Forensic Engineering Staff

Nikhil Kumar is an engineering economist with extensive experience providing research and consulting services to electric utilities, merchant power plants and government agencies. He has been working with various system operators, utilities, power plant operators and national laboratories on renewable energy and power plant cycling cost analysis.

In the forensic area, Nikhil specializes in cost of cycling power plants, operations & maintenance (O&M) cost and practices and their impact on power plant reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM), flexible power generation, cost recovery, and emissions regulations. His expertise includes the development and application of advanced methods for asset performance management, power plant operations optimization, electric system planning and dispatch, merchant plant bidding, and smart grid solutions.

Nikhil is a member of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He serves on the ASME RAM Committee for Power Plants and has a B.E. in Engineering from University of Mumbai, an M.S. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from North Carolina State University, and a Graduate Certificate in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

Bill McKeen’s expertise lies in the engineering design of shop fabricated and field installed products for highway departments, municipalities, utilities, marine and petrochemical industries. He has participated in investigations of failures of structures, pipelines, valves and related equipment to determine the root cause of failure.

His forensic engineering experience has included analyzing wind-damaged above ground fuel storage tanks, an explosion in a sulphuric acid tank, and the fracture of a hydraulic cylinder for fabricating prestressed concrete beams.

Bill graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.S. and M.S. in Civil Engineering. He is also a member of several industry bodies including National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE), National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), Texas Society of Professional Engineers (TSPE) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Dick Schreiber has over 40 years of professional mechanical engineering experience. He specialises in the failure analysis of mechanical and electro-mechanical equipment, boilers and machinery, piping, appliances, and other devices that are involved in complex accidents, fires and explosions. He also focuses on escaped water losses.

Some of the large losses Dick has investigated include a rocket fuel oxidizer plant explosion (Henderson, NV, 1988), an ammonium nitrate fertilizer plant explosion (Port Neal, Iowa, 1994), a vapor cloud explosion of natural gas at a combined cycle power plant (Middletown, CT, 2010), a meat packing plant fire (Booneville, AR, 2008), a propane explosion in a commercial building (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, 1996), explosions at three oil refineries (Delaware City, DE, 2001 and Big Spring, TX, 2008 and Texas City, TX, 2009).  During these investigations, Dick and his team interacted with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), federal and state OSHA, the ATF and the NTSB.

Dick graduated from the University of California with a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He is a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator, and is a registered Professional Engineer.

Douglas Hilleman is a Florida professional engineer and a life member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and graduated from the University of Iowa with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.

He has 46 years of experience in the power generation industry and his expertise includes general boiler design, power plant maintenance, and balance of plant; power plant operation; plant reliability improvements, process management and improvement.

During his career, Douglas has managed design, operation, maintenance, performed plant inspections for reliability assessment, damage assessment, and as a plant representative on a system-wide boiler, he and his team provided support that included predictive and preventative analysis, troubleshooting/failure analysis and countermeasures to manage the cost effective life of plant assets.

In the forensic area, Doug has experience in failure analysis with a focus on disputes between power plant owners and original equipment manufacturers on the suitability for service, remaining life and warranties on boilers and balance of plant equipment.

Eric Sullivan is a registered Professional Engineer and graduated from California Polytechnic State University with a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering. He has over 37 years of metallurgical engineering experience in the fields of materials, metallurgical and welding engineering, non-destructive testing and failure investigation.

Eric specialises in the analysis of mechanical equipment, engines, combustion, steam turbines and devices that are involved in complex accidents, losses, fires and explosions. He is also experienced in providing testimony for deposition, mediation and trial.  In the past, Eric has performed accident reconstructions and evaluated failures of equipment, devices and systems that have caused accidents, fires and explosions in oxygen and oxyacetylene systems, refiners, industrial boilers and natural gas storage facilities. 

Fatma Faham is a senior project manager with experience in performing stress analysis, design calculations and remaining life estimations for power generation components, e.g. tubing, piping systems and pressure vessels.

She also has experience in performing failure analysis of power plant components associated with turbine, boilers and piping systems as well as pressure vessels, heaters and condensers. She also has experience performing metallurgical and mechanical laboratory analyses of power plant components using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), optical microscopy and stress rupture testing methods. She has experience performing metallurgical evaluation, failure analysis, inspections and weld repairs of Grade 91 material. Fatma graduated with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Middle East Technical University, obtained an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Northeastern University and is a registered Professional Engineer in California, Rhode Island, and Texas.

Dr. Egan graduated from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and gained a Ph.D. from the University of London. He is a member of several industry bodies including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), American Welding Society (AWS) and the American Society of Non-destructive Testing (ASNT).

Dr. Egan has provided expert witness testimony in a range of forums including state and federal courts, mediations, arbitrations, and federal and state licensing hearings. He has also been retained and served as an arbitrator under the rules of the American Arbitration Association.

Dr. Egan is a world-renowned expert in the area of mechanical integrity assessment of pipelines and petrochemical plant process equipment.

He has worked on projects in numerous locations around the world including Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

Henry Vaillancourt has over 35 years of experience in the fields of metallurgical engineering, welding and failure analysis.

