Partner provides Remedial Cost Estimates to help our clients quantify the environmental liability of a contaminated site. Remedial Cost Estimates can be an important tool for planning and budgeting, establishing reserves, property acquisitions, and financing.
A Remedial Cost Estimate may also be referred to as a Remediation Action Cost Estimate or an Opinion of Cost. All of these services address two primary questions when contamination is identified at a site: 1) How much will it cost to clean it up? and 2) What will the regulators make me do about it?
To reach a Remedial Cost Estimate, Partner’s remediation experts and cost engineers will review pertinent prior reports and data available in order to understand the likely work remaining at the site and various scenarios to achieve regulatory closure, and then calculate an order-of-magnitude cost opinion based on those scenarios. Because each site is unique, Remedial Cost Estimates are customized and may require the presentation of a range of potential scenarios and associated costs.
It is important to note that a Remedial Cost Estimate or Opinion is not a quote for service.
The Remedial Cost Estimate is typically done after a Subsurface Investigation and/or Site Characterization has been conducted confirming the presence and extent of contamination at a site, rather than immediately after a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment identifies a potential concern. The more data available, the more accurate and precise a Remedial Cost Estimate will be.
Some providers of Remedial Cost Estimates or Opinions of Remedial Costs fail to take into consideration the regulatory requirements that could impose additional time and cost, especially in states where the cleanup requirements are not as straightforward as in other states. Another common oversight is that the cost engineer will not include all costs that can go along with remediation, such as a human health risk assessment and/or the cost of long term operations and maintenance or monitoring. Any such exclusions or assumptions should be noted within the report so that the client is aware of these potential additional costs.
Most critical to obtaining a quality Remedial Cost Estimate is to work with a consultant that is highly experienced in conducting environmental remediation.
