Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everybody and have a wonderful New Years!  I am currently vacationing and will probably not be posting until later in the week, if not until next year =P

Bill Mahan

Fire and Accident Investigation Services

So why exactly are these kinds of services helpful to you? Generally, insurance companies find the most use from the services of a forensic engineer or accident investigator. What they can provide you with is an excellent way to investigate the legitimacy of a suspect claim. Especially in harsh economic times, people file fraudulent claims hoping that the payout will be quick and no questions will be asked. ESI has investigated thousands of claims, and found that a large percentage of the claims that an insurance company may feel is not genuine, is in fact fraudulent. Most adjusters or people on staff, however, do not have the know-how of an Engineer when it comes to physical properties of materials, weather-related incidents, or proper construction procedures. Having a good forensic engineer on call can drastically reduce the amount of claims being paid out, and can help overall reduce rates.

Fire investigators are an excellent tool for the insurance companies as well. There is rarely a dispute of whether or not a fire actually occurred, however, with fire investigations it is a matter of origin and cause. It must be determined whether or not an accellerant was used, but you MUST first determine why a fire happened and where before you can assume anything about whether or not it was intentional.

Motor vehicle accident investigators are a great tool for insurance companies hoping to determine who/what is at fault. It could even be something completely separate from the driver or vehicle itsself, including traffic signals, signs, or even improper road markings.
Example: Sometimes the real cause of an accident can be poor asphalt mixture and have nothing to do with a victim's tires at all.

Winterizing...Why it is important

Winterizing is a very important topic for any homeowner, especially those who like to prevent damage to their home. Water damage is usually the most common complaint during the winter from homeowners who don't take the necessary precautions to prevent it. What happens a lot of the time is the homeowner doesn't shut off the water to outside lines for things such as sprinkler systems or hoses, and when it gets really cold out the pipes can pretty easily freeze up. Thanks to any chemistry class you may have taken in middle or high school, you know that water expands a great deal when frozen, and pipes cannot accommodate this. Once they burst, they patiently wait for a bit warmer weather, and once it thaws you have quite a mess on your hands. The water pressure is already pretty high, so the hole in the pipe provides an excellent route for it to escape. (Imagine turning on a hose inside of your house).

Some quick steps to winterizing your home are:
- Purge sprinkler system lines (you will need a professional to do this)
- Turn off water to any outside lines
- Put hoses inside the garage, definitely do not leave them hooked up to the house!
- Close your garage door when not in use
- Get your furnace checked out before the cold hits!
- Seal exterior cracks and crevices
- Insulate your attic better to keep heat from escaping out the top
- Seal doors and windows better
- Never let your home drop below about 50-60 degrees if gone on vacation

That about does it, have a good winter with these tips!!

Car Accidents Abundant and Unnecessary

With the recent snow here in the midwest, we once again get the opportunity to venture out to our cars under the very real threat of dying before we get there. But what's best about the winter time is that it doesn't stop there. Once we finally arrive at our vehicles, we are generally distraught to find out that now we have to either A) Start warming up the car, then scrape off the ice of B) Scrape off the ice then warm up the car. Now with either choice you are a loser, and here is why. Should you have gone with the latter option, you will scrape off your windows, and with frozen hands climb into the frigid cold you pay hundreds of dollars for every month. If you went with choice A, you will hop in, turn it on (thinking that the heater will be going nicely by the time you're done scraping) and get back out into the cold and scrape your heart out. You KNOW that whatever way you do it your car won't even be toasty and comfortable until you're home anyways, unless of course you commute across town, in which case I don't even feel like talking about what you experience everyday.

Once you are on your merry way, sliding everywhere, you wonder why nobody has caught the person that goes around to every intersection applying a completely invisible, yet very real, sheet of pure ice. God help you if you happen to have a passenger. Passengers like to complain and point out every obvious object, person, or streetlight you may come upon as a driver. I'm not sure what causes a passenger to become Captain Obvious the moment they sit down next to you, but we'll just withold judgement until we're finally home.

