Diane,

I enjoy reading your insightful summaries and comments.

Any words of advice on how to become qualified to do Ph I ESAs for banks, SBA loans, HUD, and FDIC clients?

I have over 21 years of experience in ESAs, remediation, and compliance and trying to develop a consistent backlog of ESA work but getting that from developers and real estate clients on a consistent basis does not keep the lights on.

thanks.

All the discussion of green building due diligence is irrelevant; once the building is certified with a LEED rating, that is what it is. Either it is LEED rated or not. Owners don't get any points for being green unless it is LEED rated. There may be some value in doing a gap analysis to find out how much more work needs to be done to bring a building up to a LEED rating which could be a factor in sale/refinance of the property.

Thanks to all those who responded.

Larry,

I have  been  doing Phase Is for the last 18 years mostly for large environmental consulting firms whose primary business is not Phase Is.  For the past few years, I have done several hundred ESAs for telecom sites and commercial/industrial sites for the so called "Phase I sweatshops".  What I have found is that these "sweatshops" use non-engineering and science subs and even employees who have no knowledge of chemical or industrial processes (they couldn't write the formula of sulfuric acid) for doing these Phase Is. These companies are more interested in meeting client deadlines (usually less than a week) to crank out Phase Is, rather than conducting adequate  research into the site and identifying the risks for the client.  One of the motivations for their managers is that their compensation is tied to the volume of Phase Is completed in a certain period. More Phase Is they complete, more money they make.

Hence, quality suffers. Some of PMs and Directors are also not qualified to lead the  projects and may have been doing non-professional jobs in the past and were promoted quickly due to shortage of staff or they were close to the owners (e.g., they may have worked as former restaurant employees).

These kind of companies serve very large banks and real estate investment trusts. Because of the volume of business these banks and REITs give these "sweatshops", there is tremendous pricing pressure and this results in a domino effect.  The companies just can't afford to use qualified people; or if they do, their compensation is what a termite inspector might make.

Why am I not surprised that there were so many defaults of loans and so many toxic properties?

Another problem is the conflict of interest created between the goals of real estate investors/brokers and the EP; they usually don't align very well.  RECs called by the EP are termed as  being too conservative or without any basis.

Regards.