Exponent, Inc. and with its subsidiaries (‘Exponent’) operate as a science and engineering consulting company that provides solutions to complex problems.
Clients
Exponent serves clients in chemical, construction, consumer products, energy, food, beverage, and nutrition, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, technology, industrial equipment, transportation, and other sectors of the economy. Many of the company’s engagements are initiated directly by large corporations or by lawy...
Exponent, Inc. and with its subsidiaries (‘Exponent’) operate as a science and engineering consulting company that provides solutions to complex problems.
Clients
Exponent serves clients in chemical, construction, consumer products, energy, food, beverage, and nutrition, government, life sciences, insurance, manufacturing, technology, industrial equipment, transportation, and other sectors of the economy. Many of the company’s engagements are initiated directly by large corporations or by lawyers or insurance companies whose clients anticipate, or are engaged in, litigation related to their products, equipment, processes, or services. During 2024, the company provided services representing approximately 24%, 19%, 16%, and 10% of revenues to clients in the consumer products industry, energy and utilities industries, transportation industry, and chemical industry, respectively.
Services
Exponent provides high quality engineering and scientific consulting services to clients around the world. The company’s service offerings are provided on a project-by-project basis. Many projects require support from multiple practices.
The company operates the following 16 practices in two reportable operating segments, Engineering and Other Scientific; and Environmental and Health:
Engineering and Other Scientific segment
This segment includes Biomechanics, Biomedical Engineering & Sciences, Civil & Structural Engineering, Construction Consulting, Data Sciences, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Human Factors, Materials & Corrosion Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Polymer Science & Materials Chemistry, Thermal Sciences, and Vehicle Engineering.
Biomechanics
The company’s Biomechanics Practice applies engineering principles and biomechanical knowledge to address intricate challenges at the intersection of biology, healthcare, and engineering. The company’s expertise enables it to comprehend and evaluate the interaction between the human body as a biological system and the physical environment. This analysis facilitates the identification of the causes, nature, and severity of injuries, as well as the potential impact and optimization of human health and well-being. The company applies biomechanical principles to assess the injury potential associated with the use and misuse of consumer and industrial products. Furthermore, it extends these principles to support the development and integration of wearable and digital technology solutions, tailored to specific use cases and user outcomes.
Over the past year, the company’s biomechanics staff conducted analyses of human injuries that occurred while individuals were utilizing a diverse range of products, including recreational vehicles, sporting goods, trucks, trains, aircraft, industrial equipment, and automobiles. Additionally, they evaluated the implications of utilizing protective devices, such as restraint systems, airbags, and helmets, in reducing the likelihood of injury and assessed injuries in various settings, including workplaces, homes, and recreational activities. The company’s consultants also evaluated product designs for performance, hazards, and injury risks to assist clients with design modifications, address consumer feedback, and respond to regulatory requirements. Finally, they designed and conducted a series of large-scale laboratory-based and subsequent clinical validation and benchmarking efforts to support the design, development, and adoption of fit-for-purpose solutions.
Biomedical Engineering and Sciences
The company’s Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Practice applies engineering principles and scientific methodologies to medical technologies, including the evaluation of designs and performance of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and biologics. The company’s engineers and scientists assist clients with characterization of biomaterials, medical devices, and their interactions with pharmaceuticals, cells, and tissues. To assist in regulatory clearance and approval, the company performs preclinical testing, helps formulate related regulatory strategy, and conducts design verification and validation. The company also assists with design and manufacturing failure analyses, root cause assessment, recall management, and medical device explant analysis. In addition, the company’s staff performs analysis of clinical outcomes for medical devices and related procedures using administrative claims databases. The company’s expertise is also utilized in product liability, intellectual property litigation, regulatory investigation support, technology acquisition, and due diligence matters.
