Disputes

Objective analysis for the highest-stakes disputes

Construction

Identifying the causes of delays, cost overruns, design errors, and performance failures; investigating structural, materials, and equipment failures, as well as operational damage and construction accidents; evaluating worker injuries.

Consumer Products

Evaluating materials, manufacturing, and performance challenges; determining the patentable qualities of products; assessing safety and intended use messaging; studying the health impacts of product issues; analyzing product defects; advising on recall decisions.

Electronics

Evaluating battery, coding, materials, and electrical engineering failures; assessing contract performance and intellectual property issues; providing understanding for product safety challenges.

Food & Beverage

Assessing health benefits or safety concerns of ingredients or formulations; identifying sources and causes of contamination; analyzing packaging or manufacturing failures.

Government Sector

Assessing the impact of regulations on public health, the environment, and industry; appraising contract performance; supporting environmental assessments.

Exponent provides independent, data-driven expertise for technical, scientific, and engineering challenges.

Software & Computer Science

Analyzing high-tech intellectual property, such as software, circuits, and embedded systems; assessing system performance; evaluating security breaches.

Life Sciences & Healthcare

Evaluating product function for intellectual property and patent disputes; assessing product performance for contract disputes and acquisitions; providing root cause analyses for insurance claims and loss management disputes; conducting failure analysis for international arbitration and product liability, including mass tort.

Manufacturing Technology & Industrial Equipment

Evaluating accidents, injuries, and liability matters; assessing operating instructions and warning labels.

Transportation

Investigating product liability and accident matters; assessing data for class action disputes; analyzing incidents with ADAS; evaluating component failures.

Mining & Forestry

Investigating equipment failures; evaluating slope and soil stability, including high-wall, tailings, and open pits; assessing worker injury and safety issues; analyzing mine production metrics and chemical assays to provide insights into contract disputes.

Energy

Conducting loss of containment investigations; analyzing process safety, and infrastructure, equipment, and pipeline failures; assessing production and construction performance for contract disputes; evaluating alleged environmental damage; investigating worker safety incidents.

Smoke releases from several stacks at an industrial plant on a waterfront

Chemicals

Investigating large loss fires and explosions; evaluating corrosion or incorrect metallurgy damage; analyzing pipelines and piping systems failures; determining the causes of worker injuries; assessing the contributing factors, fate and transport, and severity of pollution; studying health impacts of chemicals released into the environment.

Utilities

Analyzing the causes of failures in infrastructure, equipment and pipelines; identifying causes and consequences of wildfires; assessing environmental damage and impacts to human health; analyzing gas line and regulator failures; investigating worker injuries; evaluating materials for infrastructure failures.

Our Expertise

We have significant experience assisting our clients with failure analysis, international arbitration, product liability, toxic tort, natural resource damage assessments (NRDA), intellectual property, construction defects, contract and patent disputes, personal and premises liability, personal injury, and matters involving agencies such as OSHA, NTSB, EPA, CPSC, and the FDA.

We have testified in state and federal courts across the United States, and in multiple international arbitration, mediation, and intellectual property courts, and other jurisdictions as part of high-profile matters.

Why Did an Automated Manufacturing Machine Fail to Achieve Performance Requirements?

For a designer of automation machinery, we brought together

engineering analysis , quantum analysis , delay analysis

Why Did an Automated Manufacturing Machinery Fail to Achieve Performance Requirements?

A dispute between a designer of automation machinery and a manufacturer of cargo shipping containers resulted in international arbitration.

