Forensic Engineering Editing and Proofreading Services

A failed component arrives in a laboratory in a sealed bag. It is the only one there will ever be. Cutting a section through the fracture will reveal how the crack propagated, and it will also destroy the fracture surface forever, along with the other side's opportunity to see what you saw. Forensic engineering is done under a constraint no other engineering discipline shares: the investigation consumes the evidence, and the record of what was done becomes the evidence instead.

We edit what forensic engineers and failure analysts produce — examination protocols and inspection plans, evidence receipt, custody and storage records, destructive testing protocols and joint inspection arrangements, photographic and documentation schedules, failure analysis reports and findings, site investigation and scene examination records, materials testing instructions and laboratory briefs, hypothesis development and elimination documentation, reports for insurers, solicitors and tribunals, peer review and technical audit responses, reconstruction and modelling documentation, and disclosure and preservation correspondence. Our editors work on the record that has to stand in for the object itself.

The examination record is the whole of a forensic engineer's credibility, and its purpose is to let a stranger reconstruct what was in front of you. Most reports describe conclusions well and the examination itself thinly. We work through these so the item is recorded as received — packaging, seals, condition, marks that were already present, and anything that happened to it before it arrived, since damage caused in transit or by a well-meaning maintenance fitter will otherwise be attributed to the failure; so every step is logged in sequence with what was observed before it and after it, because the value of an observation depends on when it was made; so anything destructive is preceded by a documented decision — what was recorded first, why the step was necessary, whether the other parties were notified and given the chance to attend, and what is now unavailable to them; so photographs are described in the text rather than left as an appendix of images, given that a photograph without a written observation records that something was seen without recording what; so hypotheses considered and eliminated are set out with the observation that eliminated each, as a report presenting only the surviving explanation invites the suggestion that it was the only one entertained; and so the limits of the examination are stated. Records written this way outlast the argument.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including instructions, evidence records and draft findings. We are editors rather than forensic engineers or legal advisers, and we offer no view on cause, liability or examination methodology. What we can do is make the record complete enough to stand where the object cannot.