JOB SUMMARY:

Principled Engineering Consultants, LLC (PEC) is a member-company of 777 Partners Group of companies. PEC is a culmination of 30 years of experience in delivering engineering and expert witness services to the property casualty industry merging its talents and expertise with a financial group with over $10B in assets and 2,000 employees. Principled Engineering Consultants, LLC (PEC) consists of a team of expert-witness forensic engineers based in Dania Beach, Florida. Our firm has conducted thousands of engineering evaluations with our core expertise being in damage assessments following catastrophic weather events and composing engineering evaluation reports. These reports ultimately aid in settling disputed property cases for BOTH plaintiff and defense law firms, which allows us to continuously qualify as unbiased and objective experts within our field. We have handled a large scope of claims, ranging from small residential claims to large multi-million-dollar commercial claims across Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, where our opinions are overwhelmingly the basis of settlements.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Conduct residential and commercial forensic investigations to analyze and determine the

cause, origin, and extent of structural failures, water intrusions, roof damage, construction

defects and building system failures.

• Primarily responsible for heading PEC production, including preparing and drafting of Technical Reports, Photo Reports, and assisting with research of background documentation or technical publications, or delegating such tasks to Staff Engineers (EI) to keep production moving forward.
• Ability to adapt and quickly learn the field of forensic engineering and the qualities that make an effective expert witness.
• Either individually or as the lead engineer of a team, perform site inspections and investigations for residential and commercial properties to analyze and determine the cause, origin, and extent of structural failures, water intrusions, roof damage, construction defects, and building system failures.
  • This includes investigations related to catastrophic events such as storm damage, hurricanes, and floods.
• Serve as the expert witness on any claim in which the individual acted as the lead engineer.
  • This includes signing and sealing the technical reports and, when necessary, sitting for depositions and trials as the licensed expert engineer on the case.
• Must perform any duties necessary to uphold the engineer's professional license and keep it current and active.
• Exhibit the capability to manage multiple concurrent projects and assume responsibility for execution of the project within a set time frame or deadline.

SKILLS / KNOWLEDGE / ABILITIES

• Demonstrate strong written and verbal communication skills – these will be necessary to write effective technical reports and discuss claims with attorney clients.
  • Effective communication skills are a crucial part of delivering sound and confident expert witness testimony during depositions and trial.
• Demonstrate the capability to work effectively as a team with other engineers to accomplish tasks and projects in a timely manner, be it in a support role of another Senior Engineer or as the lead of other Staff Engineers.
• Perform rigorous inspections in hot climates (South Florida), including investigations of roof surfaces and the ability to crawl through and inspect attic spaces of residential structures.
• The candidate will work directly with the VP and Principal Engineer on cases to ensure consistency in standards and training of younger staff engineers and inspectors.
• Perform all work in accordance with PEC inspection protocols and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
• Help mentor younger engineers to continue to build a strong organization of expert forensic engineers and a practice focused on Integrity and Excellent Client Service.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Graduated from an ABET-accredited university with a BS degree in either Mechanical or Civil/Structural Engineering (master's degree or PhD preferred).
• Must be an active licensed Professional Engineer (Civil/Structural Engineering preferred).
  • Licensed Professional Engineer for 3+ years (preferred).
• Forensic investigation inspection experience, especially regarding roof damage evaluations (preferred).
• Deposition/expert witness testimony experience (preferred).
• Experience with Condo and Commercial Recertifications (preferred).
• Master's degree in Civil/Structural or Construction Engineering (preferred).
• The engineer must have an active Professional Engineer license, preferably in Civil/Structural Engineering, and preferably for over 3 years.
• Any additional certifications regarding home inspections or construction would be an incredible benefit and asset (examples include Haag Inspector certifications or General Contractor license, etc.)
• 5-10 years in field of engineering

CERTIFICATIONS AND LICENSES

• Florida Professional Engineering License (PE License)

KEY PERFORMANCE IDICATORS

• Communication: PEC engineers must be highly effective communicators. This includes verbal and written communication. This KPI is a measure of how effective the engineer is at communicating internally (verbal, email, teams) with peers, supervisors and subordinates as well with others outside of the PEC team that include clients and other 777 partner companies and managers. Perhaps the most important measure of the effectiveness of a PEC engineer is the quality of the reports he/she puts together. PEC engineers should require progressively less review comments during the QA process and avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. In fact, the engineer should aim to never have to address the same review comment more than 1 or 2 times. PEC engineers must also communicate effectively in Teams/Zoom calls as well as over the phone with our clients. Lastly, the engineer will communicate effectively in depositions and trial testimony to convey technical engineering terms in layman terms for non-technical audience (lawyers, adjusters, umpires, mediators, and members of the jury.
• Learning and Professional Development: PEC engineers must always be willing to learn and grow as a forensic expert. This means learning processes, protocols from superiors, other advisors, lawyers, adjusters to ultimately become a more well-rounded professional. The best forensic expert engineers are highly technical, but also develop an in-depth understanding of insurance law and policy language. Our jobs as PEC expert engineers is to make our supervisors and clients jobs easier. By learning and growing as a professional, we are able to provide more value to our clients.
• Teamwork: Teamwork is also a very important KPI for PEC engineers and corporate culture. The PEC team members must work together to "get the job done". PEC team members must understand their role and responsibility within the team, but also be willing to help other peers, managers, subordinates, and admin staff in order to "get the job done" and meet deadlines. As a client service-oriented organization, we must work together in order to meet client needs and deadlines.
• Accuracy and Quality: PEC team members must draft accurate, professional, defensible reports. The primary metric for Accuracy and Quality is the number and types of review comments that result from the QA/Review process. Theoretically, mistakes/review comments should not occur more than once or twice. The engineer has the opportunity to review QA comments through "tracked changes" feature on Microsoft work. The engineer should take note of the review comments and aim to never make the reviewer have to make the same comment over and over.
• Innovation: To grow and an organization, PEC team members must always look for ways to improve PEC processes, work product, develop new testing/field protocols that help us stay at the cutting edge of damage assessments. Ultimately, we have to generate accurate and winning reports by careful documentation and finding ways to tie evidence on the ground, weather data, and other factors to established engineering theory.
• Client Service: Client service can be broken down into 3 main factors. 1. Quality of deliverables, 2. Timely delivery of work product/reports, 3. Good communication that is professional and warm. Ultimately PEC engineers should develop effective professional and friendly relationships with our clients. At some point, PEC engineers should be able to text message back and forth with clients in an informal way, so that our clients are comfortable with us and can rely on PEC support on the fly.
• Engineering-on-Time Delivery – What is causing delays on your projects? Is it the engineering team? This performance metric measures the rate at which your engineering team meets its deliverables on time. On-Time Delivery = (# of Projects Delivered on-Time / Total # of Projects Delivered) * 100

PHYSICAL DEMANDS AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to sit and use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls. The employee frequently is required to talk and hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; reach with hands and arms. The employee is rarely required to stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl.

The employee must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, and the ability to adjust focus. The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.

EEOC

777 Partners is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All aspects of consideration for employment and employment with the Company are governed on the bases of merit, competence and qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, or any other category protected by federal, state, or local law.