Al Brown is a Chartered Engineer and has been appointed as an independent expert witness on more than 50 occasions. He has given oral evidence in court and has provided written evidence to and on behalf of insurers. Al leads the Fire Engineering Discipline for HKA following a successful 32-year career as a consulting fire engineer. Initially in the property risk engineering sector, conducting risk surveys and project engineering for high value and highly protected manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific, specialising in the semiconductor and information technology sector. 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. He is a recognised expert in semiconductor and LCD fabrication industry fire engineering and fire protection and has served on the NFPA standards committees for 318 (Cleanrooms) and 75 (IT Equipment) since 2001.