Management Team
Lonnie Haughton, MCP, LEED AP, General Contractor, Principal
Lonnie Haughton, MCP, LEED AP is a California-licensed general contractor (B) whose areas of expertise at Richard Avelar & Associates include construction defects, accessibility and personal injury litigation services, including field investigation, forensic evaluation of as-built conditions, building codes & standards research and code compliance review of existing construction and associated contract/design documents.
Lonnie is a professional member of ASTM International (ASTM), Construction Specifications Institute (CSI); Construction Writers Association; Exterior Design Institute (EDI); Forensic Expert Witness Association; International Code Council; International Wood Collectors Society; The Institute of Roofing, Waterproofing & Building Envelope Professionals (RCI, Inc.) and Western Construction Consultants Association (Westcon). He is a CSI-certified Construction Documents Technologist and an EDI-certified EIFS Third Party Inspector.
Lonnie is one of the less than 700 individuals nationwide who have been certified by the International Code Council as a Master Code Professional. Lonnie's many additional ICC certifications include Building Inspector—CBC; Building Inspector—IBC/IRC; California Residential Inspector; Building Plans Examiner; Property Maintenance & Housing Inspector; Accessibility Inspector/Plans Examiner and Fire Inspector I. In addition, he has been recognized by California's Division of the State Architect as a Certified Access Specialist (CASp-030). Lonnie has provided accessibility expertise regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act, HUD-504 and the Fair Housing Act for numerous state and federal cases. His expertise regarding proper interpretation and application of historic building codes has been used by attorneys in California, Nevada and Montana and his technical publications include a highly relevant article titled Use and Misuse of Historic Building Codes for Injury Trip and Fall Claims.
Lonnie Haughton's forensic expertise in applied building science and building envelope performance includes his use of a wide range of investigative tools—from moisture meters to water-finding test paper to in-situ sensors to calcium chloride vapor domes to hygrometers to psychrometric tables to WUFI software—to solve difficult leakage and condensation puzzles in California and Nevada, including claims of roof ‘leakage' that only occurs during hot sunny days. He has led a variety of training sessions for contractors and forensic professionals that present case studies where various types of humidity sensors were used to resolve claims of building envelope defects. An example of Lonnie's many publications in this field is his article titled Concrete Slab-on-Grade Moisture Tests: How Useful Are the Testing Data When the Vapor Barrier May Be Ineffective?.
Lonnie also is a widely published expert on investigative protocols for building envelope leakage surveys. An example of his publications in this field is the peer-reviewed paper, Qualitative Sampling of the Building Envelope for Water Leakage, first published in 2007 in the Journal of ASTM International and then republished by ASTM in 2009 within its special technical manual Repair, Retrofit, and Inspection of Building Exterior Wall Systems (STP 1493).
Prior to joining the RA&A team in 2005, Lonnie was a senior associate at a comparable building envelope consulting firm (Trinity-ERD) in Seattle for more than six years. He has extensive experience with construction defects litigation in Washington, Oregon and Alaska and has wide familiarity with current and historical state and local building codes within these jurisdictions.