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The education and practice of forensic structural engineering should have three goals: first, and foremost, to reduce the number and magnitude of failures; second, to apply effective and reliable methods of forensic analysis; and third, to provide technical support for the fair resolution of disputes.

IABSE's Working Group 8, Forensic Structural Engineering, aims to examine and mitigate failures, improve the international professional practice of forensic structural engineering and to facilitate the application of failure information to design and construction. This paper gives a brief overview of the Working Group's first project: a survey of the forensic practices in the US and a limited number of European countries. A preliminary conclusion is that the forensic practices in the USA, followed by the UK, are more organized and structured than in the other countries of Europe that have been reviewed: France, Hungary, The Netherlands and Switzerland. The centralized registration and analysis of failures in France (Sycodes), the efforts in The Netherlands (ABCMeldpunt), and the UK (CROSS) with the accompanying initiatives to improve safety (e.g., Platform structural safety and SCOSS) are commendable, and other countries should consider following these initiatives in learning from failures.