Dr. John Nelson is a Principal Engineer of Engineering Analytics, Inc. In that capacity he provides technical review and expert witness testimony on a variety of projects. Dr. Nelson has over 50 years of experience in the area of foundation engineering and construction. He was on the faculty of Colorado State University for 39 years. During that time he was also an original shareholder in Shepherd Miller, Inc. and served as a corporate consultant at Tetra Tech, Inc. for 7 years.
Dr. Nelson is the senior author of two books, the most recent being Foundation Engineering for Expansive Soil and an earlier one entitled Expansive Soils: Problems and Practices in Foundation and Pavement Engineering. He has experience in the areas of consulting engineering, research, teaching, and construction. He has a broad range of experience dealing with expansive soils, landslides and slope stability, compacted fills, soft soils, seepage and water movement in soils, design of embankment dams, and mill tailings management. Since 1974 he has been actively engaged in research and practice dealing with foundations on expansive soils, and also tailings management.
In the area of expansive soils, he was the principal investigator on several major research projects to investigate water movement in expansive soils and developed methods of heave prediction beneath slabs. He is also conducting research on full-scale piers in expansive soils. Dr. Nelson has developed a method for the design of stiffened slabs-on-grade and has provided professional litigation support dealing with slabs and foundations on expansive and collapsing soils.
Dr. Nelson has extensive experience in the area of slope stability and creep movement of slopes. He has published several technical papers on this subject as stated in his resume. He has taught several undergraduate and graduate level courses at Colorado State University in which this subject has been part of the curriculum. He has served as a consultant and expert witness on several projects dealing with slope stability both as landslides and as a part of the design and analyses of dams.
In the area of dams and mill tailings management, he served as chief technical reviewer for the USNRC for the Church Rock tailings dam failure and reviewed almost all of the Title II tailings management license applications. He is the engineer of record for the design of raises of tailings dams in Arkansas and New Mexico. He served as an expert witness on litigation involving failure of a tailings dam in Idaho, and on litigation involving seepage from large tailings impoundments in Arizona. He has also served as senior reviewer on several projects dealing with reclamation of tailings impoundments, and seepage from tailings. He taught a graduate course on Design of Dams at Colorado State University for over 30 years.
He is the author of more than 100 technical papers and reports.