Guidelines For Forensic Engineering Practice

Within the broad field of civil engineering, the practice of forensic engineering involves the investigation of performance, difficulties, or failures of buildings, structures, pipelines, foundations, airplanes, manufacturing equipment, vehicles, bridges, flood control facilities, and other engineered products. Guideline for Forensic Engineering Practice is organized into five general topics of forensic engineering: (1) Qualifications addresses commonly accepted education and experience requirements for forensic engineers. Various aspects of Federal and State law are cited with an expanded section on admissibility and disqualifications are discussed in this chapter; (2) Investigations intended to show the typical aspects of physically carrying out a forensic investigation, such as the handling of evidence for subsequent courtroom presentation; (3) Ethics the promulgation of guidelines for ethical behavior of the forensic engineer is a primary objective of ASCE and the Forensic Practice Committee, as well as the ASCE Code of Ethics and codes from other engineering associations are applied to the forensic engineer; (4) Legal gives a brief overview of the court system as it applies to the construction industry, including the role of the forensic engineer as an expert witness is defined; and (5) Business intended to relate the non-technical management side of forensic engineering practices and the marketing of forensic engineering services within an acceptable ethical scheme is encouraged.

This book serves as an introductory text to the forensic civil engineering discipline and provides guidelines for carrying out the practice in an effective (and ethical) manner.

Sponsored by the Forensic Engineering Practice Committee of the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering of ASCE. This report provides the fundamentals of developing a practice that includes forensic engineering. Within the broad field of civil engineering, forensic engineering involves the investigation of performance, difficulties, or failures of buildings, structures, pipelines, foundations, airplanes, manufacturing equipment, vehicles, bridges, flood control facilities, and other engineered products. This report covers five general topics important to the practice of forensic engineering. "Qualifications" addresses commonly accepted education and experience requirements for forensic engineers. Various aspects of federal and state law are cited with an expanded section on admissibility. and disqualifications are discussed. "Investigations" shows the typical aspects of physically carrying out a forensic investigation, such as the handling of evidence for subsequent courtroom presentation. "Ethics" fulfills a professional charge to promulgate guidelines for ethical behavior of the forensic engineer. "Legal" gives a brief overview of the court system as it applies to the construction industry, including the role of the forensic engineer as an expert witness. "Business" describes the nontechnical management side of forensic engineering practices; the marketing of forensic engineering services within an acceptable ethical scheme is encouraged.

This book outlines the fundamental steps that will assist forensic engineers in tailoring their forensic investigations of failures and performance problems associated with structures and building systems.

The Guidelines for Failure Investigation by the Task Committee on Guidelines for Failure Investigations of the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering, American Society of Civil Engineers provides an overview to the functions and responsibilities of the successful failure investigation. The Guidelines covers all aspects of the investigative process from the planning stage, the development of a failure hypothesis, and the preparation of a concise report, to the engineer's role as an expert witness. To help explain this process, two investigations in specific engineering disciplines, geotechical and structural, are developed in detail. With this complete coverage, the Guidelines not only provides an introduction to the investigative process for the initiate forensic engineer, but also supplies the veteran investigator with references and guidance.

Proceedings of the Sixth Congress on Forensic Engineering, held in San Francisco, California, October 31-November 3, 2012. Sponsored by the Technical Council on Forensic Engineering of ASCE. This collection contains 144 peer-reviewed papers presenting findings intended to help forensic engineers develop practices and procedures to reduce the number of failures, disseminate information on failures, and provide guidelines for conducting failure investigations and for ethical conduct. Topics include: bridges; building envelopes; critical infrastructure; design practices; disaster risk management; education; emerging technologies; fires; floods; flooring; geotechnical failures; hurricanes, tornadoes, and extreme winds; investigative methodologies; practices to reduce failures; professional practice; research and testing; residential construction; and structural failures. This will be valuable to engineers, researchers, educators, and students involved in forensic engineering.

This proceedings contains 82 papers presented at the 5th ASCE Forensic Engineering Congress, held in Washington, D.C., November 11 14, 2009. The conference was sponsored by the ASCE Technical Council on Forensic Engineering whose mission is to develop practices and procedures to reduce the number of failures, to disseminate information on failures, and to provide guidelines for conducting failure investigations and for ethical conduct. Forensic Engineering 2009: Pathology of the Built Environment includes papers that examine case studies, investigation approach and methodology, expert witnessing, ethics, standard of care, non-destructive evaluation, and education in forensic engineering. This book will be valuable to engineers, professionals, researchers, educators, and students involved in forensic engineering.

In this edited volume on advances in forensic geotechnical engineering, a number of technical contributions by experts and professionals in this area are included. The work is the outcome of deliberations at various conferences in the area conducted by Prof. G.L. Sivakumar Babu and Dr. V.V.S. Rao as secretary and Chairman of Technical Committee on Forensic Geotechnical Engineering of International Society for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering (ISSMGE). This volume contains papers on topics such as guidelines, evidence/data collection, distress characterization, use of diagnostic tests (laboratory and field tests), back analysis, failure hypothesis formulation, role of instrumentation and sensor-based technologies, risk analysis, technical shortcomings. This volume will prove useful to researchers and practitioners alike.