Environmental Firm Disappearance: R.I.P. (Requiescat in Pace)

• IT corporation (1927 to 2002), originally the Industrial Tank Company, of Richmond, CA.
  
• Hanson Engineers (1954 to 2002), originally the respected off-campus arm of the geotechnical engineering faculty at the University of Illinois.
  
• Law Companies Group (1947 to 2002), originally joined the soil mechan ics faculty at Georgia Institute of Technology in 1947.
  
• Arthur D. Little, Cambridge, MA, (1886 to 2002), claimed to be the world's first consulting firm, employed 2000 people in 30 countries, from its Cambridge, MA, headquarters. They never had a geological staff as such, but was adroit at identifying geological expertise for relevant participation in its projects.
  
• TAMS (~1947 to 2002), consultants, formerly Tibbets, Abbot, McCarthy and Stratton, has been taken over by Earth Tech, the highly successful North American representation of the Dutch shadow holding company TYCHO.
  
• EMCON (1964 to 2001), truly the first multi-talented environmental consulting company, founded at San Francisco, CA.
  
• Weston Environmental Solutions (1957 to 2002), a premier grounded environmental consulting firm, worldwide.
  
• Geraghty and Miller (1946 to 2002, late of ARCADIS). Originally the second American hydrogeological consulting firm, after Leggett, Brashears and Graham, created in the late 1936.
  
• ABB-Combustion Engineering. A major actor in US environmental remediation, for a 10-year period, Swiss-based ABB has seen its old-American Combustion Engineering (CE) fade to obscurity.
  
• Earth Tech, (1971 to 2002). The original company, FUGRO USA was founded in Los Angeles, but due to many buy outs and professional staff changes, no longer recognized for participation in engineering ... society activities.
  
• What happened to Yates and Auberly, who were swallowed up by Harding Lawson in the middle 1990s and now are nowhere to be found?
  
• Harding Lawson (?? to ~2000). Another big firm with much to offer that is now long gone.
  
• Dames and Moore (1938 to Oct. 2000). Swallowed up by URS. A very big feather in their cap but what about their long list of previous clients still needing follow up services?
  
• Woodward-Clyde Consultants (Big and Old to ~2001). Another swallowed up by URS, as above. Sooo much for the Big Firms disappearing in the sunset.
  

From: Allen W. Hatheway, Ph.D.

http://www.hatheway.net/Downloads/2002_8th_Annual_EnGeo_Report.pdf.

Long before the above competitors disappearance, we knew we could create a team to offer discreet, high quality scientific services, with real savings for our clients. On big projects we still provide professional Scientists, Engineers and Technicians, with symbiotic, complementary expertise to solve complex problems just like those above who are now gone, forgotten, and cost too much.

Cost-efficient Assessment Services, and Billing Rates. We provide innovative, cost effective solutions difficult to find elsewhere, typically in the field of contamination assessment. We maximize your resources through tight control of overhead, automation, and optimizing methods by working with laboratory colleagues, we know and trust, prior to arriving at your site. When possible, we combine field work and related travel expenses among clients in neighboring, distant places to lower clients' costs even more. We also will take samples when unusual field conditions are found, but hold them until we receive the client's informed consent to send them out for analyses.

Billing rates fall into one of two categories: litigation support at, U.S.D $ 110.25 per hour; and non litigation support at, $ 85.00 per hour. We have special rates for actual court room presentations, appearances, and preparation. All out of pocket expenses are for the account of the client. The quality of services is the same. We bill the fees from laboratories, we know and trust, straight thru, without 'padding'. These labs are also used by our top competitors: Harvard School of Public Health, and the National Jewish Medical & Research Center, Denver! We sometimes have to add small charges for special handling.

Assessment costs vary greatly from project to project. We have flat, fixed rates for certain kinds of routine services, such as assessment of new, problem homes. The range of these costs starts at about $ 350 US for a visual assessment, report, & plan for a single, well understood insult, requiring on site inspection within 80 kms of our offices in Arvada, Colorado. Very large homes, with multiple HVAC units, needing engineering evaluation services, can be more. Ask for our current fixed costs for residential assessments for those who have had to evacuate and need the forensic (legal) monitoring data to establish their case, which can include seller buy back.

For example, a 16,000 square meter, four story, six year old, masonry government building, that was low in odors, designed by Architects & Engineers, for Architects & Engineers to GSA standards, with very severe, unbelievable IAQ problems. We provided part time work over a 1.5 year period, and accommodated their need to provide extensive assistance from their in house HVAC Engineers as a cost saving measure. Our fees were less than $ 8500 including lab fees. For a very large resort hotel with severe IAQ, mold, and raw sewage problems, in a remote part of Hawaii, costs were less than $ 9,000, excluding per diem. Our routine services are frequently less than the costs of carpet cleaning alone. Assessment of complex, poorly understood problems in large environments involving pesticides and/or underground solvent plumes cost less than winning court room litigation, remediation, and one ambulance trip to E.R. for respiratory failure.

We have greatly reduced rates for long term industrial and manufacturing project assistance, that start as low as $ 45.00 per hour plus out of pocket expenses. We send samples to laboratories we know and trust and never `pad' their fees, but instead bill them straight through with the exception of special handling fees. We work on retainer with the informed consent of the client.

