Building Code Expert Witnesses

What is a building code expert witness?

Building code expert witness candidates have years of experience and expertise in the construction industry and the rules and regulations that govern construction and occupancy of facilities. Building code expert witness candidates are familiar with all phases of building code compliance, construction management, LEED certification, building inspections, fire protection, and/or HVAC/electrical/plumbing experience. Building code expert witness candidates will have advanced degrees (PhD, PE) in construction management, architecture, civil engineering, structural engineering, or forensic engineering. Building code expert witnesses may be members of professional organizations such as the International Code Council (ICC), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), or the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

What types of cases require a building code expert witness?

A building code expert witness might also provide testimony in construction defects, ADA compliance, personal injury, premises liability, property damage, insurance claims, cause investigations, or building system failure analysis.

Building code expert witness case examples

When the need for a building code expert arises, top legal professionals call on Cahn Litigation Services. The firm has placed professionals for many matters, including:

• New York fire code consulting,
• apartment fire cause,
• Utah building codes,
• New York apartment complex construction defects
• electrical safety and electrical accident investigations,
• personal injury accident investigation,
• ​emergency management,
• fire sprinkler systems failure causation in a New Jersey factory,
• forensic analysis at a Texas manufacturing facility,
• energy management at a New York facility,
• product liability investigation for California insurance companies,
• a Pennsylvania health care facility’s water heaters installation,
• failure analysis of a ventilating unit in Colorado,
• root cause analysis of industrial HVAC system failures in Florida,
• commercial building fire investigation,
• an explosion investigation in Florida, and
• fire code compliance in Michigan.

Cases may be civil or criminal and require not only building code expertise, but the ability to communicate findings to juries for ease of understanding.

What litigation support work might a building code expert witness be expected to perform?

Litigation support by a building code expert witness could include research and authoring expert reports, providing expert opinions, arbitrations, building code consulting, accessibility analyses, forensic engineering analyses, deposition testimony, and expert testimony at a trial. In a high-profile case, or litigation involving a significant financial stake, a law firm may request an expert with prior expert witness experience. In addition, clients may seek a building code expert for pre-litigation consulting work.

Cahn Litigation Services has the experience required to turn a search for a building code expert witness around quickly, providing the right balance of expertise and testimony experience.

Related Disciplines

Building Code Expert Witness - Representative Bios

Please Note: All Cahn Litigation expert witness searches are customized to attorneys' precise specifications and preferences. Attorneys are encouraged to discuss search parameters with a Cahn search specialist.

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The below expert witness bios represent a small fraction of those Building Code experts known by Cahn Litigation Services. These bios are provided to give lawyers a sense of the Building Code landscape.

• Expert Witness #260531

  This expert is an AIA certified Architect with many years of architectural design and construction administration experience with all building types, including educational, medical, R&D, corporate, commercial, custom residential, multi-family housing, military and industrial projects. Emphasizing use of durable, low maintenance materials including stainless, copper, bronze, zinc, cement-fiber, plastics, composites, specialty sealants & industrial paints. This expert heads a building reconstruction and forensic investigation consultancy that provides visual inspection, intrusive testing, defect analysis, repair recommendations and forensic expert services for both plaintiff and defense parties. This expert brings to the table specialized knowledge of construction materials, industry standards, code compliance, waterproofing, vapor transmission, exterior finishes, corrosion, condensation, ventilation, mold, wood rot, suspended ceilings, interior partitions, and structural issues. This expert's experience includes thousands of visual inspections and hundreds of intrusive tests for construction defect cases, including institutional, commercial and retail structures, housing developments and private homes. This expert also provides reconstruction design, details and specifications focused on solving complex construction problems and developing effective repairs for commercial and institutional buildings.

  This expert has served as a third-party neutral construction expert for mediators, arbitrators and courts, and retained jointly by both plaintiff and defense parties. Specializing in complex construction disputes where resolution can be facilitated through clarification of technical issues and extensive case documents. Experience includes complex, multi-party commercial and institutional cases.

  
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• Expert Witness #265019

  This expert’s architectural degree and experience makes a uniquely qualified expert in the area of slip and fall accidents occurring from areas other than walkways. This expert’s architectural experience spans the spectrum from residential properties to office buildings to hotels and manufacturing plants, and experience with roofs run the same gamut. This expert has published articles and given lectures. This expert has participated as an expert witness and has been deposed approximately 100 times, with 14 court appearances in areas such as premises liability, standard of care, coefficient of friction on walking surfaces and building code compliance.

