Engineers and Fire Investigators

Many people who work in the insurance  industry are under the impression that the work that engineers and fire investigators do is the same.  Because of this perception, they are often not sure whether when to use an engineer or a fire investigator.  Fire investigators are usually private investigators, engineers are not.  However, it is not unheard of for an engineer to be licensed to practice fire investigation.  Depending on the state in which they are based, they might be required to be licensed as private investigators in order to perform fire investigative services.  Typically, fire investigators do not have the education or experience to analyze the physics behind fire scenarios.  It is for this reason that engineers are used.  Engineers are equipped by education and (hopefully) by experience to address the physical workings of a machine that was thought to have malfunctioned and caused a fire.  In addition, engineers do not account for assets, conduct surveillance activities, or do background checks on people.  Engineers do investigate failures by means of experimentation, research, and calculation.  Where fires are concerned, fire investigators can identify the origin of a fire.  If that origin is inside a machine, such as an appliance, then, an engineer should be used to determine the cause of  the fire by determining what component failed. Engineers are also used to confirm that a machine was not involved in the cause of a fire.  Unless the cause is very obvious, an engineer should be used to identify the cause of a fire when the origin is placed by the fire investigator inside a machine.