Sean Moran's Blog, page 3

Insurance Claim Expert Advice, Loss Adjuster Forensic Engineer

We offer an Engineering Expert Service For Loss Adjusters And Insurers, Supporting Investigations Of Insurance Claims

Sean Moran has many years of experience supporting loss adjusters, and insurance companies in investigating insurance claims involving business interruption, destruction of plant and equipment, and engineering design construction, and operation competence. The cases he has been involved with include:

Expert Witness in overseas insurance case over damage to a major municipal pumped storage plant (Production of Advisory Reports)

Expert Witness in insurance case and commercial dispute to do with overseas sludge dewatering, drying and pyrolysis plant (Production of Advisory Report)

Expert Witness in overseas insurance case and commercial dispute to do with fire damage at an anaerobic digestion plant (Production of Advisory Report)

Expert Witness in insurance case relating to loss of containment and air pollution at a specialist metals processor (Production of Advisory Report)

Expert Witness in insurance case and contractual dispute relating to refinery cooling water quality (Production of Advisory Report)

Expert Witness in overseas insurance case over damage to the effluent treatment plant at a sugar refinery (Production of Advisory Report, Meeting Of Experts)

I have added a few more pages to the website this morning giving specifics of my experience in Water, Sewage, Chemical/Process Engineering, Construction Disputes and as a Single Joint Expert

I have added a few more pages to the website this morning giving specifics of my experience in Water, Sewage, Chemical/Process Engineering, Construction Disputes and as a Single Joint Expert

Competence And Negligence Expert Witness Water Treatment

I have just submitted an article to Process Industry Informer about the difference between negligence, competence, good- and best- practice in chemical process engineering design.

Many of my expert witness engagements are to do with the issue of whether a plant's design process has been carried out competently, or whether there has been negligence on the part of the engineer. Even those cases which are initially thought to be to do with poor construction, operation or maintenance often have issues of engineering competence in designers, operators and managers. Though the bar for what constitutes competent practice is set quite low, (essentially at mediocrity) I don't always think that it is cleared by those I look into.

Unsupervised Inexperienced Designers Produce Bad Designs

I recently worked in a company which was failing to transform green graduates into experienced engineers. My review of the designs they produced showed that they were incompetently executed.  I wrote an article about the experience, which gave me an insider insight into how mistakes in several past expert witness engagements had occurred. 

Domestic Sewage Package Plant Troubleshooting Engineer

Independent Expert Engineer Limited offer troubleshooting services, especially for sewage and water treatment plants. We have had many engagements to look at domestic packages sewage treatment plants and domestic drainage over the years. There is a page on our website with a few case studies, and free advice for anyone thinking of buying or specifying such an off-mains drainage system.

Sewage Treatment Design Problems #2: THE PLANT WORKS . . . MOST OF THE TIME

I see this issue most commonly in troubleshooting and expert witness work. A client will maintain that their plant works, but the sampling data show that the plant does not always meet specification. It may even be that every sample taken has failed, but the client remains convinced that the plant is working the rest of the time, so it is working. Mostly.

This may be an operational failure, but it is most commonly an issue of underdesign. The design envelope must be set to have the plant working as much of the time as specified. This is most commonly 100% of the time, though there are exceptions. The costs of each incremental improvement in treatment efficiency may rise exponentially, so underdesign is tempting in as competitive an environment as water treatment.

A plant which has been underdesigned may “work” some of the time, but “working” means meeting specification to an engineer, and the specification usually includes acceptable ranges of availability and product variability. Working some of the time is more properly called “not working” from an engineer’s point of view. Managers and other non-engineers may however have another opinion.

Sewage Treatment Design Problems #1: Lack of consideration of the needs of other disciplines

Real process plant designers have to take into consideration the needs and desires of several other engineering disciplines, most notably civil, mechanical, electrical, and software in that order. The idea that a chemical engineer can sit down and design a plant in glorious isolation probably comes from the inadequacy of links between disciplines and professional practice in academia. Even the simplest “brownfield” management of change projects on existing facilities almost always require multidisciplinary input and expert reviews before they can be progressed.

Hydraulic And Drainage Engineering Expert

The Grande Cascade at Alnwick Castle was one of my more interesting hydraulic engineering challenges. Mostly in expert witness and troubleshooting assignments, I am involved in determining whether pipes and pumps are the right size, or whether pipes and channels have enough fall to manage a given flow.

I have been involved in troubleshooting the hydraulic design of drinking water pipelines in Iraq and water generation schemes in Israel, as well as more prosaic disputes over drainage here in the UK.

Sewage Treatment Statutory Nuisance Odour And Noise Expert

I have made a start this week on a Part 35 Expert Report to do with noise, odour and other nuisance caused by a municipal sewage treatment works which discharges to an estuary. 

I was first involved in odour issues when I worked for water engineering limited, back in 1992. We used to design and build odour control systems, which involved a detailed knowledge of odour problems to do with sewage and sewage sludge, as well as some odorous industrial processes. 

Since them I have been involved in designing and commissioning odour control systems, as well as troubleshooting such systems when they don't work. There is a lot of bad specification, design and operation of such systems, as well as a number of products which are entirely ill-conceived. 

Noise issues tend to be more straightforward, as noise is easier to measure, but both noise and odour nuisances can be quite subjective. 

Water Piping Engineer Expert Witness

I submitted an article to Expert Witness Journal this week about why you need an independent expert engineer if you have problems with your water or wastewater treatment plant. It will appear in the October edition of the publication. This is to some extent a follow-on from the last article I wrote for them, "Expert Witnesses:  Avoiding False Economy", which you can download here: https://independentexpertengineer.co....