MODERN FORENSIC GEOTECHNICAL HANDBOOK FOR PRACTICING CONSULTANTS

MODERN FORENSIC GEOTECHNICAL HANDBOOK FOR PRACTICING CONSULTANTS

Investigation Methods, Case Documentation, and Expert Witness Testimony for Foundation and Structural Failures

When foundations settle, retaining walls move, slopes fail, drainage changes, or structural distress appears, the most difficult question is often not what happened-but why it happened, how the evidence can establish the cause, and how that conclusion can withstand professional and legal scrutiny.

Modern Forensic Geotechnical Handbook for Practicing Consultants provides a practitioner-focused framework for investigating geotechnical failures and developing technically defensible opinions from the first client contact through investigation, analysis, reporting, deposition, and expert testimony.

Rather than treating forensic engineering as ordinary geotechnical design performed after a failure, this handbook presents forensic work as an evidence-driven process of observation, hypothesis development, investigation, analysis, documentation, and causal evaluation.

• Accepting and scoping forensic assignments
• Conflicts of interest, competence, independence, and client relationships
• Evidence preservation and chain of custody
• Records review and investigation planning
• Boring programs, sampling, laboratory testing, and field instrumentation
• Settlement and differential settlement investigations
• Expansive and collapsible soils
• Bearing-capacity and foundation failures
• Slope instability and lateral earth-pressure problems
• Groundwater, drainage, erosion, piping, and moisture-related failures
• Seismic and dynamic ground failures
• Concrete deterioration and petrographic investigation
• Photogrammetry, LiDAR, digital documentation, and drone-based site capture
• Back-analysis and numerical modeling
• Root-cause and causal-category analysis
• Forensic reporting and technical documentation
• Depositions, cross-examination, and expert testimony
• Construction-defect and insurance-related investigations
• Residential, commercial, and infrastructure case examples
• Investigation checklists, report structures, and practical templates

The handbook emphasizes competing hypotheses rather than confirmation of a predetermined theory, encouraging consultants to identify alternative explanations, evaluate evidence objectively, document uncertainty, and connect conclusions to observable and testable evidence.

This handbook is written primarily for forensic geotechnical consultants, geotechnical engineers, civil engineers, forensic engineering professionals, construction-defect consultants, expert witnesses, and other professionals involved in engineering investigations and disputes.

Its professional and legal discussions have particular emphasis on U.S. practice, including U.S. engineering professional frameworks, expert disclosure, evidentiary reliability, litigation procedure, and regulatory considerations. Readers practicing outside the United States should adapt the legal, licensing, regulatory, and professional guidance to the requirements of their own jurisdictions.

This is not intended as an introductory soil-mechanics textbook. It is designed as a practical reference for professionals who already have a working understanding of geotechnical engineering and need a structured approach to forensic investigation and expert practice.