>lets see the guy is paid a fairly high consulting fee and he is not familiar with oil booms.
The way it was worded I get the impression that $100/hr for consulting work is the norm for what he gets paid. Assume that that's what he got paid and that it's what he's used to making and I doubt we're looking at someone who's going to damage his professional integrity for the same amount of money he's used to making. As for familiarity with oil booms, there's no need. All he needs to be able to do is tell if it's going to hold up to the conditions it will be under when it's deployed. Any physical engineer should be able to do that with any material. As he said, it's a fairly standard, simple problem. >and exactly how independent was he? "...say Ian T Durham of the Department of Physics and Cooperative Engineering at Saint Anselm College" So he's a college professor. That's pretty independent. >sounds fairly suspicious to me. Not at all suspicious. Sounds to me like the company spent a boatload of money making sure their booms will work. Think about it this way: these are high quality booms (according to Durham) that BP is responsible for paying for. BP nixed them. I find it more likely that the BP engineer turned them down in hopes of getting cheaper booms elsewhere. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:321330 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
