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Expert has 16 years of experience in designing, assessing and certifying equipment to national and international standards for intrinsically safe equipment. He has designed many intrinsically safe devices, including gas detectors, fire detectors and other systems. Applied standards include UL 913, ANSI/UL 60079-11, EN 50020 (ATEX), and IEC 60079-11. Nearly all of his designs have been to Class I, Division 1 and Class I, Zone 0 standards - the most stringent classifications available.

As part of this work, Expert has created many designs for industrial gas detection. He is an expert in the application and operation of all types of gas detection sensors, including electrochemical, catalytic, semiconductor, infrared and photo-ionization types, as well as industrial gas detection in general. He has designed, constructed, tested and certified some of the most successful designs in the industry. He also has experience in infrared and ultraviolet optical fire detection and general embedded electronics design and manufacturing.

Expert is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and has an interest the application of Lean principles to the practice of electronic product development and engineering. He has worked extensively with numerous major certification agencies worldwide, including UL, FM, CSA, DNV, Demko, SIMTARS, LCIE and SIRA.

System Design: He was approached by an industry-leading services company to design a hazardous locations rated safety system for their transportable equipment. This involved designing new modules and hardware from new, as well as integrating various existing components. He completed over six complete system concepts within eight weeks of inception, including thorough review against the latest certification standards. He subsequently completed experiments showing the selected option was viable, performed the system design and sourced and/or procured all the required material. The system was certified intrinsically safe for Class I, Division 1, Groups A-D, T4 with the potential to achieve both ATEX and IEC certification to Class I, Zone 1, IIC.Design Assistance: A leading firm in the field of fire and gas detection equipment approached him for consultation on an ongoing design effort. The initial consultation call showed several areas of concern, including potentially incorrect assumptions and interpretations made on the part of the certifications agency involved. He was retained as a consultant to help clarify the requirements for the design and potentially prepare arguments as to why the certification agency interpretations were incorrect per the applied standard(s).Design Review: On more than one occasion, he was contacted by a large multinational corporation that had a legacy product that was facing a recertification challenge. In one such instance, he examined the construction of the existing product and compared it to the new, incoming requirements for hazardous locations certification. Documentation and information was lacking on the product, but he was able to determine the methods of protection used and the application towards intrinsic safety. In this case, the cost to redesign the product to meet the new requirements outweighed the value of the product offering.Certifications Review: He was retained by a leading GPS manufacturing firm to investigate methods by which the company's product line might be made suitable for hazardous location use. Drawing on his experience with other, parallel products, he found that it was possible to achieve certification provided the agency used certain interpretations. He contacted an alternative certifications agency for the client and was able to establish that their approach was compatible with the product design, ensuring a strong likelihood of the existing products achieving intrinsically safe certification without significant modifications. Other areas of concern, such as the use of certain electrical components, were also highlighted as areas of concern and strategies to deal with them were developed.Product Design and Certifications: During his career, Expert has designed several portable, fixed, single and multi-gas gas detection monitoring instruments. All designs were certified as intrinsically safe to Class I, Division 1, Groups A-D T4 and/or Class I, Zone 0, IIC, T4. During this phase of his career, he became experienced in all of different intrinsically safe standards in use worldwide, as well as the many versions, revisions and interpretations created over the ensuing two decades. New technologies presented unique and previously undefined challenges to intrinsically safe certification, requiring novel approaches and inventive, well-reasoned arguments to be presented to the various agencies worldwide. None of his designs ever failed to achieve the target certifications.