Failure™ Magazine

Exponent: The Company That Failure Built

Whenever disaster strikes, Exponent goes to work to find out, “What happened?”

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Business, Science & Technology

When Failure set out to do its first Science & Technology story, we chose to profile the science and engineering firm Exponent (Nasdaq: EXPO), not only because of its involvement in high profile investigations, but because we share a common bond. You see, until March of 1998, Exponent was known as The Failure Group. Naturally, Failure wanted to know how people responded to a company that had long used “failure” in its name—and why they ultimately changed to an innocuous moniker. We paid a visit to the firm’s worldwide headquarters in Menlo Park, California, to find out more about a company that makes failure its business.

Founded in 1967 as Failure Analysis Associates, the firm initially gained fame for its work in stress and fracture mechanics—in plain English, how things crack and break. Before long, Failure Analysis was investigating accidents and failures of every kind, including major aviation disasters, fires, explosions and earthquakes. Most of the few thousand projects they handle each year are of the garden variety, but some are the type you see on television or hear about on the radio. Past investigations include the walkway collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency (1981), the Exxon Valdez (1989), the Kobe, Japan earthquake (1995) and TWA Flight 800 (1996).

Exponent also maintains specialized laboratories at its various offices and operates the Test and Engineering Center (TEC), a 146-acre site in Arizona equipped with a two-mile “race” oval and 1,200-foot crash rail. It’s the place to be if you want to see spectacular automobile and aviation crashes. Another company specialty is producing computer animated 3-D re-creations of past accidents and shootings. A few notable examples include JFK’s assassination, James Dean’s automobile accident, the sinking of the Titanic, and a re-enactment of the likely sequence of events in the Nicole Brown Simpson murders.

Up until the past few years, the company focused primarily on these failure analysis-type projects—analyzing data and events after-the-fact. “Traditionally our business has been very event driven—when a plane crashes or a chemical plant explodes,” notes Exponent’s president and CEO Michael Gaulke. “We’re now doing more work before the failure and in that case we’re more proactive. As a generalization I would say people aren’t as actively seeking prevention as they are finding help after something has happened. But in some sense there’s even more value to clients if we can help them avoid an accident or failure. Because these things—at least the large scale ones—are terribly expensive when they do occur.”

Along with placing more emphasis on preventive services, the company’s acquisition of Environmental Health Strategies in 1996 and PTI Environmental Services in 1997 enabled the then-Failure Group to begin investigating a wide array of health and environmental hazards. Today, Exponent commonly studies medical technology, health services, air quality, water resources and water quality, and handles a wide range of human health risk assessments.

However, cold scientific analysis isn’t the only thing that Exponent can provide its clients—which include major corporations, national associations, government agencies and countless law firms. According to Angela Meyer, Exponent’s director of business development, taking human factors into consideration is critical in understanding how and why accidents occur. “We don’t just look at a design,” says Meyer, “we look at how the design is being applied. We also take the human element into consideration. Do people read warnings? What kind of instructions do people utilize or not utilize when working with a product? We take a 360 degree approach, taking all the elements into play.”

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