Electrical Electrocutions and Shocks Consultants: 5

Burtness Engineering Services, is a multi-disciplined consulting engineering firm serving municipal, institutional, industrial, and commercial end user clients, civil engineering firms, and landscape architectural firms with MEP services for the construction industry. They specialize in Street and Area Lighting Design, Electrical Engineering, and Forensic Engineering services.

Consulting Services Include:

• Illumination Engineering for Roadway, Street, and Area Lighting
• Electrical Engineering (Through 15kv)
• Monitoring and Control Systems for Street and Area Lighting
• Full Range of MEP Services
• Industrial Instrumentation and Control Systems
• Stakeholder Based Collaborative Design Philosophy
• Focusing on the Marriage of the Art of Aesthetic Design and the Science of Technical Engineering
• Serving as a Prime or a Sub Consultant
• Forensic Consulting and Expert Witness Services

Principal, Thomas H. Burtness, PE, is an Electrical Engineer specializing in both Electrical and Building Construction - equipment selection, specification, and installation (actually “working with the tools”), as well as cost control techniques.

Background - Mr. Burtness has 40+ years of experience in the design, specification, construction contract administration, installation, startup, and troubleshooting of electrical power, on-site generation, distribution, control, and instrumentation systems and equipment for residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal occupancies. His experience also includes water, wastewater, and stormwater treatment plants, and military facilities.

Additional expertise includes Illumination Engineering for street, roadway, and area lighting including photometric footcandle requirements, calculations, field verification, equipment specifications, installation, and analysis of failure, glare, overlighting and underlighting.

Thomas Burtness has written numerous in-depth reports, including municipal master planning documents, as well as operation, maintenance, and testing manuals. He also has extensive experience in public speaking and teaching.

View Thomas Burtness' Expert Witness Profile.

Discovery Engineering is a private Engineering Firm based in Boulder, Colorado, performing investigations into Electrical, Electronic, and Communications Systems.  Discovery Engineering also works with management to analyze risk, improve quality, and understand variability processes.  Clients include industrial, commercial, research, legal, government, and private entities.

Mark McFarland, PE, Founder & CEO, is an Licensed Engineer and Statistician with over 25 years of extensive education and experience in applied statistics, statistical learning, artificial intelligence, electrical engineering, and communications. His practical experience includes the design, analysis, and testing of satellite, cellular, LTE, Internet, wireless, Wi-Fi, RADAR, networks, data communications, communication protocols, standards, public safety communications systems, GPS, instrumentation, and control systems. 

Mr. McFarland understands variability is crucial to improving and controlling processes.  He brings scholarship and practical experience in Statistics and Applied Research to help clients understand variability and improve outcomes.

Applied Research and Analytics Consulting Services:

Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction Quality Improvement and Control Risk Analysis Root Cause Analysis

Research Methods Experimental Design Statistical Engineering Electrical Investigations

View Mark McFarland's Expert Witness Profile.

Electrical Safety Group Inc. provides consulting services in Occupational Electrical Safety for matters critical to electrical safety, including:

• Codes
• Standards
• Regulations
• Safe Work Practices
• Management Systems
• Inherently Safer Designs
• Reliability

Click here for my current CV

Partner and Principal Consultant, H. Landis “Lanny” Floyd II, PE, CSP, CMRP, CRL, CESCP, Life Fellow IEEE, has over 45 years of experience in Electrical Safety in the Workplace. His work has advanced the application of Human Factors Engineering, Electrical Technology, and Safety Management Systems in preventing occupational electrical injuries. 

Mr. Floyd retired from DuPont in 2014, holding the positions of Principal Consultant - Electrical Safety & Technology, and Global Electrical Safety Competency Leader. For more than 35 years, Mr. Floyd has focused on electrical safety in the construction, operation, and maintenance of industrial and commercial facilities. This included safety management systems, competency renewal, work practices, and the application of technologies critical to electrical safety performance. From 1992 to 2014, he led the team that designed and facilitated implementation of a strategy for continuous and sustainable improvement in occupational electrical safety for DuPont Global Operations. This work enabled breakthrough performance in prevention of serious injuries and fatalities from electrical energy in DuPont facilities worldwide. In 2013, Mr. Floyd was invited to join the faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he teaches in the Advanced Safety Engineering and Management Master of Engineering degree program. 

Author / Speaker - Actively involved in professional organizations spanning electrical engineering, occupational health and safety, and maintenance and reliability, Mr. Floyd has authored or co-authored more than 70 papers and articles and has given more than 150 presentations at conferences, seminars and webcasts in his work to advance the practice of electrical safety. He has been an invited speaker on electrical safety in Australia, China, Brazil, Western Europe, and throughout North America. 

View Lanny Floyd's Expert Witness Profile.

Ernest P. Chiodo, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., M.S., C.I.H. is a physician, attorney, Certified Industrial Hygienist (C.I.H), and biomedical engineer. Dr. Chiodo is board certified in the specialties of Internal Medicine, Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and Public Health and General Preventive Medicine. Dr. Chiodo served as the Medical Director of the City of Detroit and was the chief physician in charge of measures designed to protect the public health of over one million persons. He has also been the lead expert witness in a number of high profile cases including serving as the lead expert witness in a mass toxic tort case for Gerry Spence.

Areas of Expertise:

Toxicology

Epidemiology

Industrial Hygiene

Mold

Asbestos

Benzene

Biomedical Engineering

Accident Reconstruction

Electrocution

Building Related Disease

Biomechanics

Bed Bugs

A Licensed Professional Engineer in 11 states, John Averrett specializes in Electrical Shock / Electrocution, Utilities, Lightning Strikes, and Grounding cases involving death, personal injury, industrial equipment failure, vehicular accidents, fire cause/origin, contract, and construction disputes. 

Areas of practice include: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas; other states by comity. 

John Averrett is Executive Vice President of Goodwyn Mills & Cawood headquartered in Montgomery, AL. He has more than 25 years' experience in plan development for governmental, municipal, industrial and commercial clients and is currently coordinating a group of twelve other electrical engineers and designers. In addition to his design efforts, Mr. Averrett's experience includes work with electric utilities that includes transmission, sub-stations, and distribution; work with investigating lightning strikes; work with investigating grounding insufficiencies; and work analyzing and providing solutions for arc flash hazards.

Litigation Support - Mr. Averrett offers expert witness services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant. He provides site review, thorough reporting, deposition, and trial testimony as needed nationwide.

Electrical Engineering Electrocution Lightning Lightning Protection Arc Flash Electrical Safety

Building Analysis Grounding Shock Electric Shock Drowning Breaker Coordination Electrical Utility Districution