Often there are no eye witnesses, or witnesses are confused as to what happened. An engineer often can do the best job of reconstructing an incident. The engineer knows what is physically possible and can make the appropriate calculations. Engineering intuition and imagination help to develop reasonable reconstructions. Engineering training is invaluable in the technical analysis of assumed possibilities.
Engineers also have the advantage of working with materials and knowing how materials react.
Product Development or Evaluation Many companies retain consulting engineers to provide specific, short-term expertise. Often a company may choose to retain a consulting engineer to ease the work load on regular permanent staff, thereby procuring niche expertise that is not resident or is not required on a regular basis. The consultant provides fresh ideas or concepts, often from alternative disciplines, and contributes unbiased evaluations of the projects or designs under consideration. Consulting opportunities available to power and machinery engineers are a good example of this trend. To keep up with the growing demand for innovative, high-tech equipment, farm equipment manufacturers need more engineers than are graduating from universities.