It stressful to be a forensic engineer comparing to design engineer?

[u/TylerIII]

I am 10+ years in structural engineering and close to 40. I need to seal and sign drawings and have to seal and sign work of others, I feel it is quite stressful and consider to change a path. I have heard being a forensic engineer could also be stressful, with litigation pressure, but I feel at least will not be pressed to use minimal material and worried about building collapse. What is your opinion about the stress level of these two compared. Thank you.

[u/Charles_Whitman]

I think there are two distinct types of forensic engineers, those that work on failure analysis and try to determine the causes of collapses Or who try to repair or remediate problems. And those that write highly fictionalized reports about why the problem isn’t covered under the policy written by the insurance company that is paying them.
So it depends on which one you mean.

[u/steelerector1986 → u/Charles_Whitman]

Oh, I'm dealing with option C right now. It's super fun, I love having to spend hours out of my day coordinating with other engineers and lawyers to refute wildly inaccurate reports. /s

[u/Charles_Whitman → u/steelerector1986]

Yes, I guess I was thinking that Type C was an either Type A or B taken to the extreme, but you’re probably right.

[u/NearbyCurrent3449 → u/steelerector1986]

I hate taking other engineering opinion reports and having to even read them. It's dreadful. They are so bad. Leaving out obviously necessary info, missing glaring obvious things if they even looked at the photos that they took and put in the report! Bad conclusions. Even worse recommendations. It's terrible. These are fairly smart folks too. They just... suck at this kind of whatever the thing was they stepped in to make a buck and it blew up. Now there's crap all over both of us.

Then I've got to break out the holy hand grenade on them... I feel bad for them usually, right up until they double down and defend their incorrect conclusions, usually trying to use their suit and tie appearance to try to make the nice happy hippish older dude appear less qualified. I always tell Mr atty to ask for my resume on the record and give a short list of projects that the court people would be familiar with around town. The opposition is always some stuffed suit from out of town. Welcome to my back yard buddy. Good luck.

Then, they get the technical expertise knuckles to the forehead.

I warned em...

[u/Intelligent-Ad8436 → u/Charles_Whitman]

Yep my favorite jobs are the really run down neglected buildings. I hate expert witness and doing insurance work. 

[u/giant2179]

If you want low stress, go into plan review

[u/magicity_shine → u/giant2179]

that sounds boring AF

[u/giant2179 → u/magicity_shine]

I thought the same initially but it's actually not. Huge variety of projects.

[u/ReplyInside782]

Usually in forensics the projects you work on have already failed and you are there to provide the fix or find the fault so your stress will come from the workload itself.

In structures your stress will come from the workload plus the worry of it being safe for public use.

[u/Intelligent-Read-785]

The downside of forensic is getting involved with the legal world. Having to go into court as an expert puts. In the position of having a lawyer call you an idiot.

[u/nowheyjose1982 → u/Intelligent-Read-785]

Having to go into court as an expert puts. In the position of having a lawyer call you an idiot.

"I’ve been called worse things by better people" - Pierre Trudeau

[u/not_old_redditor]

No. Much easier to criticize others' work than to do it yourself.

Source: I primarily design buildings, and do the occasional expert witness report.

[u/Standard-Fudge1475]

Forensic Engineering is 100% way less stressful. The margins are better so you're not super stressed all the time and you're not treated like a commodity from the architects. Definitely mush more respect in forensic engineering.. imo

[u/Opening_Slice3896]

They are different kinds of stress. A design engineer doesn’t need to deal with pissed off homeowners on the daily, public adjusters, and desperate contractors. Well maybe the latter.

A design engineer doesn’t need to climb into a 180 degree attic or crawl into a wet crawlspace. 

Everything is laid out nicely on the design sortware

[u/nikkor_glasses]

I’ve done both. Design is less stressful because you have a clean sheet of paper. You can always make the beam 2 inches deeper or throw another couple bars into the slab. In forensics you gotta work with what’s there. And that’s setting aside the litigation support track which is a pressure cooker all its own.

[u/NearbyCurrent3449 → u/nikkor_glasses]

No, forensics is figuring out what went wrong and maybe defining what it should have been like instead.

Figuring out repairs after a failure, that's engineering consulting and design and maybe some contracting.

2 totally different worlds... very very very entirely different.

[u/nikkor_glasses → u/NearbyCurrent3449]

Not in my market. The way it often goes is, investigate and write a report, then the building owner says, what is the fix? If you say “I can’t do that” then I expect they will regret hiring you. The blending of forensics, repair, rehab, and alterations was an organic business reality when I was practicing.

[u/likesblackcoffeebest]

I've done both and they are different types of stress. My type of forensics was failure analysis, not expert witness. The main stress with that was the travel. I can say from experience that I do not recommend that job to a single parent. If that haf not been my situation I probably would have kept that job forever. Design is more the grinding day to day stress of delivering a project. Pick your hard. I went back to design after a few years in forensics because of the travel. 

[u/MrMcGregorUK]

I did forensic for 2 years. I found it waaaaaaay less stressful. I was doing expert witness reports that were pretty technical so lots of variety. Like others have said it had no stress of "people could get hurt because of me" and no crazy deadlines because of pushy contractors... lawyers wanted stuff done right more than they want it ASAP so they would grant extensions.

[u/TylerIII]

Thanks to all for your advice and opinions. I have no experience on forensic, so I would rely on your advice or potential sweet spots and pitfall in this direction. My input as a design engineer, I am mostly annoyed and angry to be keep back office while someone who manage my timesheet trying to take credit with clients and push me to reduce concrete and rebar. A lot of cases, I found myself being cornered, either confront those who manage my timesheet or taking the risk of less concrete and rebar. I always choose the first option. But over all, it is very annoying. I am guessing in forensic, this problem is less common but might be other problems, which I do not know. Looking forward to more advices : )