  
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• Expert Witness #212142

  This software systems expert has over 30 years of experience in software system design, development, implementation, and small-group management, including extensive experience in bioinformatics and computational genomics, as well as building graphical user interfaces using XWindows and Motif for complex financial and technical applications.

  This expert has worked as an expert witness for over 25 years and has been engaged in over 60 matters, prepared over 35 reports and declarations, and provided deposition, court, arbitration, and hearing testimony. This expert has performed source code analysis throughout this expert's career, first as a software engineer and architect and later as an expert witness in patent, trade secret, copyright, and contract disputes. The work has involved a broad range of programming languages and application areas, and this expert is experienced in quickly learning new applications, languages, and technologies. This expert is fluent in reading and understanding many high-level languages, including C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, and SQL, though this expert has not worked extensively in assembly language for several decades.

  This expert has served for over 45 years as a software development consultant to several major technology and life sciences businesses. This work has included developing an Oracle database to manage and index a large technical archive, making retrieval of specific data fast and efficient, and creating a suite of software tools to support database loading and the assembly and delivery of small and large archived data sets to customers. This expert has particular expertise in algorithms, relational databases, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and software applications.

  This expert's experience spans a broad spectrum of technology, several programming languages, a wide variety of applications, and multiple platforms. This expert has also worked as an expert witness in software intellectual property litigation, including disputes involving patents, trade secrets, copyrights, the DMCA, and business practices. In that work, this expert has analyzed source code and systems, prepared expert reports, given deposition testimony, and testified in arbitration hearings and federal court.

  
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• Expert Witness #253417

  This lidar technology expert holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from a prestigious university and is a leading expert in electro-optical systems, advanced sensors, and imaging technologies, with over 40 years of experience in research, product development, and intellectual property litigation. This expert founded a consultancy specializing in electro-optical system design and debug, proprietary product development, and expert analysis of patents and trade secrets embodied in complex hardware and software systems. This expert is the author of a best-selling textbook on building electro-optical systems. The technical work includes the design and prototyping of lidar, spectroscopic, imaging, and sensor systems intended for real-world, publicly accessible environments. This includes vehicle-mounted and mobile platforms such as vehicular lidar, bathymetric and obstacle-detection systems, and ruggedized optical instruments operating under vibration, temperature extremes, and ambient light. This expert's experience directly encompasses camera and imaging technologies, including low-light and high-dynamic-range optical detection systems and solid-state imaging receivers. This expert spent over 20 years at a major corporate research center, making foundational contributions to optical interconnection, imaging, spectroscopy, and manufacturing instrumentation, and authored numerous patents and publications. This expert is a Master Inventor and recipient of multiple major technical awards.

  This expert has worked on vehicular sensors, including the design and installation of spark and heat detectors for use on cotton harvesters, as well as expert work involving radars, lidars, and cameras on cars. This expert has experience in patent and trade secret matters for both defendants and plaintiffs. This expert has also performed extensive reverse engineering of vehicle-mounted lidars. As an optics and electronics specialist, this expert has substantial knowledge of the design and use of cameras in many situations, including visible-light cameras in instruments, imaging lidar, thermal image sensors, and scanning systems.

  This expert is an experienced expert witness and litigation consultant. This expert has served as a testifying expert in over 30 patent and trade secret matters in U.S. district courts, the ITC, and USPTO proceedings, including high-profile, multibillion-dollar disputes, with extensive experience in reverse engineering deployed equipment and analyzing source code, firmware, and system behavior.

  
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• Expert Witness #260492

  This fabric flammability expert holds a PhD and has been involved with fire testing of materials and products for over 40 years.

  This expert has served on technical committees addressing fire standards, textiles, plastics, and fire tests, including leadership roles on several subcommittees and task groups. The particularly relevant fire test for apparel textiles is 16 CFR 1610, which all fabrics used for apparel textiles in the U.S. must meet; it is a U.S. federal standard. Other tests applicable to fabrics include NFPA 701 and ASTM D6413.

  This expert has served as a special expert in a number of fabric flammability cases, working for both plaintiffs and defendants. This expert is also heavily involved with code development for building and fire-safety codes, including committee work addressing structures, construction, and materials. This expert has been deposed and testified at trial.

  
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• Expert Witness #268384

  This PHP/source code comparison and code review expert is a computer scientist educated at a prestigious university and has over 10 years of experience as a testifying expert witness in technology cases. This expert has served as a consulting and testifying expert witness in software development, patent infringement, and commercial litigation matters for both plaintiffs and defendants, with the ability to translate complex software, patent, and technology issues for lay audiences.

