ABSTRACT
Despite rigorous safety standards and practices applied in industry, accidents still occur from time to time, either due to workers disregarding safety procedures or to some exceptional and unforeseen circumstance arising during routine operations. It is sometimes found that a faulty tool or machine setting was responsible. Serious accidents are usually subject to an inquiry by a team of experts and attract nationwide publicity, as well as likely prosecutions of management; smaller accidents are dealt with by local management teams with their insurers usually insisting on inclusion of independent experts with knowledge of the process operations and materials involved. The cases in this chapter are presented as representative examples illustrating the wide diversity of investigations requiring the skills of a forensic engineer.
