Petroleum - Natural Gas Engineering Expert Witnesses: 3

James P. Langley is an independent Energy Consultant with over 45 years of experience in his field. His practice focuses on business analysis related to Refining, Transportation, and other facets of the Downstream Industry. Mr. Langley holds a BA in Chemical Engineering and an MA in Business, with emphasis in marketing and finance. He has worked extensively on the international scene, traveling to over 40 countries 

Background Experience: Building on hard core plant operations, Mr. Langley's career moved into operations planning and strategic analysis. The money side of the industry analysis led into mergers and acquisitions, CFO of a specialty refining and chemical company, and, for many years, the industry subject matter expert for the financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. In that role, Mr. Langley traveled the world to guide PwC consultants and auditors in the nuance of the petroleum industry. Critical in that assignment was bridging knowledge between functional expertise in many areas, including litigation and arbitration support.

Later, Mr. Langley provided engineering, operations, and maintenance knowledge to the benchmarking of natural gas pipelines and processing facilities in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America, and Africa.

Litigation Support: Jim Langley has worked and consulted in almost every aspect of the downstream industry, and can explain past and current practices. He has worked in operations, supply and trading, marketing, finance, accounting, and taxation.

Mr. Langley has been successful in helping attorneys quickly understand the commercial, technical, operational, and broad business practices of their clients' industry. He provides a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the opposition's position, and includes suggested interrogatories. In written reports, he offers insights that clarify underlying issues in the dispute, and quantify the economic impact on clients. In deposition and testimony, Mr. Langley explains these issues in a way that is easily understood by the judge or jury.

He has spoken on industry issues on several occasions and taught an annual symposium course for 18 years at UT Dallas to international oil company finance and accounting executives.

Case Examples:

Florida Office:
Andrew Avalon, PE, PSP
Chairman
8633 Willow Kane Court
Orlando, FL 32835
aavalon@long-intl.com
T: (407) 445-0825     F: (407) 445-0821

Long International provides expert engineering and construction claims analysis, expert testimony, project management consulting, and insurance claims analysis services. Our focus is on heavy industrial projects including oil and gas, petroleum refining, petrochemical, chemical, mining/mineral processing, power, cogeneration, and other industrial projects. We analyze claims, not limited to, disputed change orders, schedule delay, acceleration, time extensions, liquidated damages, loss of productivity, defective specifications, and deficient project management performance.

Richard J. Long, P.E., P.Eng., Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Long International, has over 50 years of U.S. and international consulting experience involving construction contract disputes analysis and resolution, arbitration/litigation support and expert testimony, project management, engineering/construction management, cost and schedule control, and process engineering. As an internationally recognized expert in the analysis and resolution of complex construction disputes for over 35 years, Mr. Long has served as the lead expert on over 300 projects having claims ranging in size from US$100,000 to over US$2 billion. He has presented and published numerous articles on claims analysis, entitlement issues, CPM schedule and damages analyses, cumulative impact claims, and claims prevention.

Rod C. Carter, CCP, PSP is President of Long International and has over 20 years of experience in construction project controls, contract disputes and resolution, negotiations, mediation, arbitration support, and expert testimony on scheduling, loss of productivity, and quantum issues.  He has experience in entitlement, schedule, and damages analyses on over 30 construction disputes ranging in value from US$100,000 to US$7 billion, related to oil and gas, oil refinery, LNG, heavy civil, nuclear, environmental, chemical, power, industrial, commercial, and residential construction projects.  Mr. Carter is proficient in the use of Primavera P6 and P3 software, and he has extensive experience in assessing the impact to engineering and construction works of RFIs, change orders and other events.  Mr. Carter specializes in loss of productivity, cumulative impact, and quantum calculations, and had a lead role in assessing damages on more than a dozen major disputes.  In addition, Mr. Carter has developed cost and schedule risk analysis models using Monte Carlo simulations to address the uncertainty of estimates and claims.

Michael J. Vallez, P.E., MBA, LEAN SIX SIGMA is a Senior Principal with Long International and has over 40 years of hands-on and leadership experience in project management, engineering/construction management, cost and schedule control, change management, claims, and dispute resolution.  He has served in executive management roles for both the owner and contractor working on world-class oil and gas, power, and international mining projects.   Mr. Vallez has a proven ability to organize, integrate and manage the work of multi-disciplined technical specialists and project construction teams to achieve corporate financial goals and objectives of return on investment, safety, operational performance, cost, and time.  In all, he has provided leadership on several billion dollars’ worth of projects in the chemical, heavy civil, mining, power, oil and gas, industrial, and commercial sectors.  Mr. Vallez has written several books on the subjects of construction management, safety, and effective project leadership.

Mr. Melan was also past chairman of the API workgroup which developed the API 1163, “In-Line Inspection Systems Qualification” standard, and past chairman of an ad-hoc committee established at the request of the USDOT Office of Pipeline Safety (currently PHMSA) in creating the frameworks for API 1163, NACE SP0102, and ASNT ILI-PQ (In-line Inspection Personnel Qualification and Certification). While on assignment in the UK, he participated in the creation of Parts 4 and 5 of British Standard PD8010 (Code of Practice for Pipelines).

Litigation Support - As a Pipeline Construction, Operations, and Maintenance subject matter expert witness, Mr. Melan provides services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant. His In-line Inspection evaluation services allow him to evaluate pipes and pipelines using non-destructive examination techniques to detect and size internal and external damage.  He has been retained domestically and internationally. Mr. Melan's services include on-site inspections, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony.  

Areas of Expertise:  

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