For Facility Managers

You own the problem, the budget and the liability, usually all three at once and usually without the authority to spend what the problem actually costs. This page is written for that position rather than for a homeowner.

The short version. We are an independent testing company. We assess, sample, and produce a written record. We do not perform remediation, we do not bid it, and we take no referral fee from anyone who does. So when you hand our report to your director, your carrier or your legal department, nobody can argue the findings were shaped by who was getting the repair contract. It also means we are useless as a one-stop shop, which is deliberate.

Small commercial under 5,000 square feet is $650 to $950 depending on sample count. Larger scope is quoted, typically $0.10 to $0.20 per square foot plus per-sample. Net 30 for established accounts.

Scope validation before you sign a remediation proposal

This is the highest return thing on this page, so it goes first.

A contractor walks your building, finds moisture, and produces a proposal. Linear feet of demolition, containment count, ceiling grid and tile, HVAC cleaning, drying equipment, a number at the bottom. The proposal is internally coherent. What nobody has done is independently establish the boundary of affected material.

That matters in both directions, and the second one is the one people forget.

Scope too large. You pay for demolition of material that was never wet. Common, hard to detect after the fact, and impossible to dispute once the wall is open and the invoice is written.

Scope too small. Worse. Wet material stays behind a closed wall, growth continues, and you find out in eight months with a second event, a second contractor, and a file showing you already spent money on this once.

What we do is map moisture, image temperature differentials behind intact finishes, borescope cavities where a visual answer is needed, and document extent with instrument readings and photographs keyed to locations. You get a documented boundary. The proposal gets measured against it.

Cost of the validation is a fraction of the remediation. On a $30,000 scope, a $900 assessment that moves the number in either direction has paid for itself many times over, and if the scope was right, you now have third-party documentation that you verified it before spending.

We do not write remediation scopes and we do not bid the work. That separation is the only reason the comparison means anything.

Vendor onboarding

You cannot use a vendor who is not approved, and getting approved is usually the friction. Send us your packet at the start rather than after the first job.

We handle:

• Certificate of insurance with your required limits, additional insured and waiver of subrogation language
• W-9 and vendor registration forms
• Your standard vendor or master services agreement for review and signature
• Background check and badge requirements, including escorted access and safety orientation
• Supplier portal registration, including Ariba, Coupa and similar systems

Turnaround on a vendor packet is usually one to two business days. Send it before you have an emergency, because the day you need a tester on site is a bad day to start onboarding.

Invoicing that clears without a phone call

Invoicing failures cost you more time than the work does. Ours are built to clear on the first pass.

• Net 30 for established accounts
• PO number, work order number or cost center on the invoice, referenced exactly as you provide it
• One invoice per job, or consolidated monthly billing across multiple properties, your choice
• Per-property and per-building cost coding so allocation does not fall on your accounting team
• Fixed written quote before mobilization. We do not expand scope on site without your written authorization, which means the invoice matches the approved amount
• Billing addressed to your office, an owner, or a carrier, per job, as you direct

If your approval process needs a quote document in a specific format, tell us and we will produce it.

Minimal disruption

Closing a floor or a wing costs more per day than the entire assessment. We schedule to avoid that.

After hours, overnight and weekends at no premium. Zone by zone so only one area is affected at a time. During scheduled shutdowns, holidays and tenant improvement windows. Coordinated with your security, badge access and any escort requirement.

The physical footprint of air sampling is one person setting a pump on a tripod for five to ten minutes per location. It is quiet and does not require clearing a space. What benefits from off-hours access is ceiling work, borescope inspection, and anything in a mechanical room.

One decision to make deliberately: occupied or unoccupied conditions. Foot traffic and door cycling resuspend settled particulate, so a sample pulled at 2 p.m. and one pulled at 6 a.m. in the same room are different measurements. If the question is what occupants are breathing, sample occupied. If the question is whether a reservoir exists, sample quiet. We record which condition applied and why, because an unrecorded choice looks like an accident later.

Records that hold up under review

Assume the report will be read by someone looking for a reason to discount it. That assumption drives the build.