Accident Investigations

Another hot topic for forensic engineers is accident investigations! These kinds of investigations can range from fire, vehicle, boat, plane, etc... and picking the right expert is more than half the battle. You may wish to call a forensic engineer to investigate an accident for you if you are an insurance company, and suspect you are dealing with a fraudulent claim. Overall making sure that your customers are not trying to cheat you out of money is something that can surprisingly done cheaply, and quite efficiently. The cost benefits of having an engineer inspect the suspicious claims will always cost the insurance company less, and is an excellent reason to get the checked!

Fire Investigation Specialists

If you're looking for the premier fire investigation specialists, make sure to check out Google for some great links. Try searching by area as well by just adding your city name to the end of the search. You can try, for example, "fire investigators omaha" into Google and see what you can pull up! Fire investigations tend to be more prevalent in the Winter months when people are using space heaters, Christmas lights, candles, etc... that are relatively dangerous. Be on the lookout!

Forensics Topics for the Economic Downturn

In hard times, people have more money-related stress than not. What this often lends itself to is a lot of people strapped for cash, who turn to bad ways of getting money. For some reason, a lot of people don't think that falsifying an insurance claim is stealing, and due to this we see more fraudulent claims during harsh times than not. In today's economy I expect that not only will more claims be filed, but fraudulent ones will be very common.

For those of you that are actually just interested in safeguarding yourselves, check out this link

Summers Over, Less Fires?

In the summer months fires tend to be a pretty prevalent source of insurance claims. These are usually legit claims, and stem from either brush near the home set ablaze by the intense heat, children attempting to kill small bugs, and lastly just accidental things from more people being outside due to the nice weather. Now you would think that fire investigators would have an easier time in the off season since less people are out grilling and tossing cigarette butts on top of dry mulch, but it actually starts to really peak in the heat of winter. One of the many reasons, is heating. In the winter time in a cold climate, everybody requires heat. I can pretty much guarantee you that any source of heat is susceptible to causing, or starting a fire. That space heater you got basically just overheats a piece of metal a lot by drawing a relatively immense amount of current through it, and then operates "efficiently" by pushing that warm air out with a fan. Sounds dangerous huh?

Basically I'm saying that fire investigations do not really ever seem to slow down for reputable companies. As an insurance company you also need to make sure you are investigating claims that seem odd or are particularly improbable, because there's a good chance it is.

Bill Mahan

Who are Forensic Engineers?

What makes a forensic engineer a forensic engineer? One thing to keep in mind is that forensic engineering is NOT a major, there is not a club, but rather it is a state of experience. To be considered a reputable source for forensic engineering, you generally should have a master's of science is a related engineering field of investigation, and years of on-the-job experience. Generally those two guidelines will appease any courtroom you may find yourself testifying in, with the designation of "expert witness".

So basically, forensic engineers fulfill a small designation of engineers with a thorough education and lots of experience. This is required to ensure that their conclusions are founded in logic and factual knowledge.

Forensics and Storm Damage

One topic I haven't really had a chance to cover yet is storm damage. Storm damage can be detrimental when the damage is widespread over a large community or town. One other thing that storm damage can produce, however, is insurance fraud. A lot of times, especially involving hail damage, storms can produce odd patterns of areas that have no damage even sometime being across the street from homes that are severely damaged. What this lends to is insurance companies being targeted by blanket claims that can be terrible for business.

I remember a buddy of mine (He is a Forensic Engineer) telling me about a case he investigated where a particular home owner had filed a claim for hail damage on his roof. What initially tipped off the insurance company was the wrong date of the storm on the claim, and an adjuster was promptly sent out. Unable to accurately assess the damage, my friend was called in to give his expert opinion. What he found was a rather strange scenario on the roof. He told the story better than I can, but he was basically shocked to find that this area of the state apparently produced flat-bottomed hail that was the exact same diameter in every indentation, and further it refused to damage the other side of the roof. A brief search of the yard found the culprit, and unfortunately the hammer did not carry insurance, and after this incident neither did the homeowner.