Civil & Structural Engineering
The company’s Civil & Structural Engineering Practice brings together decades of expertise to offer a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to promoting the safety, durability, and economic viability of a wide range of infrastructure assets. It addresses the challenges inherent in designing, constructing, and maintaining buildings, bridges, tunnels, pipelines, and industrial facilities—investigating the extent to which these structures perform their essential functions under a variety of loading conditions and natural hazards. The company’s team, which includes structural engineers, geotechnical experts, architects, material scientists, and geologists, is dedicated to identifying and solving complex engineering problems. Whether it’s evaluating structural failures due to natural or human-induced phenomena, or investigating soil issues, such as landslides, foundation and retaining wall damage, and dam or levee failures, the company leverages sophisticated simulation tools, on-site inspections, laboratory testing, and remote sensing technologies to provide actionable insights and recommendations for remediation.
In addition to failure investigations and repair recommendations, the company specializes in assessment and mitigation of risk to the built environment associated with hazards, such as hurricanes, flooding, wildfires, earthquakes, explosions, ground movement, and aging infrastructure. The company has assessed such risks to high-rise buildings, bridges, tunnels, industrial facilities, pipelines, and nuclear power plant structures and provided testimony in the U.S. and international courts of law. The company’s expert consultation ensures that clients—from property owners and contractors to utilities and government agencies—receive the highest level of technical support and innovative solutions to complex engineering challenges.
Construction Consulting
The company’s Construction Consulting Practice provides expertise in the areas of project advisory, risk analysis, strategic planning, dispute resolution, delay analysis, and assessment of financial damages. It has continued to expand the practice by leveraging key client relationships in several industry sectors, including utilities, data centers, infrastructure, and oil and gas.
Over the past year, the company’s team of advisors and experts have been retained on numerous complex projects around the world. The company’s advisors and experts have successfully collaborated with its clients on numerous assignments, from assisting in establishing best-in-class construction and risk management processes and structures, managing a variety of programs and projects, to providing forensic analysis and expert advice in analyzing and resolving project performance, cost, and schedule impact claims in both domestic and international arbitration, and private and public litigation matters. The company’s multi-disciplinary staff, which includes engineers, project and program managers, schedulers, quantity surveyors, and cost specialists, provides these services to both the public and private sectors for clients who represent a diverse mix of corporations, law firms, and agencies. The company’s projects support many sectors of the construction and engineering industry, which include electric and gas utilities, refineries, petrochemical facilities, data centers, building construction, transportation systems, infrastructure, power plants, hospitals, airports, and sporting arenas.
Data Sciences
The company’s Data Sciences Practice comprises its core capabilities in statistics, data analytics, and dedicated data collection. Drawing on experience in a breadth of engineering, science, health, and environmental applications, the company assists clients with their most complex data challenges at all stages of the product or process life cycle. The company’s team of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers designs sampling plans, surveys, and experiments to create, manage, and analyze data sets of all sizes and varieties. User-focused visualizations support data-driven decision-making and help clients measure risks and benefits to determine appropriate courses of action. Utilizing rigorous statistical methods, the company can help assess and improve quality and reliability and mitigate risk. The company’s experience helps clients build products that perform for a wide variety of users while preventing data bias, collecting personal data with consideration for privacy, and managing the risks associated with global data collection.
During the past year, the company’s team worked on diverse projects for government, industry, and legal clients. It performed assessments of manufacturing quality systems, evaluated the durability and reliability of smart cards for identity management and credentialing, examined the in-service safety record of home appliances and medical devices, and developed sampling plans associated with product recall campaigns.
Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
The company’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Practice offers a broad range of expertise to address complex issues for industrial, government, and legal clients. The company’s power engineers advise clients on challenges relating to reliability of electrical systems, failures in power generation, transmission, and distribution, as well as on distributed generation and renewables.
The company’s team of electronic engineers works on failure analysis, product robustness, and reliability for consumer devices, industrial electronics, and the health industry. The company’s computer scientists and engineers advise high-tech industry clients and work with computer-controlled applications to evaluate product safety and software reliability. The computer science and engineering expertise the company offers encompasses a breadth of areas, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, information and numerical sciences, algorithms and data structures, computer graphics, computer architecture, networking and communications, as well as security and cryptography. The company operates laboratories for testing heavy equipment and electronics and has a broad capability in analyzing computer software.