Every sample carries a location, a collection time, a measured air volume, a pump identifier and a chain of custody entry. Every instrument reading records the material tested and the reference dry standard used. Every photograph is keyed to a location on a floor plan. Laboratory analysis is by an accredited lab using direct microscopic examination, with raw data attached rather than summarized.

Every job includes an outdoor control sample. Outdoor air always contains mold spores. Elevated means elevated relative to outside, same property, same day. An indoor spore count with no baseline supports no conclusion. This is the most common defect in the third-party reports we get asked to review, and any competent adjuster or opposing expert will find it in the first minute.

The language is deliberate too. There is no numeric legal limit for airborne mold in Washington, Idaho or federal law. Nothing passes or fails a statutory threshold, and a report claiming otherwise has invented a standard. What we establish is condition, comparison to outdoor baseline, moisture state, and extent of affected material on the date tested.

Health language stays accurate for the same reason. CDC has never established a causal link between Stachybotrys and serious illness, and says no test proves an association between a specific mold and particular health symptoms. Documented effects are allergic reaction, asthma triggering and upper respiratory irritation in sensitive people, plus serious infection risk in the severely immunocompromised. A report that overclaims creates an obligation your organization has to answer for.

What the assessment includes

• Air sampling with a calibrated pump drawing a measured volume through an Air-O-Cell or Allergenco-D spore trap cassette, submitted to an accredited laboratory for direct microscopic examination
• Outdoor control on every job
• Surface sampling by swab or tape lift to confirm whether visible growth is fungal rather than staining, soot or efflorescence
• Bulk sampling where a material sample answers the question more cleanly
• Moisture mapping with pin and pinless meters
• Thermal imaging behind intact finishes, above hard-lid ceilings and behind casework
• Borescope inspection of wall cavities, chases and plenums
• Psychrometrics by zone: temperature, relative humidity, dew point, indoors and outdoors
• Mechanical walkthrough where implicated: AHU interiors, coil and drain pan condition, filter condition and MERV rating, visible duct liner, outside air damper position, return path
• Written report with photographs keyed to a floor plan, raw laboratory data, indoor to outdoor comparison, chain of custody and stated method and limitations

Post-remediation verification is evaluated against IICRC S520, the industry standard for professional mold remediation, and is quoted by containment count. Six containments is six discrete verifications.

Pricing and turnaround

Why a tester who cannot sell you remediation is worth more to you

Washington's Department of Health states plainly that there are no certification requirements for mold work in the state and that anyone can call themselves a mold specialist without training or credentials. Idaho licenses neither mold work nor home inspection. In that vacuum, nearly every firm marketing mold testing here also sells the cleanup, which means finding a problem generates revenue and finding nothing does not.

New York decided the conflict was structural rather than personal and prohibited it under Labor Law Article 32, which bars one company from both assessing and remediating the same property. Washington and Idaho have no such rule. Independence here is chosen.

For you, the consequence is that a scope written by the party performing it is not evidence of extent, and the moment a loss becomes a claim, evidence of extent is exactly what someone will ask for.

Questions facility managers ask

Can you validate a remediation proposal we have already received? Yes, and it is the most common reason we get called by facility staff. We document extent independently so the proposal can be measured against something other than another bid.

How fast can you be on site? Typically one to three business days across Spokane County and Kootenai County, faster for account holders. Active containments get priority because we know what idle equipment costs. Off-hours work carries no premium.

Will you write a remediation protocol? No. We document conditions, extent and moisture state, and verify completion against IICRC S520. If your specification requires a protocol authored by a Certified Industrial Hygienist, we are not CIHs, will not imply the credential, and will refer that scope out at no charge.

Can you review a report we already have? Yes. Send it. The first thing we check is whether an outdoor control was collected, because without one the conclusions are not supportable regardless of who signed it.

Do you handle multiple buildings under one agreement? Yes. Send the property list and we will return a rate sheet and one point of contact.

What if you find nothing? You get a report documenting that, same method, same rigor, same price. Nothing in our incentive structure makes a finding more profitable than a clean result, which is the entire reason a clean result from us is worth having.

Get a written scope

Send the address, square footage, building type, areas in question, access constraints and vendor requirements. We will return a fixed written quote and a schedule, usually the same day.