Forensic engineering investigates the causes of an accident in order to identify them, explain their consequences, and propose remediation or preventive measures.

Principia has been active in this line of work for a long series of incidents. We studied the Aznalcóllar tailings pond following its failure in 1998, the collapse of a 50 m road signalling structure in the A-6 freeway upon impact from a lorry in 1999, the sinking of the Prestige tanker in 2002 with the associated activities to recover the fuel from the sunk tanker and, more recently, the collapse of a 200 m crane onto the roof of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 2015.