Mark formed Equipment Damage Consultants in July of 2007 after 5 years with another engineering/scientific consulting firm. Mark’s 27 years of consulting expertise helped to develop and maintain state-of-the-art investigatory and damage assessment techniques for high-tech equipment losses. Mark has provided damage assessments and LKQ analyses on over 1150 claims totalling >$22 M in technology equipment, helping insurers minimize the potential for, and impact of, catastrophic losses, as well as to reduce the inflation of high-tech equipment damage claims. In addition, Mark has served as an expert witness on numerous equipment damage events and was an instructor for a variety of training courses (lightning, fire, water damage claims, equipment restoration) and directed several disaster recovery, restoration, and damage assessment training and certification programs.
For corporate clients, Mark has consulted on disaster recovery and damage assessment projects involving >$100M in technology assets for the telecommunications, IT, medical and manufacturing industries. He has also developed and instituted Physical Risk Assessments, Phase I Business Contingency Planning programs as well as full scale business continuity and business resumption plans for several telecommunications and IT organizations. In a prior position, Mark spent 16 years in the telecommunications and electronics industries, primarily in a disaster response and remediation methodology research role. As Director of an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers, Mark has provided electronic equipment hardware and facilities restoration guidance for several hundred disasters involving fire, smoke, water damage, and numerous other contamination events. Through the “lessons learned” in disaster response and recovery, this experience has been applied to developing proactive consulting on physical risk analysis, risk mitigation, environmental control, environmental analysis, and disaster avoidance and response training. Mark has been involved in some of the largest disaster restoration projects in the telecommunications industry. He has gained extensive experience in mediation of restoration efforts among clients, insurance carriers, the press, cleaning companies, environmental control companies and in negligence claims. As an OSHA certified "first entry" supervisor for hazardous materials situations and hazardous material transportation, Mark has been called upon to enter facilities for equipment assessment immediately after a fire has been extinguished, or a hazardous materials event has occurred - usually several hours prior to the client being allowed in. Mark has contributed expertise in contaminant chemical analysis, air filtration technology, airborne particle measurement and has developed standard techniques for risk and environmental assessments ("auditing") of electronic equipment, data processing and administrative facilities.
Mark holds B.S. degrees in Marine Science/Biology/Chemistry from the University of Tampa and attended graduate school at RutgersUniversity for Environmental Chemistry. Published in the field, Mark is a Certified Professional Chemist (CPC), a Certified Business Contingency Professional (CBCP), and has held key technical and standards committee positions within the American Society of Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Association for Aerosol Research (AAAR), and the Association of Contingency Planners (ACP).