View full case study

Our Mechanical Engineering practice provided our client with a comprehensive engineering analysis of the equipment, from design to eventual abandonment, including:
- Provided boots-on-the-ground support through a mechanical engineer in Exponent's local Hong Kong office, who inspected and documented the machinery left behind at the project site.
- Determined the root cause of broken components and subsequent failures.
- Performed a tolerance stack-up analysis to demonstrate that one hypothesis was not valid.
- Completed finite element analysis (FEA) of the machinery, finding that the equipment design was excessively flexible and susceptible to vibration.
- Integrated expertise from Exponent's Data Sciences practice to analyze the results of machine performance tests and determine failure rates under various operating scenarios.
Exponent's Construction Consulting practice performed a schedule analysis to understand the reasons for various delays during the project and their impacts. This was used to develop an estimate of the amount of time needed to complete the project, assuming it had continued.
Assessments of the project cost allocation and residual value of the abandoned equipment were also completed. Specific forensic analyses included assessments of:
- The contractor's initial project schedule and its compliance with the terms of the agreement and reasonableness.
- Potential schedule delay related to an alleged late provision of testing materials evidencing the contractor's performance and overall completion of work.
- Other causes of schedule delay, including the contractor's performance.
- Status of the project and a reasonable timeframe for completion, considering prior performance schedule delays.
- Reasonableness of the contactor's incurred costs and estimates to complete the project.

Capabilities

What Can We Help You Solve?

When you need an objective understanding of what happened or what went wrong, Exponent can assemble a multidisciplinary team to address your questions, leveraging cross-industry expertise and over 50 years' experience in failure analysis.

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Environmental Consulting for International Arbitration

Objective, evidence-based insights for claimants, respondents, or arbitration panels.

Businesspeople shaking hands in agreement. Exponent engineering expertise for construction disputes.

Expert Services for Construction Disputes

Independent, evidence-based expertise for construction disputes.

Economic Assessment of Natural Resource Damages

Assess relationships between natural resource attributes and monetary damages.

Stakeholders discuss important paperwork at a desk. Exponent provides technical consulting for disputes and claims.

ITC Section 337 Investigations

Objective insights on infringement, domestic industry, and patent validity for high stakes ITC Section 337 investigations.

Artistic photo of mechanical gears. Exponent provides mechanical engineering support for disputes and claims.

Mechanical Engineering Support for Dispute Resolution

Mechanical engineering support and testimony for litigation, international arbitration, mediation, and insurance.

A computer tower and circuit boards are engulfed in flames. Exponent electrical engineers construct detailed accident reconstructions.

Thermal Sciences Expertise for Disputes

Evidence-based scientific insights and expert witness support for industrial fires and explosions, oil and chemical spills, and equipment failures.

Biomedical Expertise for Disputes

Support for complex disputes, from intellectual property and patent infringement to hospital fires and product damage.

Government building with stone columns. Exponent provides scientific and engineering expertise for the government and public sectors.

Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act

Guidance and support navigating CPSIA regulatory requirements.

Two people shake hands over a table with contract agreement paperwork laying on top

International Arbitration

Clear Answers for Complex Global Disputes

Exponent's international arbitration experts provide clients with everything necessary to navigate tough, intricate technical disputes in legal forums around the world. Our engineering insights are coupled with a unique ability to convey information clearly for lay audiences — and nowhere else will you find the depth and breadth of multidisciplinary expertise required to seamlessly answer questions involving complex machinery, systems, and construction projects across multiple industries.

Well-Known Investigations

In the months following the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, Exponent was retained to conduct a detailed and extensive study of the collapse for each tower and analyze damage to the sub-grade mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure. And this is just one example of our high-profile, high-stakes work. Over the past 50+ years, we've investigated some of the most well-known disasters and catastrophes around the world.

Explore our investigations

Visual Communication

Storytelling Tools That Power Innovation

Exponent's in-house Visual Communication team supports the work of our experts by creating scientifically accurate animation, graphics, photography, video, laser scanning, and 3D printing. These tools help our clients and their audiences gain a deeper understanding of the technologies they're exploring.

Best-in-Class Facilities Meet World-Class Experts

Our multidisciplinary teams of scientists and engineers at Exponent facilities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are uniquely positioned to provide rapid response, onsite inspections, bespoke testing, and unparalleled scientific analysis, data, and research.