Mark Phillips is a Mechanical Engineer, specialising in the investigation of fires, explosions and incidents of a Mechanical Engineering nature. He founded Phillips Forensic Science and Engineering in 2013 after 18 years as a Partner at Burgoynes. He obtained his degree in Engineering from Cambridge University in 1986.

Since 1989, he has been continuously occupied investigating incidents, usually seeking the cause. He has undertaken investigations in Europe, North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Russia, the Caribbean and the Falkland Islands. As well as completing well over 1000 investigations, he has given evidence as an expert witness in civil and criminal courts, and to domestic and international arbitration tribunals. His evidence has also been considered by a public enquiry. He has frequently acted as a single joint expert and has given concurrent evidence (‘hot tubbing’).

The Engineering incidents he has investigated include major rail incidents, including site investigations at Ladbroke Grove, Paddington, Hatfield, Selby, Potters Bar and Ely; derailments in tunnel boring works; accidents involving power-generation equipment, including gas turbines, internal combustion engines, wind turbines and fuel cells; accidents with cranes, lifts and work-access equipment; accidents on fairground rides; accidents with powered gates and automatic doors; hydraulic system failures; and incidents arising from defective systems of work, defective safety interlocking systems, defective design, structural collapse, and fatigue and corrosion failures.

His involvement with crane accident investigations is extensive, covering tower cranes, road and rail-mounted cranes, crawler cranes and travelling gantry cranes; as well as access equipment, such as mobile elevated working platforms (MEWPs) and window cleaning cradles. He investigated numerous prominent collapses, including the Canary Wharf, Durrington School and Croydon crane collapses, the Avonmouth Bridge gantry collapse, and the collapse of the HMS Belfast walkway.

He has extensive experience of incidents involving fluid transport systems, including water distribution systems, plumbing systems, plumbing fittings, hydraulics systems, gas distribution systems and cryogenic transportation equipment.

His experience in Fire Investigation is extensive, covering fires in large industrial plant, power generation and distribution equipment, road and rail vehicles, aircraft, ships, hotels, homes and domestic appliances, including situations where recalls have been initiated. He has dealt with marine fires involving hydrocarbon fuels, reefer cargoes, the spontaneous ignition of oil-soaked lagging, charcoal, fish-meal and calcium hypochlorite, including containerised cargoes. He has carried out heat-transfer calculations to analyse the heating of drums in a container next to a heated tank, solar heating, the temperature profile resulting from welding, the effect of condensation, the cooling of glass in a manufacturing facility following a machinery breakdown, and temperature variations during the discharging of ship tanks.

He has investigated incidents arising from the physical and chemical properties of substances, the mechanical properties of structures, fluid dynamics and thermodynamic phenomena. This includes Explosions resulting from the combustion of vapours and gases, as well as hydraulic, steam and other ‘mechanical’ causes. As well as explosions, he has also investigated the mathematically more challenging failure of storage vessels under vacuum.

Many of his investigations have focussed on Subrogation, Public Liability and Product Liability issues, but he has frequently been retained – and given evidence – where accidents at work have led to prosecutions for manslaughter, breaches of Health and Safety legislation or other legislation enforced by the safety regulatory authorities, including the HSE, EHOs, the ORR and the CAA. He has occasionally advised in murder cases where mechanical issues, such as the motion of projected or falling objects, is germane.

He began his engineering career in 1981 with British Aerospace, with whom he completed a technical apprenticeship and served as a Mechanical Systems Engineer. During this time his responsibilities included design and engineering of aircraft fuel systems, including specification of pumps, tanks, pipe networks, valves and other items; determination of system performance at rapidly varying ambient conditions; design and engineering of hydraulic systems; and consideration of the design of engine bay fire suppression systems. He was involved in the development of a mathematical model to assess the heat transfer into fuel used as a coolant and the rejection of heat to the environment in purpose-designed coolers and through adventitious heat loss.

Mark Phillips won a scholarship to Cambridge University, was a National Engineering Scholar in 1982 and has contributed articles to periodicals and reference works, including sections on pressure vessel failure, dispersion in confined spaces and the ignition of petroleum vapour. He has lectured to a range of audiences, including a Post Magazine Conference on Environmental Issues, Institution of Mechanical Engineers events at the Health and Safety Laboratory and in London, at a conference on the potential ignition hazards of mobile telephones at the Institute of Physics, and in Korea.