Scott Hancock has 40 years of experience and joined S&ME in 1999. He has held many positions leading up to his current role, including Laboratory Technician, Field Technician, Driller’s Helper, Staff Engineer, Project Engineer, Project Manager, Department Manager, Office Manager, Chief Engineer, Regional Chief Engineer, and Technical Principal. He has extensive geotechnical, construction materials, special inspection, electronic reporting, and forensic experience. In his current role, he is responsible for assigned tasks; providing technical support to all offices in the company; and development/implementation of a cloud based, construction materials test and observation reporting system.
Electronic reporting of construction materials tests and observations has been an interest of his for the last 15 years. He was asked by an overseas client to report a construction materials project electronically. In attempting to comply with this request, the inefficiencies and duplicate entry of information became apparent. He has lead development of electronic reporting systems in Access and web based software. The current paperless system captures information in the field on a tablet, saves it in a cloud, makes it available for review over the internet, and prepares PDF reports that may be distributed electronically to a predetermined list of recipients. It includes a three stage Discrepancy Notice work flow to document deviations from project requirements and track them to resolution.
Scott’s interest in forensic studies was an outgrowth of what seemed like every crack on every client’s building being attributed to settlement. Over time it became apparent that settlement is not the cause of a crack unless you have angular rotation across the crack, and the crack extends into the foundation at some locations. The majority of cracks are cause by concrete shrinkage and constrained thermal expansion.
Scott graduated from the University of Florida with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in geotechnical engineering.