Al Brown is a Chartered Engineer and Fire Engineer Expert with over 37 years of consulting experience.
Al has been appointed as an independent expert witness on more than 50 occasions. A testifying expert – Al has given oral evidence in court and in adjudication. He has participated in mediations and international arbitration.
Following a successful 32-year career as a consulting fire engineer, Al now focusses on expert witness instructions in fire engineering.
Recent instructions have included contractual compliance with statutory requirements, Defective Premises Act “fitness for habitation” claims, and Building Safety Act 2022 Remediation Orders. The fire safety issues involved include:
- Cladding and facades (ACM, HPL, EPS render and rainscreen systems)
- PAS 9980 Assessments and FRAEW (Fire Risk Assessment of External Walls)
- Passive Fire Protection (fire-stopping of service penetration, fire doors and fire dampers, fire and cavity barriers)
- Active Fire Suppression Systems (Automatic Sprinklers) including defects in design and installation, and accidental activation
- Fire modelling of products of combustion
Al Brown is “a passionate expert in his field” who is”immensly knowledgeable” and provides “easily digestible advice“
WWL Consulting Experts 2022 (Page 114)
Peers and clients say:
Construction Expert Witnesses 2023
“Al adopts a methodical, thorough and extremely diligent approach”
“He is able to explain technical issues in layman’s terms”
“His written and presentation skills are exemplary”
Career in Fire Engineering
Al’s fire engineering career began in the property risk engineering sector with FM Global, conducting risk surveys and project engineering for high value and highly protected manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. Since 1994 he has specialised in the semiconductor and information technology sector and as a large loss investigator he carried out investigations into 23 fires and other incidents.
In 1999, Al formed the fire safety engineering consultancy RUSHBROOK with fellow professional fire engineers. He served as Managing Director and Principal Fire Engineer for 23 years working on a wide range of fire safety engineering, fire protection, fire risk assessment and fire investigation projects in North America, Europe, South Korea, Japan and China.
In 2018 , he joined HKA as technical director, leading the Fire Discipline. In 2022 , became a Principal and in August 2023 returned to private practice to focus on his expert witness instructions through Fire-Expert.
Fire Engineering Expertise
A knowledgeable expert in cladding and façade fire safety, he has been instructed on more than 30 occasions acting on behalf of developers, main and sub-contractors.
For over two decades Al has been a recognised expert in semiconductor and LCD fabrication industry fire protection engineering. He has served on the NFPA standards committees for 318 (Cleanrooms) and 75 (IT Equipment) since 2001.
Al is highly regarded by clients and the dispute resolution professionals he works with. He has featured as a vetted expert on the Law Society of Scotland Register of expert witnesses and has appeared in WWL Consulting experts 2022 and WWL Construction 2023.