When Steven and Karen Pietropaolo sit down to watch the evening news with its accounts of grim tragedies in the region, it”™s with an eye on future business.
“We watch the news to see what we”™re going to be dealing with the next day,” said Steven Pietropaolo, president and CEO of LGI Forensic Engineering P.C. in North White Plains “Whether it”™s a building collapse, fire, most of the stuff you see, I”™m going to get involved.”
As his company”™s principal engineer, Pietropaolo specializes in “the high-profile large losses, which are typically fires and explosions and product failure,” he said.
Citing the confidentiality agreements required by many of his clients, Pietropaolo was tight-lipped about specific headline-making incidents and accidents, many of which caused deaths, for which he was called in to collect material evidence and trace disasters to their causes. He said he also appears three to five times a year in state and federal courts to provide expert testimony for clients in civil cases.
With five full-time employees and a dozen consultants, the Pietropaolos run a company whose range of services are sought by insurance companies, utilities that include Con Edison, law firms and the county attorney”™s office, claims adjusters and appraisers and fire investigation companies. Clients rely on forensic engineers to scientifically investigate the failures of materials, components, products and structures.
LGI consultants ”“ nine engineers, an architect and two field investigators ”“ are called in on “anything that goes wrong ”“ fires, explosions, a building collapses, a construction accident, scaffolding collapse, trip and fall,” the CEO said. “Our services are always in demand.”
“We do a lot of mold investigations ”“ sick building syndrome,” said Karen Pietropaolo, who works with her husband as executive vice president.
In the 14 years since Pietropaolo bought the business, LGI has employed scientific methods in the field and in the laboratory to answer the what-caused-it questions for more than 1,000 clients, most of them in New York City and the tristate area. Often they are steered to the Westchester company “just by word of mouth,” Steven said. “We do very little marketing.”
LGI”™s team of engineers and investigators “answers the question of why,” said Karen Pietropaolo. She coined the company slogan: “When you need to know why”¦You need LGI.”
“Why did the explosion occur, the pipe burst, the foundation collapse, the person was electrocuted, the swing set failed, and on and on,” she said. “That”™s basically what we do, is find out why things happened.”
“We do a lot of product liability” work, she said. “You wouldn”™t believe how many dishwashers get on fire.”
In the company”™s new materials testing laboratory, a cook stove sat wrapped in plastic, It”™s an “exemplar,” Steven explained, a new product model that will be used as LGI applies “reverse engineering” to trace the cause of failure in another stove of the same design.
Pietropaolo, a Yonkers native who earned degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering from Manhattan College, worked in the construction and insurance industries, where he was first exposed to the sleuthing work of forensic engineers.
“I always had an investigative mind,” he said. In this specialty business, “I was able to mix the two passions of being an investigator and using my engineering background.”
Working as an insurance claims adjuster, “My first assignment was a boiler failure. My supervisor put the name of an engineer on my desk. It was the guy I bought the company from 10 years later.”
The engineering business he bought in 1999 had been founded in 1952 to investigate heating and air conditioner failures for insurance companies and attorneys. “It was a one-man operation,” Pietropaolo said, “basically an engineer working out of his house.”
“Steve”™s dream was to build the business and really expand it to do lots of different things,” Karen Pietropaolo said.
That business owner”™s dream has been realized. LGI Forensic Engineers in April more than doubled its headquarters and laboratory space when it relocated from its Halstead Avenue location in Mamaroneck to 7 Reservoir Road in North White Plains. The company paid $1.8 million to acquire the 7,700-square-foot building from its previous occupant, an orthopedic medical group.
The Pietropaolos have invested approximately $3.25 million to purchase, gut and renovate the building and equip what Steven Pietropaolo called a state-of-the-art testing laboratory. With the recent addition of a scanning electron microscope and the hiring of an engineering lab technician, LGI is expanding its in-house operations to include metallurgical testing. (A leaking water-pipe valve that resulted in damage to condos at Trump Park Residences in Shrub Oak recently has been under the microscope.) Pietropaolo said LGI previously subcontracted some lab testing. “We want to be able to do it all,” he said.
Pietropaolo said renovations to the new headquarters started two days after Hurricane Sandy rampaged up the Atlantic coast, leaving in its wake vast property damage and heavy business for LGI in New York and New Jersey.
“I think Sandy was probably the biggest, most influential event in the last 10 years,” Pietropaolo said. “Sandy and (Tropical Storm) Irene kept us very busy.” His company has assessed the extent and causes of damage from the October superstorm, determining at homes and businesses whether damage was the result of flooding or wind.
That post-Sandy business continues. “Things are going to go into litigation,” Pietropaolo said. “The influence of Sandy is going to be around for a long time.”
“It”™s a specialty niche business and there is competition,” he said. “I would say it”™s a very select type of engineer that can do this.”