  This expert has consulted on significant antitrust cases in the travel industry. This expert has been responsible for PHP code review work, including comparing software products in patent infringement matters and evaluating allegations involving installation of web-based software products. This expert has experience coding and managing software development for PHP and web-based applications, including building numerous e-commerce sites for large and small stores and implementing order management, payment processing, and real-time tracking systems at private companies and a major financial institution.

  
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• Expert Witness #270508

  This network monitoring expert has over 40 years of experience with storage devices, embedded software systems for industry and consumer products, and related systems, including flash memory such as solid state disks, memory cards, and flash drives; optical storage such as CD, DVD, WORM, and magneto-optical storage; magnetic storage such as hard disks, floppy disks, and tape; RAID and disk arrays; jukeboxes; USB; SCSI; iSCSI; IDE/ATA/ATAPI/SATA; Fibre Channel; PCMCIA; game programming; home appliances; and telecommunications.

  This expert has written and designed device drivers, software, and firmware for Windows, Linux, VxWorks, QNX, and other embedded real-time operating systems (RTOSs). Professional roles have included software developer, project lead, seminar presenter, and technical writer. Technical experience includes programming languages such as Java, Python, PHP, LabVIEW, C, C++, Delphi, C#, and assembly.

  This expert has served as an expert witness and expert consultant in over 40 engagements involving patent, trade secret, copyright, class action, and contractual disputes, as well as patent portfolio reviews involving file systems, game programming, home appliance technology, telecommunications, and television control software. These engagements have drawn on over 30 years of experience in the software storage industry and over 40 years of experience as a computer engineer, and have involved technology in the consumer products, telecommunications, and storage industries.

  This expert has written expert reports, been deposed, and provided courtroom testimony at trial. Engagements have involved source code analysis and comparisons, object code disassembly, benchmarking, computer media duplication, and forensic analysis on data storage devices and file systems using tools including EnCase, FTK, and DiskJocky.

  This expert has worked on over 50 expert witness matters and has testified by deposition and at trial multiple times. Career experience has included work on networks internal and external to computer systems, including international communication networks. Prior projects have included building a system that periodically pinged computers on a network to detect computer hardware theft, and similar technology has been used to measure the availability of web systems.

  This expert is an experienced expert witness and litigation consultant.

  
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• Expert Witness #279988

  This biomechanical causation expert leads a highly successful, in-demand architectural security design consulting firm that provides consulting and design services to architects, owners, and developers in the private and public sectors. This expert has over 30 years of experience and specializes in planning, safety design, construction, and accessibility features for many types of buildings, including apartment buildings, office buildings, shopping centers and plazas, parking garages and lots, parks and recreation facilities, nightclubs and restaurants, schools and universities, jails, prisons, courthouses, and police facilities.

  This expert earned a Ph.D. in Criminology as well as a B.Sc. and MSc. in architecture and works as a consultant on building codes, secure environments, slips, trips, falls, and threat assessments for private and public buildings. This expert has specialized training and experience in architecture, safety, security, and human factors. This expert has worked on many stair-fall cases and has testified for both plaintiffs and defendants. This expert has extensive experience providing expert witness services in premises negligence cases, including matters involving slips, trips, falls, accessibility and ADA compliance, building code compliance, negligent security, inmate violence, and suicide.

  
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• Expert Witness #283004

  This mechanical engineering/HVAC expert holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Engineering Management and Operations, and specializes in mechanical engineering design and forensic engineering, with a focus on Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration (HVAC), plumbing systems, building systems, and energy conservation. This expert has held a founding leadership role at a technical consulting firm providing design, forensic, and construction management technical consulting services, drawing on over 30 years of mechanical engineering experience.

  Project experience includes work at residential, commercial, industrial, municipal, educational, and institutional facilities. Services include forensic investigations, property loss and liability consulting, expert witness testimony, investigations of building system performance issues, repair and replacement cost estimate preparation and review, and building code research and analysis.

  
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• Expert Witness #283093

  This construction defects and inspection expert is an active residential and commercial building inspector with over 25 years of experience and has performed over 40,000 inspections of both new and existing construction. This expert is certified by a prominent building-code organization as a California Commercial Building Inspector and California Residential Building Inspector and by a national home-inspection certification association. This expert is an active municipal building inspector with extensive experience in all phases of residential and commercial construction.

  
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• Expert Witness #283127

  This building inspection expert has over 20 years of experience as a county building inspector and brings extensive experience inspecting residential, commercial, and industrial projects for compliance with applicable codes, ordinances, and specifications.

