As you have learned previously, Forensic Engineering comes into play when failure of a technical system occurs, or if failure of a technical system is suspected to be the potential cause of an adverse advent. But what is failure really?

Failure is when a technical system has observably or measurably not fulfilled its functions in its utilization phase. Forensic Engineers may study these failures for reasons such as to determine:

• what happened,
• what caused it to happen,
• how it could have been avoided,
• how the technical system could be improved to avoid the event in the future.

The root causes of a failure can be in any of the life-cycle phases. And that is what the Tree House of Failures explained in this video will help you with.