Over the past year, the company performed a wide array of investigations ranging from assessing damage to electrical power infrastructure from the effect of weather-related events to working with clients to develop sophisticated machine learning algorithms applied to large quantities of unstructured data. The company continues to work with consumer electronics manufacturers and the transportation industry on the reliability and robustness of computer-controlled equipment for user safety.
Human Factors
The company’s Human Factors Practice evaluates human performance and safety in product and system use. The company’s consultants study how the limitations and capabilities of people, including memory, perception, attention, reaction time, judgment, physical size, and dexterity, affect the way they use a product, interact with an organization or environment, process information, or participate in an activity.
The company reviews warnings and labeling issues related to consumer products, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, medical devices, and industrial products, supporting the development of safety information to accompany products and assessing claims that the safety information provided was inadequate.
The company applies its expertise in human behavior, warnings, and decision-making in class action suits, and in evaluating claims seeking to establish a class. In addition, the company assists manufacturers with compliance with regulatory guidelines related to products and works with them regarding analysis of adverse event reports and consumer complaints in publicly available databases overseen by the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The company examines the role that attention plays in human perception, memory, and behavior, and how attention, inattention, and distraction may affect safety in a wide range of settings and activities, such as operating vehicles and machinery, walking, and using consumer products. The company addresses the reliability of human memory and retrospective reporting in the gathering of fact-based evidence. The company utilizes scientific investigations and research, such as human perception, reaction time, and looking behavior, to assess driver behavior in both accident investigations and during the design of automotive systems. The company’s Human Factors scientists have been actively engaged in research and project work supporting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), covering topics, such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and automated vehicle technology, in order to understand and advise its clients on how these technologies may change the nature and dynamic of driving, and the role and performance of the driver.
The company provides user experience research, including focus groups, usability testing, and complex user studies with custom-tailored designs, across a wide range of industries, including consumer electronics, medical devices, and vehicle technologies. The company’s state-of-the-art Phoenix User Research Center, with 5,000 square feet of research space, has six lab suites, including a dedicated focus group room, an ophthalmological lab, a motion capture lab, and wearable eye-tracking technology, plus connectivity to its vehicle test track. The scope of Human Factors engagements ranges from consulting on its clients’ research to providing turnkey research solutions.
The company performs incident investigations and root cause analyses of near-misses and accidents involving human error in occupational and industrial settings. The company’s Human Factors scientists have advanced technical systems training and experience required to understand how humans contribute to the initiation of, and emergency response to, explosions, fires, chemical releases, and major equipment failures in the manufacturing, utility, oil and gas, and construction industries, among others. The company also capitalizes on this knowledge to conduct human error risk and culture assessments to help clients proactively control human performance gaps, improve occupational and process safety performance, and create administrative controls and procedures.
In addition to helping clients address the frequency and severity of incidents related to human error, fatigue, and performance, these and other similar project activities can be leveraged to improve efficiency, reliability, and maintainability of normal operations.
Materials & Corrosion Engineering
The company’s in-depth knowledge of materials science, corrosion, and metallurgical engineering, combined with the breadth of its collective experience across many industries and disciplines, gives its Materials and Corrosion Engineering Practice a unique ability to efficiently provide its clients with solutions to their complex materials-based problems. The company uses its knowledge and experience to understand how and why materials, products, and processes may not perform their intended function. Further, the company uses this knowledge to help its clients minimize the risk for future failures of new products, as well as aging infrastructure.
Over the past year, the company’s Materials and Corrosion Engineering Practice helped clients solve critical materials-related issues in the consumer electronics, medical devices, battery systems, chemical processing, transportation, energy, utilities, and aerospace fields, among others. The company’s support of dispute resolution in the intellectual property, premises, and product liability fields continued to grow, supported by its strong position in direct industrial consulting.