  This expert is a professor teaching courses including National Electric Code, residential wiring, and commercial wiring, and is an ICC Commercial Combination Inspector, Building Inspector, and MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, & Plumbing) Inspector. This expert is also an experienced expert witness and litigation consultant.

  
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• Expert Witness #284607

  This software/financial system development, integration, and migration expert has over 40 years of experience in software development and architecture and has founded a successful technology consultancy.

  This expert provides forensic reviews involving reverse engineering, patent infringement and validity, algorithmic analysis, software development, hardware benchmarks, and web crawling. Development projects have included integration of Node Webkit applications for widespread deployment and a web-based collaborative archive for video content. Installations have included design, development, and deployment for major providers, statewide and national agencies, manufacturing entities, banking-sector organizations, and others.

  This expert has experience in software development, software review, requirements synthesis, architecture and design, distributed computing, highly available systems, SOA, network integration, quality assurance, change management, and best practices, as well as C/C++, Python, Javascript, Java, C#, VB, J2EE, AWT, Node, Node-Webkit, DataDog, Logmatic, .Net, JQuery, JavascriptMVC, jsRender, Linux/Ubuntu, Oracle Developer, HTML/XML, CSS, XSL/XSD, iCal, GIT, Installshield, and QUnit.

  This expert's experience includes direction, design, deployment, and operation of systems to deliver a well-known commercial credit rating, building a real-time trading exchange for wholesale voice communication contracts, and developing, deploying, and monitoring a nationwide system delivering near real-time real-estate transaction data to agents and consumers. The accuracy and availability of these systems were a daily responsibility, achieved by applying instrumentation, monitoring, and alerting based upon key metrics and statistical anomaly. Metric history integrated with change management data facilitated rapid rollback of erroneous "breaking" changes and the detection of "bad" data.

  This expert has observed scenarios with large data providers in which the execution, or failure of execution, of legacy system evolution characterizes an organization's willful effort to preserve profit but eventually results in multi-week service outages and continual system failure. This expert has participated in numerous forensic source-code and technical-document discoveries corresponding enterprise history to relevant legal theories.

  
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• Expert Witness #291628

  This architectural and building materials expert holds AAA and MRAIC credentials and has substantial knowledge of the design profession, building materials, and building regulations.

  This expert has evaluated building components for industry, particularly wall and roof panels, as well as other building components, and has consulted on wind-energy development in Alberta.

  This expert has served on and chaired technical building-code task groups concerning airborne sound transmission, solar collectors, and sheet steel products.

  This expert is a registered architect who continues to design buildings, examine and remediate building envelope issues, and consult on building regulations and standards.

  This expert has been qualified in court as an expert in architecture, building science, building construction, building codes, indoor air quality, and general health.

  
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• Expert Witness #296301

  This civil/structural and metallurgical engineering expert holds a PhD and has over 40 years of experience in metallurgical and civil engineering. This expert earned a BS in Civil Engineering, an MS in Metallurgical Engineering, and a PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from well-regarded universities. This expert specializes in inspection and evaluation of distressed, failed, and damaged structures, building code evaluations, failure analysis of mechanical components, and is a Licensed Professional Engineer in several states.

  This expert has substantial forensic experience in structural and metallurgical engineering, including investigative and litigation-related failure analysis involving pipelines, water mains, reinforced concrete pipe, ductile iron pipe, construction defects, corrosion, and water-treatment infrastructure.

  This expert has investigated water main failures involving structural collapse during major underground construction work in California. The work included metallurgical examination of pipe materials and preparation of cause-and-origin analysis.

  This expert has investigated reinforced concrete transmission-main failures involving fractured pipe and steel-reinforcement failure. The work included metallurgical evaluation to determine the cause of the reinforcement failures.

  This expert has evaluated water-main disconnection during installation and pressure testing, including construction-related issues involving improperly constructed thrust blocking at pipe joints.

  This expert has investigated ductile iron water-main failures caused by pipe fracture, including metallurgical analysis showing that tubercular corrosion weakened the pipe and contributed to the fracture.

  This expert has evaluated structural failures involving water mains entering buildings along foundation lines. These evaluations addressed conditions such as rock impingement against pipe walls, differential settlement between foundations and adjacent backfill, and long-term settlement of pavement.

  This expert has investigated metallurgical water-main failures caused by corrosion, including dissimilar-metal galvanic corrosion, stray-current corrosion, soil pH-related corrosion, and improper water chemistry.

  This expert has also participated in multidisciplinary failure analysis involving the construction, operation, and incident events leading to failure at water-treatment infrastructure during a historic flood event.

  
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