Construction Industry Consulting

How We Help Clients

• Construction Operations

  When technical or managerial challenges are blocking your path forward, Exponent can provide the problem-solving power you need.  

   Exponent engineers and construction experts thrive on solving formidable challenges. Whether it's analyzing design issues or evaluating subcontractor invoicing processes, we get to the right answers by applying rigorous methods and creative solutions. 

  Drawing from construction management, civil engineering, materials and corrosion engineering, mechanical engineering, data sciences, and dozens of other disciplines, our custom teams are assembled to tackle your specific challenge, including:    

  • Change-order management 

  • Claim preparation and review 

  • Cost estimating/management 

  • Data analysis

  • Design peer reviews 

  • Differing site condition evaluation 

  • Monitoring — geotechnical instrumentation, remote sensing, and data interpretation 

  • Process improvement  

  • Project and portfolio management  

  • Rapid response to provide support after failures or collapses to identify and collect perishable data 

  • Reporting  

  • Risk management  

  • Scheduling support  

• Accident & Failure Investigation

  Our 50+ years of experience across all types of catastrophes — from building collapses to earthquake damage to worker accidents — enable us to provide detailed, actionable insights on why an incident happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening in the future.

  Immediately after an incident, Exponent can mobilize a team of experts to identify and collect perishable data that could be essential to understanding what happened. Our team of experts applies sound science and engineering to identify root causes, determine the scope of repairs, estimate their costs, and analyze schedule delay and cost impacts.

• Risk & Regulatory

  We work with clients to develop risk assessment methodologies to address issues ranging from jobsite accident prevention to environmental damage to schedule delays. Our experience across construction projects gives us unique insights into the sources of potential liability and the smartest ways to address them.

  While others offer qualitative opinions, we provide quantitative, actionable models — based on real numbers and grounded in science — to help you minimize risk across your operations. 

  Our reviews help ensure compliance with building codes, worker safety regulations, and testing mandates.

  Case study

  How Can We Ensure Safety Procedures Are Followed?

  When a major manufacturer's new factory was pushed to produce more, they hired Exponent to assess whether worker safety was at risk.

  

• Environmental Impacts

  Manage the environmental impact of your projects with expert scientific guidance. Our multidisciplinary scientific and engineering teams can give you a clear understanding of how your construction activities may affect the air, soil, and groundwater within and near your sites. Across hundreds of construction projects, we've helped clients with environmental impact statements and other specialized studies.

  Case study

  How Do You Prepare the Grid for Climate Threats?

  Southern California Edison needed support assessing, quantifying, and mitigating the effects of climate change on its vast infrastructure, and turned to Exponent to create a first-of-its-kind engineering framework.

  

• Specification & Design

  When you're suspending tons of steel and concrete over people's heads, there's no room for error or doubt. Ensure your designs are sound and process is solid with expert review and analysis.

  Exponent's construction experts, engineers, and process consultants can support you across the project lifecycle:

  • Specialized pre-engineering studies and peer reviews
  • Audit of engineering plans, civil and structural designs, and fire-suppression designs 
  • Materials specification for complex or innovative approaches 
  • Cost and quantum analysis 

  Industry Analysis

  Addressing Safety Gaps in High-Rise Façade Fires

  High-profile fires in high-rise buildings worldwide reveal design, testing, and regulatory insufficiencies in modern building façade materials and systems.

  

• Sustainability

  We help you understand the impact of climate change on your business, now and in the future. How will your customers' needs change? How are building codes expected to evolve? How can your operations use less energy? Are your structures built to withstand extreme weather?

• Health Impacts

  Get clear scientific guidance about how hazards on the job site and in building materials may impact human health. 

  Our specialists in toxicology, mechanistic biology, and epidemiology have conducted detailed assessments on the health impacts of hundreds of substances including dusts, paints, and plastics. We've studied hundreds of job sites and occupied structures, giving us unparalleled breadth of experience across the most challenging human hazards. 

  Beyond assessing the substances themselves, our studies account for exposure amounts and situations that create a true picture of real-world potential health impacts. 

• Data Analysis & Insights

  Insights that can reduce risk and uncertainty are hiding within the mountains of data produced by major construction projects. Our data sciences team can help you uncover the knowledge needed to make smart decisions and head off trouble before it becomes a liability. Ways we can help:

  • Advanced data modeling to provide key insights and decision-making support 

  • Analysis of what to measure and how 

  • Database management and integrations with third-party data sources 

  • Design of real-time dashboards and custom reports to enable clear communications 

  • Strategic alignment on the business challenges to solve 

  • Organization, cleaning, and alignment of data across multiple sources 

• Disputes

  From structural defects to schedule delays, Exponent knows construction projects (and their potential pitfalls) inside and out. When you need to understand the situation at hand, Exponent brings principled science to the task — telling you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. 

  Exponent scientists and engineers represent the science at dispute proceedings by bringing clarity, precision, and the ability to explain complicated topics in understandable ways to judges and juries. We assist clients across all phases of disputes including pre-litigation, fact-finding, litigation expert testimony, and arbitration.