In the forensic area, Henry has testified in matters involving boiler material selection criteria and welding defects in structures. Henry graduated from the California Polytechnic State University with a B.S. in Metallurgical/Welding Engineering.

Dr. Kim Clark has over 40 years of experience in solving equipment and system problems in mechanical engineering and thermosciences using engineering analysis and testing. He has conducted many investigations into the origin and cause of complex fires and explosions in chemical process plants, industrial facilities, and commercial and residential buildings. Dr. Clark has provided testimony for deposition, mediation, arbitration and trial.

Dr. Clark has co-authored a book on the procedures, techniques and lessons learnt from origin and cause investigations of large losses. During his career, he has investigated ethylene plant heat exchanger shell catastrophic failure; stationary, truck and marine diesel engine failures; origin and cause of numerous fires and explosions in chemical plants, refineries, steel and metal heat treating plants, warehouses, commercial and residential buildings, and ships.

Dr. Clark graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, and gained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University. 

Mr. Jim Yavelak is a senior metallurgist, and is experienced in the research and development of advanced nondestructive examination (NDE) techniques for critical boiler components. Research includes investigating changes in material properties reflective of long operating time stressed aging of microstructures and the kinetics of precipitation in microalloyed steels. Work experience includes failure analysis of boiler pressure parts, material evaluation, electron microscopy, troubleshooting, degradation rates, root cause determinations, and boiler tube failure reduction programs, Developed recognizable microstructure “scale” for estimating the failure temperature of carbon steel tubes in-service in power generating equipment. Also participated in developing nondestructive oxide measurement techniques and internal tube damage ultrasonic measurement methods.
 
Past experiences include participation on due diligence teams during evaluation of New England Electric, Montana Power, and Southern California Edison systems. Specialized in power boiler evaluations, and development of degradation-based capital and maintenance spending forecasts.
 
Recent experience includes estimating the cost of cycling boilers; boiler condition assessment; monitoring the development of new condition assessment techniques; participating in field trials and commercialization of these new techniques; and project management of boiler condition assessment strategies and recommendations.

Dr. Gascón is a data scientist with expertise in evaluating large data sets from fossil and renewable energy power plants. He then uses statistical analysis, mathematical modeling and machine learning techniques to generate predictive models to improve plant efficiency. Dr. Gascón earned a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics developing detectors to study nuclear reactions. During a 2-year postdoc at Stanford and 3-year fellowship at Berkeley National Laboratory, he studied how to improve the functionality of radiation detectors by applying extreme conditions and using novel techniques and materials, with the objective of increasing the sensitivity of these detectors for national defense applications.

Dr. Gascon leverages his broad experience, programming skills and quantitative analytical background to solve a wide variety of problems involving large data sets in the power industry. He is the principal architect of Intertek's data analytics platform INGRID. His current responsibilities include the development of COSTCOM, a real-time cost analysis tool for power plant operations, WearMulti and Opcon, two multipurpose programs used in the nuclear industry. He also developed WINDLIFE, a fully customizable web-application for wind farms featuring anomaly detection and remaining life estimation. Dr. Gascon has also developed programs and algorithms to predict the impact of the variability in power generation of renewable energy on the wear and tear of fossil fuel plants.

Marvin Cohn has over 35 years of experience in the fields of engineering mechanics, stress analysis and metallurgy. He graduated with a B.S. in Physical Metallurgy from the University of Washington and obtained an M.S. in Engineering from the University of California. Marvin is an author of more than 50 technical papers, including eight professional journal papers, and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) as well as a member of the ASME B31.1 Power Piping Section Committee.

His recent work involves simulation of high energy piping calculated displacements to field measurements for more accurate stress predictions and remaining creep life estimates of main steam and hot reheat piping systems.  Marvin has provided litigation support for disputes involving the contracted design of high energy steam piping.

Mike Cronin specialises in material stress analysis, fracture mechanics analysis and non-destructive testing. He is an expert with ANYSYS computer modelling software for stress analysis.  The accuracy of his analysis results is enhanced by the combination of his theoretical background with his knowledge of mechanical systems. He has over 40 years’ experience and is a member of the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and American Welding Society (AWS). Mike graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology with a B.S. in Physics and a B.S. in Mathematics.  In his spare time, he gained an A.A. in Computer Studies, Programming and an A.S. in Computer Science from Ohlone College.

His recent work has involved fracture mechanics based suitability for service analyses of large high pressure steam turbine rotors and research on the effects of residual weld stresses on fractures.  

Mike’s forensic engineering experience includes analysing and testifying on failures of pressure vessels and piping, buried and undersea pipelines, solar plant support structures, wind turbine blades, and turbine rotors.  

Michael Liu is a project engineer who specializes in root and direct cause analysis, with specific project experience in heat transfer, flow-induced vibration, thermal-hydraulic analysis, and lifecycle projection. Mr. Liu also specializes in PWR steam generator analysis (tubing integrity, aging management, and computational fluid dynamics with ATHOS), 10CFR50 Appendix B quality assurance, nuclear procurement, receipt inspection, vendor auditing, and scheduling and cost estimation. He is an active member of several ASME B&PVC task groups for Section XI.