Mechanical Engineering
The company provides clients with a thorough comprehension of current and alternate designs of mechanical systems to identify vulnerabilities before failures occur, develop appropriate risk mitigation methods, and provide post-failure investigations.
The company’s consultants review the performance and reliability of industrial processes, manufactured products, and engineered systems, and determine the root cause of failures. The company assists in legal and insurance matters, failure investigations, product recall investigations, internal compliance programs, product development, workplace safety evaluations, and intellectual property matters.
The company’s staff members develop and utilize detailed and validated computational models and laboratory experimental methods to evaluate products, systems, and equipment. The company performs field inspections, relies on industry standards, and utilizes operational data to inform its analyses. The company has performed these activities in a broad range of industries, including transportation, energy, industrial equipment, building systems, medical devices, and consumer products.
During the past year, the company’s mechanical engineers worked on a wide variety of projects, including international construction disputes, product recalls, and mechanical safety in product development.
Polymer Science & Materials Chemistry
The company’s Polymer Science and Materials Chemistry Practice consults with industrial, government, legal, insurance, and individual clients regarding polymers and textiles used in diverse applications, as well as the chemistry, materials, and processing aspects of batteries, drug delivery systems, and other products that depend on highly controlled manufacturing environments.
The company assists clients in understanding the short- and long-term performance of plastic, rubber, adhesive, coating, composite, reactive chemical systems, and electrochemical energy storage systems when challenged by physical, chemical, thermal, and other operational stressors. The company’s work also includes customized chemical, electrochemical, and rheological testing and leverages expanding internal infrastructure for instrumented analysis and advanced imaging capabilities.
The company’s consultants participate in product development programs, perform failure analyses, and provide support to clients involved in regulatory and legal proceedings and the protection of intellectual property. Clients value the company’s technical expertise related to chemistry, formulation, manufacturing, and materials performance, its understanding of the history and evolution of these materials, and its ability to assist them in identifying and incorporating emerging materials and manufacturing technologies into their businesses.
During the past year, significant program activities addressed aspects of battery systems, consumer electronics, wearable devices, implantable medical devices, drug delivery systems, medical diagnostics, building materials, water handling systems, oil and gas applications, the plastics supply chain, fire retardancy and flammability, technology scouting, materials science aspects of health risk, service life prediction, sustainability, and intellectual property related to consumer, recreational, medical, pharmaceutical, food packaging, and other products.
Thermal Sciences
The company’s Thermal Sciences Practice provides expert analysis to investigate failures involving thermo-fluid systems, fires, and explosions in industrial, residential, commercial, and transportation sectors. The company has investigated and analyzed thousands of thermal incidents, ranging from high loss accidents in the oil and gas sector and major wildland fires, to small insurance claims. Information gained from these analyses has allowed the company to also assist clients in proactively making their assets and products safer.
The company’s staff, consisting of mechanical, chemical, fire protection, aeronautical, astronautical, and nuclear engineers, have assisted clients in assessing risk to, and from, their facilities, consumer product recalls, regulatory compliance, and frequently provide expert testimony in domestic litigation and international arbitration. The company’s engineers use advanced computational fluid dynamics, fire, and explosion modeling tools to supplement its analytical, experimental, and field-based activities. Preventive services include process safety hazard analysis for the chemical, oil and gas, and semiconductor industries, fire protection engineering, product development support, risk-based asset management, and dust explosion consulting.
In recent years, the company’s Thermal Sciences Practice has developed tools to evaluate fire and explosion risks of lithium-ion batteries in applications, including consumer products, vehicles, and grid-scale energy storage. The company continues to be very active in wildland fire investigation and continues to assist its clients in making informed risk-based decisions related to their assets and wildfires. The company has also developed analytical tools to assist utility clients assess the risk of ignition from their infrastructure.
During the past year, the company has continued to grow in its work in oil and gas exploration and production, liquefied natural gas, and downstream oil and gas. The company’s work in fire detection and protection-related issues has remained robust, and its work in consumer product recall and international arbitration has also grown.
