As if consultants conducting due diligence do not have enough to deal with, we are challenged to show value for our product to clients who, many times, merely look at the bottom-line and an agreement to assign liability.  Chances are your approach is to show value in your product, in part, by educating your clients on the benefits of using a well qualified and ethical firm with a fair price.  If you do this well, chances are you are faring well in this economy.  However; being able to use our professional and “people skills” to compensate for challenges, does not mean we should not work to continue to improve industry practices that define our business. 

To stimulate discussion, I felt it appropriate that the first post from this Blog should be of common interest to most readers who are in the due diligence industry.  Let’s start with some of the issues with the Records Review.  As stated in ASTM 1527-05, the objective of records review is to  “…obtain and review records that will help identify recognized environmental conditions (RECs) in connection with the property..”  While straight forward in the standard, third parties like municipalities, impose their own interpretation of the standard that, in turn, imposes costs and timing issues.  Here are a few examples:

8.1.4 Reasonably Ascertainable….and 8.1.4.1 Publicly Available

We find more and more government entities want to conduct the file review and interpret the content.  Reasons are privacy concerns; personal information may be obtained from the file that enables fraud or identity theft.  Since reasonably ascertainable means that “… the source of the information allows access to the information by anyone…” can we consider such information not ascertainable?  Should conveyance of such information be considered interview information rather than records review?

8.1.4.2 Reasonable Time and Cost

The standard indicates that reasonable cost is “…no more than a nominal cost intended to cover the source’s cost of retrieving and duplicating the information.” Should we consider a $100 fee charged to cover pulling a Fire Department file a nominal fee?  What about the additional charges for review and copy charges?  If this is not enough, these third party reviews are not conducted by environmental professionals or those with a keen eye to identify RECs.  What about timing issues that arise when the information is made available after the 20 day period prescribed in the standard?

Please share your thoughts and feel free to expand the discussion to other areas of Records Review.