Expert Witness and Failure Investigation Services

Failures in any system can lead to severe safety concerns, loss of production and costly damage to equipment with further downtime for repairs. This can lead to disputes between stakeholders on the cause and responsibility for the failure. It’s vital to understand the root cause in order to mitigate the risk of reoccurrence and understand the factors that influenced the failure.

Intertek has been providing materials failure investigation services for over 40 years, on a global basis and with specialist experience in the energy, construction, marine, chemical and industrial sectors.

Formerly known as Intertek CAPCIS, we have a team of technical experts in metallurgy, polymers and elastomers, forensic science, chemical engineering and materials & corrosion science.

Intertek can offer an end-to-end service for investigations to provide Total Quality Assurance to our clients. This can take the form of:

• Consulting on investigative requirements and controls
• Coordinating site visits and sampling
• Conducting in-depth analysis (both destructive and non-destructive) in our centre of excellence in Manchester UK and within  our global network of specialist laboratories
• Analysis and reporting of findings harnessing the unique industrial knowledge of our experts to determine the mechanism of failure, assist in determining causation and making recommendations for corrective actions.
• Participation in multi-discipline root cause analysis (RCA)
• Expert witness evidence and testimony on our findings in the case of legal dispute

We take a holistic and evidence led approach to failure investigation from the first client discussions to final reporting, considering the whole system to provide thoroughly engineered conclusions and add valuable insight in order to resolve future issues.

With our global footprint Intertek can support and contain failure investigations, reducing potential for interference and providing consistency and assurance throughout the process.

Failure investigations can bring value to operations by optimising maintenance, improving equipment uptime and targeting development spend to focus on key areas to improve reliability.  

Our experts leverage relevant industrial experience to deliver accurate root cause analysis, with the ability to defend conclusions in disputes as expert witnesses. Providing support at every stage from start to finish.

Intertek’s in-house laboratory capability reduces the risk of evidence contamination that can occur from sub-contracting to external labs, ensuring control and containment of high-profile cases.