same within a specialty regardless the problem.\u00a0 I suspect the principles\u00a0are also similar across the different engineering disciplines.\u00a0 .<\/p>\n What do we investigate in Atlantic Canada?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n The following categories<\/strong> of cases will give you some idea.\u00a0 The cases\u00a0are selected from my files.\u00a0 Each category represents one to several cases.\u00a0 The\u00a0Cases<\/em><\/span> are described, in general, and the kinds of Technical issues<\/em><\/span> that might need to be addressed\u00a0are noted.<\/p>\n No two cases are exactly alike as noted above, and some are very different. \u00a0The floor surfaces in the slip and fall accidents are all different.\u00a0 And slip and fall accidents are very different from a soil-steel bridge failure and also different from toxic fumes in buildings.\u00a0 And these in turn are different from\u00a0inadequately underpinned buildings, collapsing retaining walls,\u00a0landslides, tunnel failures, and\u00a0vibrating buildings.<\/p>\n Most of the cases were in Atlantic Canada but\u00a0two were\u00a0at airports in the Bahamas.\u00a0 Four cases did not\u00a0result in\u00a0litigation but are quite illustrative of the variation in forensic engineering investigation.<\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We investigate a\u00a0considerable variety of accidents and engineering failures.\u00a0 No two are\u00a0exactly alike. Also,\u00a0our work is ‘small’ and\u00a0‘medium’-sized as\u00a0opposed to\u00a0‘big’ and\u00a0newsworthy.\u00a0 Not\u00a0like the collapse of the Elliot Lake Mall\u00a0in\u00a0June 2012. \u00a0Nor like\u00a0the landslide in Oso, Washington in March of this … Continue reading \n
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