Utilities Consulting

Few industries manage such dispersed infrastructure as utilities. Significant equipment is deployed across public and private lands, where it may be subject to fires, winds, floods, earthquakes, and tampering, and requires regular maintenance and inspections. How can you most efficiently keep this system running while reducing the risk of downtime or disaster?  

Exponent can propose practical solutions for your most pressing challenges, assembling teams ranging from civil, structural, and electrical engineering to materials, thermal sciences, and data sciences.

• Where should your maintenance dollars be prioritized? 
• What equipment should be replaced or upgraded? 
• How can you better prepare for weather extremes and climate change? 
• When are conditions dangerous enough to shut off service? 

Beyond providing answers, Exponent can help facilitate the implementation of new analyses, risk assessments, and recommendations.

The amount of data in a modern utility operation can be overwhelming, creating confusion and paralysis when the moment calls for decisive action. Tame your data and get the insights you need to make smart decisions.  

Our data sciences team can create the clarity and understanding needed to go forward confidently. Our proven methodology provides:

• Strategic alignment on the technical and business challenges that need to be solved 
• Analysis of what to measure and how 
• Organization, cleaning, and alignment of data across multiple sources 
• Database management and integrations with third-party data sources 
• Advanced data modeling to provide key insights and decision support 
• Design of real-time dashboards and custom reports to enable clear communications and ongoing insights 

Understand and manage the impact of your operations on the environment and human health with expert scientific guidance.  

Our multidisciplinary scientific and engineering teams can give you a clear understanding of how your activities may affect the surrounding air, soil, and groundwater.

Across hundreds of projects for utilities, we've helped clients: 

• Guide the safe storage and usage of hazardous compounds 
• Model the dispersion, fate, and transport of pollutants  
• Design and deploy water and air monitoring networks 
• Conduct ecological and human health studies 
• Engineer remediation for existing issues 

We help you understand and quantify the potential impacts of climate change on your business, now and in the future. How will weather extremes impact operations? How will your customer needs change? How might regulations evolve? 

We help utilities discover the causes of explosions, fires, collapses, falls, arc flash events, and other adverse incidents. With 50+ years in failure analysis, we objectively determine why things went wrong. From boiler explosions to tower collapses to pipeline failures to worker falls — we provide detailed, actionable insights on why incidents happened, the extent of the damage, and what can be done to prevent incidents from happening in the future.

From regulatory approvals for new activities to keeping up with evolving requirements, our multidisciplinary professionals can help ensure you have the firepower you need to stay in compliance.  

We can help you interpret regulations and navigate the review process to stay aligned with all federal and state requirements, as well as assist with investigations by agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Department of Transportation (DOT), the DOT's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), and the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB).

When technical or managerial challenges are blocking your path forward, Exponent can provide the extra problem-solving power you need.

Our deep understanding of the industry and broad utilities experience, encompassing engineering, planning, inspections, maintenance, operations, construction, risk, asset management, and compliance perspectives, provides unique insight into managing large-scale capital projects through their lifecycle — from front-end planning and project initiation to design and procurement to construction and closeout. 

Whether it's fixing design flaws or managing your sub-contractor invoicing process, we get to the right answers by applying smart science and creative solutions.

• Project, program and portfolio management 

• Governance and controls

• Project delivery/contract strategy 

• Data analysis and reporting  

• Process improvement   

• Risk assessment and management   

• Change Management 

We create custom teams to tackle your challenges, drawing from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, construction management, thermal sciences, materials and corrosion, data sciences, and dozens of other disciplines. 

Clients turn to Exponent when they need to objectively understand what went wrong and why. We can help you make the best decisions on how to address disputes, guided by our detailed, science-backed expert opinions. We provide principled insights, telling you what you need to know, not what you want to hear.

Exponent scientists and engineers represent the science at dispute proceedings by delivering clarity, precision, and a knack for explaining complicated topics in understandable ways. We can assist you across all phases of disputes, including pre-litigation, fact-finding, litigation expert testimony, and arbitration.