Vehicle Engineering
The company has performed thousands of investigations for the automotive, trucking, recreational vehicle, marine, aerospace, and rail industries. Internal research programs and client projects have resulted in technological contributions that have assisted manufacturers in understanding product performance and provided insight to government agencies in establishing policy and regulations. Information gained from these analyses has also assisted clients in assessing preventive measures related to the design of their products, as well as evaluating failures.
The company’s Test and Engineering Center located in Phoenix, Arizona, is used for its most complex testing and analysis. The company has gained a worldwide reputation for its ability to mobilize resources expeditiously and efficiently, integrate a broad array of technical disciplines, and provide valuable insight that is objective and withstands rigorous scrutiny. Many of the company’s projects involve addressing the cause of accidents, and its clients rely on it to determine what happened in an accident and why it happened. In many cases, clients also want the company to assess what could have been done to reduce the severity of the accident or to mitigate occupant injuries to those involved.
Current advances in emerging transportation technologies and concepts allow the company’s multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and analysts across numerous practices to focus on the development and implementation of connected vehicles, automated vehicles, connected/smart cities, and data analyses. Whether the objective is design analysis, component testing, failure analysis, or accident reconstruction, the company’s knowledge of vehicle systems and engineering principles, coupled with its experience from conducting full-scale tests, aims to add insight and proficiency to every project.
Environmental and Health segment
This segment includes Chemical Regulation & Food Safety, Ecological & Biological Sciences, Environmental & Earth Sciences, and Health Sciences.
Chemical Regulation & Food Safety
The company’s Chemical Regulation and Food Safety Practice includes both technical and regulatory specialists who are experts in dealing with foods, food ingredients, cosmetics, dietary supplements, pesticides, and biocides (including conventional chemicals, microbials, antimicrobials/biocides, biopesticides, emerging technologies, and products of biotechnology), industrial chemicals, pesticide/biocide devices, consumer products, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. The company provides practical, scientific, and regulatory support to meet global business objectives at every stage of the product life cycle, from research and development to retail and beyond.
During the past year, the company’s Chemical Regulation and Food Safety staff have conducted a wide array of work. The European and the U.S. sides of the practice were jointly involved with ongoing support of several new pesticide active ingredients and end-use products. The European side of the company’s business was involved with many projects related to plant protection and biocidal product regulatory submissions, from new active substances and those under review to product-specific dossiers for European Union member states and the United Kingdom. This has included new technologies in plant protection that meet the regulatory pressures to achieve greater sustainability. The company has also provided support for reviews of a large number of biocidal products through European and South Korean regulatory reviews. In addition, the company provided many specialist assessments relating to human and environmental exposure, risk, and product efficacy, as well as national and international Maximum Residue Limit/import tolerance submissions covering countries such as South Korea and Japan. The U.S. side of the company’s business was also involved in many projects related to agrochemical, antimicrobial, emerging technologies, and biochemical product regulatory submissions and approvals in the U.S., Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. These included new active ingredients, end-use products, emerging technologies, and import tolerances (EPA and FDA). In addition, the company has supported several clients in the U.S. with the U.S. Toxic Substances Control Act and USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service compliance. The company has supported clients with scientific and regulatory human and environmental exposure, risk assessments, and product reviews. In Europe and the U.S., the company continued to provide clients with regulatory compliance support for food contact materials, food additives, novel foods, nutrition-related analyses, as well as undertaking safety assessments for food, cosmetic, and consumer products. The company’s European and U.S. teams have been working together to help clients navigate and comply with the FDA MoCRA Cosmetics regulations that took effect in 2023.
The company also provided proactive and reactive product safety and litigation support. For industrial chemicals, the company continued to provide full regulatory support for its clients who prepared and submitted registrations and risk assessments. The company’s European and the U.S. offices were active in supporting its clients with their E.U. and the U.K. Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals and TSCA regulatory requirements.
