Standard of Care Fire Protection

Fire Protection Expert Witness Services

VERTEX’s senior engineering staff has decades of fire protection industry experience. This expertise allows our senior engineering staff to provide expert witness services and forensic analysis services related to fire protection system failures causing leaks and damage or failure to operate adequately during a fire incident.

System Failures

VERETX has provided expert witness services related to a wide variety of system failures related to fire suppression, fire alarm/detection, smoke control, passive fire protection, and life safety/egress systems. Typical failures range from systems that fail to control fires to nuisance activations that desensitize building occupants to damage from spurious activation of suppression systems resulting in water leaks or clean agent discharge

Our expert staff can review the applicable systems documentation and provide a forensic review of installation conditions to determine the potential cause(s) of failure and provide expert witness statements or testimony as needed.

Fire Incidents and System Response

In addition to the review of new systems, our expert witness staff have also been involved in multiple fire incident cases involving improper or inadequate system response. Following a fire incident, a fire protection expert witness may become involved for several reasons; this includes failure of a fire alarm system or fire suppression system activation, failure to notify occupants or monitoring stations, or faulty operation of such systems.

Once involved, our senior fire protection engineers will evaluate forensic evidence in addition to system documentation. Upon completion of the evaluation, our expert witness staff provide a letter of professional/expert opinion, written statements, testimony, and/or participation in depositions and trial as needed.