Reducing Risk: Preparing to be an Expert Witness in a Deposition and Trial

David T. Williams and Associates (DTW) is a certified MBE, SBE, DBE and Disabled Veteran owned business. Dr. David Williams, the president of DTW, has over 40 years of experience in the water resources industry and is known nationally and internationally for his contributions to the industry. He served as Principal-in-Charge for several FEMA flood insurance studies in San Diego and Orange counties. He has written the new HEC-6 User Manual for the U.S. Corps of Engineers Hydrologic Engineering Center, performed HEC-6 and local scour analysis of pipeline crossings in Arizona and New Mexico, headed the Keene Ranch groundwater modeling study and the Nile River sedimentation evaluations for the World Bank. He is well versed in the computer programs HEC-1, HEC-HMS, HEC-2, HEC-RAS, HEC-6, STORM, and WQRRS. Dr. Williams is also a nationally recognized expert in sedimentation engineering and in developing innovative solutions to difficult hydraulic and hydrologic design problems in rivers and estuaries.

 

Dr. Williams previously served as a two time President of the International Erosion Control Association. He has served as chair of the ASCE Task Committee on Analysis of Laboratory and Field Sediment Data Accuracy and Availability. He is also a past chair of the ASCE Sedimentation, Computational Hydraulics, Stream Restoration, and Probabilistic Committees. He served as a committee member of ASTM A05.12 (Wire specifications), where he helped develop the standards for both welded and twisted (woven) gabions. He also served on ASTM D18.25 (Erosion Control Products), where he helped develop a variety of standards related to erosion control. While chair of the Federal Interagency Technical Committee on Sedimentation when Dr. Williams was with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he worked with hydraulic and sedimentation experts from the Federal Highway Administration, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, TVA, Bureau of Land Management and the Agricultural Research Service. His work with the Committee involved developing sediment sampling equipment and sediment data collection methods. He is the author of more than 100 technical papers and reports on hydraulics and sedimentation. Dr. Williams was formerly an Associate Editor of the ASCE Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, as well as a reviewer. He was selected the 1993 Small Business Person of the Year by the Carlsbad, California Chamber of Commerce, and served as chair of the Carlsbad Beach Erosion Committee.

 

His professional experience includes more than eighteen years as a hydraulic engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Waterways Experiment Station (WES,, now ERDC) in Vicksburg, Mississippi, both the Nashville and Baltimore Districts, and the Hydrologic Engineering Center (HEC) in Davis, California. While at WES, Dr. Williams worked on research applications of sediment transport in rivers and reservoirs and the solution of unusual hydraulic and sediment related problems using computer models and other state-of-the-art techniques. He also worked on the development of the cohesive and network versions of the HEC-6 sediment transport computer model and wrote the Reservoir Sedimentation Chapter in the U.S. Corps of Engineering Manual on Sedimentation Investigations. At the Nashville District, Dr. Williams performed erosion control and sedimentation studies for the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway Project and also conducted sedimentation and floodplain information studies of proposed flood control projects. He was acting Chief of the Hydrology and Hydraulics Section at the Baltimore District Corps of Engineers. During the mid 1970's, Dr. Williams worked at HEC, helping in the development of spatial data management techniques, evaluation of the economic benefits of flood control projects, and sedimentation in rivers and reservoirs.

 

Dr. Williams has been a frequent short course instructor for ASCE, Federal and State Agencies for computer training workshops on using HEC-2, HEC-RAS, HEC-HMS and HEC-6. In addition, he has taught short courses on channel bed scour for toe protection design, sediment transport, fluvial geomorphology, risk and uncertainty, bridge scour and streambank protection.