A member of the California Conference of Arson Investigators, Phil Wheeler has provided investigation and expert testimony in cases involving electrical equipment and systems. He has over 40 years of electrical engineering experience in the fields of design, construction, operation and maintenance of electrical power systems, and specialises in failure analysis and prevention.

He has investigated failures in electrical equipment such as high voltage capacitor switches, air conditioning controls, underground cables, appliances and overhead conductors. In addition, Phil has also performed fire and explosion investigations in plastics recycling, oil field, rocket fuel storage and residential appliances.

Phil is a registered Professional Engineer and has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the California State Polytechnic University and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California.

Mr. Gialdini is a registered Professional Engineer (Mechanical) with experience in failure analysis, mechanical testing, instrumentation, and data acquisition. His experience includes analysis of steady-state and transient stress, strain, and temperature fields using ANSYS finite element software; fatigue and fracture analysis of mechanical components. He has designed and fabricated testing equipment for the investigation of various mechanical failures; including a high cycle fatigue tester for cast aluminum components, a bolt torsion and tensile strength fixture, and a boiler ignition system.  Mr. Gialdini is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Institute of Steel Construction.

Tom Burnett has over 40 years of experience in the field of fossil power plant design, construction, start-up, controls, operation, maintenance, system upgrades and performance analysis. His extensive experience includes lignite, coal, oil and gas combustion in utility and industrial boiler applications.
 
Tom has testified in matters involving the effect of operation and maintenance practices on the reliability and condition of power plants, including industrial cogeneration plants, large coal-fired supercritical boilers and combined cycle plants. Tom graduated with a B.S. in Marine Engineering from the United States Merchant Marine Academy and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Nazarali Merchant, PhD., is a materials scientist with 20 years of experience in alternative energies, superconductors, fuel cells, batteries, solar cells, ceramics, metallurgy, failure analysis, welding consumables and processes. He is trained in Six Sigma, DOE, robust engineering, and project management. His work thus far has resulted in six US patents, five US patent applications under review, and 25 technical publications. Dr. Merchant also has experience working with the structure-process-property co-relationships in materials and products.
 
Dr. Merchant holds a PhD. and MS in Materials Engineering from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is a member of the Materials Research Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS).

Mr. Kevin Hara is a senior project manager and is experienced in power plant operations and maintenance. He has participated in power plant remaining useful life studies, condition assessments, and failure analyses. Much of his recent work has been in the area of boiler tube life assessments. He was part of the team that developed and patented TubeMod, an innovative method of extending the life of superheaters and reheaters. He participated in due diligence projects for the acquisition of power plant assets, including those of Pacific Gas and Electric, South California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric, Pacific Power and Light, Nevada Power, and others. He has worked on several root cause failure investigations of boiler explosions, boiler tube failures, and heat recovery steam generators.
 
He has over thirty five years of experience in the fossil power industry and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Taylor Kelly earned her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Houston investigating the mechano-electrochemical coupling behavior of stretchable lithium ion batteries. She brings her deep understanding of battery operation and failure to the energy industry, providing consulting and technology assessment services to energy storage manufacturers, developers, and consumers. Her recent work includes root cause analysis of battery failures and evaluating how changes in battery operation affect degradation and life.

Dwight Agan is a mechanical engineer with 29 years' experience executing and leading energy, environmental, and business projects advising power producers, industrial manufacturing, and government agencies in making the best decisions about energy utilization and generation, optimizing economics and environmental impacts.
 
He has specialized expertise in energy technology development and commercialization, energy market analysis in energy use with specific technical experience in gas turbine, diesel engines, natural gas and electric vehicles, gas and coal fired steam, combined cycle, and cogeneration power plants, alternative energy, air emissions testing, demand-side management, geothermal energy use, gas turbine and diesel engine emissions control technologies, energy marketing analysis, and development of energy/environmental software and databases.
 
He has a BS and MS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Most recently he has managed projects for major endeavors for entering new electric energy markets accounting for the mechanical damage and financial costs of load cycling operations.

Clayton Lee has over 30 years of professional mechanical engineering experience.  Clayton specializes in engineering analysis, including heat transfer, fluid mechanics and solid mechanics, both using specialized software and spreadsheet based calculations.  Clayton has worked extensively in the power generation and forensic engineering industries.
 
Clayton has investigated a number of large losses, including an explosion of a rocket fuel oxidizer plant, an explosion of an ammonia nitrate fertilizer plant, a propane explosion in a large commercial building and numerous gas pipeline failures.  Clayton has performed design reviews in cases ranging from home heating furnaces to a large state-of-the-art supercritical pressure power plant.
 
Clayton graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering.  Clayton is a registered engineer in the state of California.

John has experience ranging from analog electronics to mechanical design to materials characterization. His previous work includes rocket injector design and testing, paleoaltimetry, particle physics, energy storage, magnetic functional materials, material discovery, alloy design, and heat treatment. He has a bachelor's degree in physics from Caltech and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.