Ecological & Biological Sciences
The company’s ecological and biological scientists provide strategic support on issues related to the environment and natural resources damages associated with chemicals and forest fires, international environmental disputes, ecosystem service assessments for businesses, adverse weather events/climate change, ecological risk assessment, ecotoxicology, novel remediation methods, restoration of wetlands and other natural resources, large development projects, resource utilization (such as mineral mining, oil and gas, wood pulp, transportation, etc.), agriculture land-use impacts, genomic assessments, product stewardship, and the use of chemicals and other products in commerce. Focusing on both legacy and emerging contaminants, the practice specializes in assessing the integrated effects of chemical, biological, and physical stressors on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Many of these assessments utilize a causal analysis approach to determine causation systematically and transparently in complex and interrelated situations. The practice consists of nationally and internationally recognized experts that cover disciplines related to the fate and effects of chemical constituents and other stressors, including the ecological implications and risks associated with these projects.
Environmental & Earth Sciences
The company’s environmental scientists and engineers provide cost-effective, scientifically defensible, and realistic assessments and solutions to complex environmental issues. The company offers technical, regulatory, and litigation support to industries that include oil and gas, mining and minerals, chemicals, forest products, railroads, aerospace, development, and trade associations, as well as to municipal and governmental clients. The company’s consultants specialize in the areas of environmental fate and transport, environmental chemistry and forensics, remediation consulting, environmental engineering and waste management, and natural resources damages assessment.
The company’s expertise also includes hydrology and hydrogeology, modeling and monitoring, water quality, water rights, and water resources, extreme weather event and climate change risk management, and evaluation of environmental and social risks.
The company’s work frequently involves complex and high visibility environmental problems and issues, often the focus of environmental or toxic tort claims, where evaluation of contamination and historical reconstruction of events, releases, and doses are central to problem resolution.
The company provides case-specific strategic and advisory consulting on risk mitigation, planning, and environmental regulatory and policy issues, as well as high-level technical strategic consulting to support critical business decisions and for complex matters where understanding the long-term implications of early technical actions is critical to managing overall liability.
Health Sciences
The company’s health scientists, including epidemiologists, toxicologists, industrial hygienists, exposure scientists, biostatisticians, risk assessment scientists, and physicians, apply scientific and medical principles to examine and address complex human-health-related risk, benefit, and value issues in a variety of settings. The company’s consultants are recognized nationally and internationally for their outstanding expertise and credentials, and their decades of experience in government, academia, and industry sectors.
The company’s work has included numerous community and environmental health assessments, disease cluster investigations, survey research, real-world data platforms, cohort and case-control studies, exposure assessment and simulation studies, biologically based modeling, meta-analyses, and state-of-the-art literature reviews. The company has addressed critical issues for clients on industrial chemicals, pesticides, mineral fibers, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, consumer products, digital health technology, nanotechnology, and other agents and products as they relate to human health risk.
The company’s multidisciplinary team has extensive experience investigating a broad variety of health concerns, such as claims of adverse health effects from exposures to a wide range of physical agents (e.g., ionizing radiation, and low-and radio-frequency electromagnetic fields); chemical agents (e.g., volatile organic compounds, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), mineral fibers, metals, air pollutants, fumes, and nanoparticles); and biological agents (fungi/molds, bacteria, and other micro-organisms).
The company can assess the potential health effects of occupational and environmental exposures, investigate accidental releases of chemicals, and evaluate the fate and transport of chemical substances; characterize consumer and workplace exposures through simulation and exposure reconstruction; develop measures of prevention and exposure control; and assist clients with occupational safety and health evaluations.
The company’s Health Sciences team, working closely with Biomechanics, Biomedical Engineering & Sciences, Data Sciences, Human Factors, Polymer Science & Materials Chemistry, and other practices, has considerable expertise in healthcare data science; strategy, design, and application of health economics and outcomes research, such as burden-of-illness assessment; selection, quality assessment, and analysis of electronic health records and healthcare claims, and the explication of methodological issues, such as randomization, bias, data linkages, drug interactions, and identification of high-risk populations.
History
The company was founded in 1967. It was formerly known as The Failure Group, Inc. and changed its name to Exponent, Inc. in 1998.
