Richard A. Gehse, P.E.

Background

Mr. Richard Gehse holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Engineering and is a registered professional engineer in multiple states. He has extensive and diverse industry experience in power, metals, chemical, oil and gas material handling systems; wastewater and water treatment; onshore and offshore oil and gas; and petrochemical/refining sectors. His experience and industry knowledge cover over 40 years in areas of design, engineering, procurement, construction, engineering and project management, asset integrity assessments, scheduling, cost estimating, quality and control procedures, OSHA safe work practices, and contract management.

Mr. Gehse’s litigation experience includes forensic analysis and testimony on a complex offshore FPSO oil and gas international arbitration construction dispute in excess of $300 million in damages.  Having engineering and construction backgrounds, he was able to testify on damage claim deficiencies, FEED, construction delay, and commissioning claims and prepare documented counter-positions to support the arbitration process.

Mr. Gehse has also provided expert testimony in cases involving intellectual property claims for pressure vessel manways, auxiliary marine-style boilers, and equipment embedded software.

He has equipment/machine experience that includes gas turbines, steam turbines, power boilers, fire tube boilers, refinery furnaces, heat recovery steam generators, reformers, heat exchangers, relief valves, excess flow valves, mobile lifting cranes, crane safety, load rigging, custom machines and equipment used in the paper, refining, chemical, steel, aluminum, and related manufacturing industries, material conveyance systems, presses, extruders, mixers, crushers, filters, sizing screens, feeders, dryers, rotary kilns, robotic paint spray systems, vapor recovery systems, et al. His analytical experience includes piping flexibility analysis, fluid and solid mechanics, failure analysis, corrosion analysis, finite element analysis, heat transfer, and energy conversion.

Mr. Gehse’s technical areas of expertise include carbon steel, stainless steel and polyethylene piping systems, construction, potential impact area classification and radius of exposure assessments, heat mapping, vapor cloud dispersion modeling, equipment failure analysis, turbines, compressors, pumps, fans and other types of rotating equipment, barge, railcar and tanker truck loading and unloading systems, pressure vessels, furnaces, API storage tanks, aboveground, belowground and underwater piping, pipeline pigging, welding procedures and safe work practices, over-pressure relieving devices, fire and explosion prevention, protection, damage limiting construction, process safety management (PSM) and risk management program (RMP) regulatory compliance, mechanical integrity, corrosion assessments, power generation, co-generation plants, and combined-cycle power plants.

Mr. Gehse’s background also includes software development and deployment of engineering technical applications. This includes the development of software for OSHA PSM and EPA RMP compliance, ASME B31G corrosion assessments, ASME B31.1, B31.3, B31.4, B31.8, and B31.8S tools. He has coded in numerous computer software and database languages, and interfaces such as HTML, Google Maps/Earth, and Navisworks. His previous positions in the IT field include information architect, software/systems analyst, database administrator, and software developer. He is experienced in industrial distributed control systems such as Siemens and Honeywell systems and PLC systems.  Communication protocol was Modbus.

Mr. Gehse’s wastewater and water treatment areas of expertise include plants at both industrial and public facilities. His fluid mechanics background has resolved several aeration issues related to DO/BOD levels necessary for bacterial survival in aerobic and anaerobic biological processes. He also has experience with control systems for Enterococcus faecalis and Escherichia coli reduction. Expertise in wastewater and water treatment equipment such as pumps, compressors, AWWA piping, clarifiers, API storage tanks, above- and below-ground piping, and instrumentation and controls.

He has managed new grass-roots capital projects as well as the re-vamping and renovating of existing oil, gas, fertilizer, and petrochemical projects. Mr. Gehse has been responsible for executing many complex EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) assignments in the electric utility, metals, and oil and gas industries.

His rotating equipment experience includes pumps, compressors, fans, hydraulic converters/couplings, gear boxes, transmissions, steam and gas turbines used for power generation and prime movers, internal combustion and compression engines using gasoline, diesel, bio-diesel, natural gas, landfill gas, and LPG.

His refining/chemical experience includes offshore FPSOs, Pipestills, Hydrotreaters, Hydrocrackers, Fluidized Catalytic Cracking Units, Coking Units, Asphalt Units, Blended Oil Ultraformers, Reformers, Vapor Recovery Units, and related components such as API storage tanks, refractory, and utility systems.

His welding experience includes the development/review of welding procedures, review of welder procedure qualification records (PQRs), preheat and postheat procedures, welding techniques such as SMAW, GTAW/ TIG, and GMAW, and welding safe work practices.