26 LAWYER MONTHLY EXPERT WITNESS AWARDS 2025 building design and construction documentation, breaking down the evidence, preparing the expert opinion presentation, and finally putting together the expert opinion report. One of the methods I use to control time is to break the evidence analysis into tasks and delegate the simple tasks, such as creating analysis models, to my senior engineering team and maintain the review and validation tasks to myself. Also, keeping track of evidence review, stakeholder meetings, notes, discussions, cross-examination, and joint-expert sessions is another essential tool to ensure the capture of relevant evidence, establish a comprehensive understanding of the subject observed/alleged defect, and support my opinions. In your experience, how has the growing importance of sustainability and structural integrity impacted expert witness work in engineering cases? Actually, the growing attention to sustainability showcases many advantages and alike disadvantages in engineering litigations. The growing importance of sustainability in both design and construction proves positive impacts on project outcomes, whether in performance, cost-effectiveness, material consumption, safety, or time-effectiveness. On the other hand, it requires a high level of coordination, specialist tradies, and different levels of attention during construction, which increases the complexity of the project, leading to an increase in engineering and construction disputes statistically. 20mm external box steel section to 600X800mm plus 16mm external box section. The subject floor beams support 30 floors on top and are supported by a series of parallel raking columns. The builder engineer, in the preparation of the analytical model, assumes that the floor is a rigid diaphragm, which, from a structural analysis perspective, was a big mistake as the in-plane forces distributed among the floor beams, crossbeams, and composite slab reducing significantly the axial forces in the composite beams lead to the under design cross-section which was the direct cause of the composite beam premature failure. The correct behaviour is that the column’s horizontal force component goes exclusively to the correspondence floor beam as tension force; hence, the original engineer design of the L08 floor composite beams was correct. Revealing this piece of evidence was the key to proving no negligence in the original designer’s work and changing the course of the litigation dispute. Litigation timelines can be demanding—what methods do you and your team use to efficiently deliver comprehensive expert reports? Planning is a key to delivering effective and comprehensive engineering expert reports. Understanding the legal brief is critical to estimating the required time for reviewing the brief documentation, carrying out the structural engineering assessment of the subject
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