Since 1997, RME has been providing Building Science services to attorneys, insurance companies, general contractors and developers, individuals, and municipalities. The types of Building Science services have ranged from baseline assessments to full-scale assessments and cost analysis. Additional details related to RME's experience is provided below.

RME has several unique areas of expertise based on our work for the U.S. EPA and private industry. RME's unique areas of expertise include:

• Property Condition Assessments
• Building Use Changes
• Building Sciences
• Terrorism and Disaster Impacts

Property Condition Assessments

While many factors affect a buyer's or seller's capital investment strategy, perhaps the most significant is the present and future physical condition of the building material systems, components, and related equipment. Property Condition Assessments are designed to identify and provide cost estimates for the property's immediate physical needs and its physical needs over the evaluation period.

RME's experience with property condition assessments covers diverse types of buildings and performance criteria based on the specific use, construction, equipment, age and maintenance of the property.

RME conducts assessments with qualified building science professionals many of who have extensive experience with litigation and construction. All of RME's opinions are based on sound engineering and construction principles, documented assumptions (e.g. unit and life cycle cost), and project specific experience or nationally recognized sources (e.g. RS Means). RME follows the American Standard for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E2018-01 Standard Guide for Property Condition Assessments: Baseline Property Condition Assessment Process for conducting PCAs.

RME's has conducted PCA projects in support of (1) Capital Investment Analysis, (2) Capital Improvement Analysis, (3) Insurance Claims, (4) Litigation, (4) Forensic Assessment, and (5) full-scale assessment and cost analysis. These projects have been related to real estate transactions, indoor air quality issues, and damage caused by man-made and natural disasters. In support of the assessments, RME has prepared independent cost estimates related to capital assessment and damage assessment.

Examples of RME's Building Science Services and types of properties assessed include the following:

Building Use Changes

RME understands the unique needs of owners that seek to turn buildings that have historically supported manufacturing and other uses that generate hazardous constituents into buildings that support office and other commercial concerns.

RME's experience serving as expert consultants in contaminated building litigation gives it a unique perspective on the amount of hazardous constituents a building can contain to be certified as "clean" and the documentation that is necessary to refute future claims that employee illness was caused by working in a contaminated building.

RME's experience managing and reviewing the cleanup of Superfund sites gives us experience with a broad arsenal of remediation technologies that can be employed to ensure that remediation efforts are cost effective while achieving the standards established for the project.

Building Sciences

RME has developed broad expertise through training and experience in the investigation of building contamination problems. RME has performed hundreds of indoor air quality assessments for mold and chemical contamination in response to insurance claims and litigation and spills of hazardous materials that have occurred near populated areas.

RME understands how building systems including roof, wall, foundation, and HVAC work together to influence moisture related problems such as biological contamination. Likewise, RME understands how these same components will influence the migration of hazardous materials from one area of the building to another, or the migration of vapors from outside the building to inside the building.

In addition, RME's risk assessment experience helps us understand the toxicological and fate and transport properties of the contaminants that are of concern to our clients, and how these properties affect the potential exposures of building occupants. The bottom-line result of this expertise is that we are uniquely qualified to help Clients evaluate building related contamination problems and design cost effective solutions.

Terrorist Impacts

RME provided program management and expert technical support to private clients that owned buildings impacted by the World Trade Center (WTC) terrorist disaster in 2001. The buildings were impacted with both Chemical (asbestos, heavy metals, and semi-volatile compounds) and Biological (mold) contaminants.

The scope of these projects included the characterization of the extent of contamination, finger printing analysis and identification of the WTC contaminants, design and implementation of clean studies, development of the remediation protocol and remediation cost estimate, and preparation of the insurance claim.

For one client, RME assisted in developing the largest insurance claim (i.e. $1 Billion) for a Building in the United States. In the program manager role, RME was responsible for:

1. Tracking and management of all project resources including schedules and cost,
2. Preparation of detail reports to the client,
3. Identifying and retaining of experts in the fields of Chemistry, Statistics, Toxicology, Explosion, Modeling, and Remediation, and
4. Coordination of project resources in the development of the insurance claim.

In the expert technical role, RME evaluated technical data to identify contaminated dust as related to the WTC disaster, evaluated technical literature related to cleaning contamination from buildings, and prepared cost estimates for environmental monitoring designed to ensure that the remediation would be conducted safely for nearby residents and workers.