So what we find is that by spending $1500 to pay for a professional opinion, an insurance company saved $15,000 on a roof the did not need to replace. Either that or maybe they need to spend a little more on a more observant adjuster.

Bill Mahan

More Fire Investigation Information!

So the last post seemed to be fairly popular as I received a lot of emails about what kind of reasons lead to fires and fire damage. Another thing I wanted to add about the destruction that fire causes is that it spreads well beyond what is in direct contact with heat and flame. The smoke produced from burning drywall, paper, and other combustibles can cause major damage as well. The smoke itself can discolor paint, ruin carpet, leave ash on ceiling tiles, and worst of all ruin anything remotely absorbent by tarnishing the smell. Fire investigators from reputable forensic engineering firms can do an excellent job of determining exactly why a particular fire occurred, something necessary when stakes are high.

Was it the remote starter installed in the car that malfunctioned or the vehicle itself?

It is these kinds of questions that require forensic engineers!!

Bill Mahan

Fire Investigations

One of the more common jobs a Forensic Engineer may encounter is carrying out a fire investigators. Fire investigations can be requested for a number of different reasons, all of course involving a fire. Requirements for the services of a forensic engineer are usually as follows:

- Large Fire
- Fire in an Urban Setting
- Fire that resulted in Death or Injury
- Fire that is product of a technical or mechanical failure
- Fire that caused property damage

These different scenarios all cause some sort of courtroom battle that requires the use of an expert. The Forensic Engineer(s) who works the investigation may even be called upon as an expert witness. In this case, the Engineer must trust his own judgment based on know-how of Engineering Rules and Scenarios to ensure that his opinion is trusted and founded in logic.

Bill Mahan

Main Goals/Topics of Discussion

The goals of forensic engineers tend to range from simplistic to complex, as with most disciplines of forensic science. They can hope to discover when something happened, how something happened, the sequence of events up to the accident, or all three. The group that moderates and maintains a basis for these engineers is the ASTM, who determines the proper course of action required to ensure an accurate investigation.

So for the breakdown we have:
- Determine Origin
- Determine Cause
- Determine Preceding Events

All of these can be quite essential investigation topics, especially when dealing with high-profile cases. Some popular cases that involved the use of a forensic engineering firm include the accident that killed Princess Diana.

Bill Mahan

Labor Day

Over the holiday I'll be out golfing with an associate from a local Forensic Engineering Firm, so I probably won't have a chance to post again until mid next week. Keep checking back, and wish me luck!

Bill Mahan

Information about the Field

So if you're reading this I'm guessing that you have a few questions about Forensic Engineering. The most common question I get is related to the practice itself, and what it has to do with autopsies. Well quite frankly, nothing. A lot of people relate the word "Forensic" with criminal investigations into murders and other various gruesome topics, but the word itself denotes that it is involved with an investigation for the purposes of the law. Meaning that Forensic Engineers will be investigating a crime scene, in an effort to determine what happened and why.

While Forensic Investigators may be interested in how or why somebody died, Forensic Engineers go above this and investigate how or why something failed, causing property damage or bodily harm. A great way to discover more information (than I could ever reasonably post in one blog) is by jumping over to the Wikipedia Article by following this link.

So in a nutshell, Forensic Engineers employ a vast wealth of knowledge from different areas of Engineering to help determine why something went wrong. The benefits of such an investigation are countless, and can not only help settle legal disputes, but can make things safer for everyone in the future as well.

Bill Mahan

Welcome to the Forensic Engineering Blog

Hello all, I hope to provide my viewers with some useful information about the field of Forensic Engineering. I want to target an audience of people that are either interested in becoming a Forensic Engineer, need to seek the services of a Forensic Engineer, or are looking for some information on what it is that they do.

Today I will be posting two items, the first of which is this one, and the second of which will include some general information about why people need Forensic Engineering, or the services of a Forensic Engineer. Hopefully you find my information helpful and can use it to answer any questions you may have about the field.

Thanks,
Bill Mahan