Claims and expert evidence
When a bore is lost, a line is struck or a schedule collapses, the dispute is usually about causation: was this bad luck in bad ground, or was it a decision somebody made? The drill record almost always knows.
What we are instructed on
Inadvertent returns
Whether the pressure envelope was computed, whether it was monitored, whether the response ladder was followed, and whether the return was foreseeable from the geotechnical record.
Strikes on existing facilities
What the locate package showed, what separation was designed and held, what the bore log says about where the tooling actually was, and whether the ground disturbance was correctly classified.
Stuck pipe and lost bores
Pull force against allowable, hole condition, ream schedule, fluid programme, and whether the abandonment decision was made against criteria or improvised.
Differing site conditions
Whether the ground encountered was materially different from what the tender documents disclosed — and what a competent contractor should have allowed for.
Schedule and productivity
Planned metres per shift against achieved, and whether the shortfall is attributable to ground, to method, to equipment or to the plan.
Workmanship and turnover
Whether the installation met the code, the design and the inspection and test plan, and what the records do and do not establish.
How we read a job
The record before the opinion
Bore logs, pressure data, navigation calibration, fluid reconciliation, daily reports, the ITP and the locate package. We form a view from the documents before we listen to anybody's account of them.
Reconstruct the installation
What was actually done, in what order, with what loads and pressures, against what was designed. Where the record is silent we say so rather than filling the gap.
Test causation
What would a competent contractor, and a competent engineer, have done with the information available at the time? That is the question, and hindsight is not admissible in it.
Report
A written opinion with the facts relied on, the reasoning, the limitations and the matters outside our expertise all identified — in the form your jurisdiction requires of an expert.
An expert's duty is to the court or tribunal, not to the party paying. We will tell an instructing client early and in private when the record does not support their position — which is more useful before a pleading than after one. We do not accept instructions on a contingent or outcome-dependent fee, and we will not write an opinion we would not defend under cross-examination.
Also, before it is a dispute
Much of this work is most valuable while the rig is still on site. If something has just happened, an engineer on the ground within a day or two can preserve the record, document the conditions and often resolve the technical question before positions harden. That is a cheaper engagement than the one that follows a year later.
What you get
- An early, privileged technical assessment of the merits, before anything is committed to.
- A document and record review, with what is missing identified.
- A formal expert report in the required form, with the declarations that role carries.
- Support through disclosure, experts' meetings and joint statements, and attendance to give evidence.