Tight Quality Control. Quality Control starts with experienced Scientists with proper funding and authority, who recognize professional credentials. It would take real effort to find another firm with more relevant quality control expertise. Marsh has a long history in this very important required, supporting field, dating back to the beginning, at the Analytical Quality Control Laboratory of Mr. John Winter at the Robert A. Taft Research Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1960s. This lab program was the beginning of today's quality control laboratory standards. The results of its `round Robin' research were shocking. Subsequently, Marsh took a similar one year contract serving QC/QA planning, development and implementation, with the National Water Quality Laboratory, U. S. Geological Survey, Arvada, Colorado, in the early 1980's; and one and a half year contract at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, as a civilian working on chemical weapons demilling (neutralizing) methods development for clean up, monitoring, worker safety, and quality control; under a secret clearance from the Department of the Army. In every aspect of our services, we employ appropriate elements of quality control programs, well beyond data generation from published methods. We can provide quality control & quality assurance documentation for the method, lab, and regulating agencies whenever needed, and as a quality control expert witness.

Additional critical elements of quality control are planning, oversight and final monitoring, with provisions for ongoing surveillance on an as needed basis - just like those of a drinking water provider. The importance and cost savings of proper planning are difficult to overstate. Follow up monitoring will reveal substances and conditions with remaining risks that could have been overlooked. We promote future, relevant, routine monitoring based on previous findings that establish a 'feel' for this particular environment or process's requirements that maximize long term benefits.

Charlatans & Flim Flam. Beware, the fields of Forensic & Environmental Chemistry and Industrial Hygiene lack serious title protection and are weakly regulated. Ask your State politicians what kind of IH title protection they want or promote. Big firms, private certifying non profit organizations in this field, Industrial Hygiene Associations, and regulatory agencies refused to help. Big companies and governments deliberately hire people they know to be technically unqualified for absolute obedience and total political conscription who will never `blow the whistle'. They learn your project at your expense, similar to a famous computer operating system that starts with 'W', that is full of bugs. You must supply the missing quality control. When the richest man in the world understands some of your problems, he then sells you another 'fix'. Our big competitors do the same with slathers of attorneys to defend the indefensible work of their cheap, young, recent college graduates who look good on paper and have lots of E. & O. insurance. A master's degree in Environmental Science is a cake walk but are billed out for big money to make bundles of $$$ for the CEO. Too much expertise is never the case.

Ask those presenting themselves as Chemists and Industrial Hygienists and especially those using titles containing C-I-H, three critical questions: What did you study in school?; What were you doing for a living 5 years ago?; and, What were you doing for a living 30 years ago? Good answers are: Industrial Hygiene, Environmental Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, and Microbiology. Steer away from geology (the study of rocks) even if some kind of certification or registration is claimed; and those who didn't have a full curriculum of Physical and Natural Sciences. Demand their professional profile or CV, scrutinize it thoroughly and ask the serious questions above. Call us for more key questions. Those providing assessment of only the current, popular contaminate of concern, from media stories, are hardly prepared to assess anything. Would you knowingly go to a doctor that had never spent a day in medical school? Cute logos, such as a happy little house with gleeful windows for eyes, represent phonies and charlatans, who frequently sell remediation services and hardware. This is unethical and a conflict of interest. Some of these smooth talking, pretty guys charge $ 75.00/h. A few have even written books! Feel free to ask for our credentials as a reference point for what to accept. Our short list of known charlatans is in this page's code. Please send the names of those whom you find dubious or dishonest.

For those who don't mind seeing their costs on a fixed bid job skyrocket with change orders, please contact the firm of Certified Industrial Hygienists (CIH) on 42nd Ave. in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. We have never, ever used even one change order, to date.

In public meetings on major Super Fund sites, potentially responsible parties (PRPs), have a myriad of tricks and deceptions to manufacture consent of their duplicity and cheating. To quantify a big corrupt remediation firm's supervisor's actual management authority, to actually manage a project properly, simply ask what is his/her's authority to spend the company's money without higher authorization?' See 'Court Testimony', with the tab above, for the closing arguments of the trials of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant SuperFund MegaSite operators Rockwell International/Boeing and the DOW Chemical Company. This summary really spells out beyond belief corruption in day to day government projects, their need for independent oversight, and should be part of every Industrial Hygiene student's curriculum.

To assess how much a regulatory agent or alleged concerned citizen (stake holder in polluters' double speak) actually cares for who he's charged with protecting ask: `How many signed documents, reports and memos can you produce that you have written to your superiors, which are critical of them on important issues and known to be not what they want to hear? Regular promotions and long tenure with the government assure the worst for victims, taxpayers, and justice! Big organizations and governments know exactly what they can get away with: consider Enron, Global Crossing, and Tyco. Small firms are the best source of required, demonstrable skills & integrity. Call for our experiences findings, and advice when dealing with regulatory agencies, gratis, (303) 421-3383.

Your Field Work. Our services start with a thorough review of your needs, existing data & findings, as well as credential review of the previous investigator(s); so you won't incur charges for `reinventing the wheel'. We follow with visual problem definition; careful evaluation of the client's suspicions & goals and develop the plan of action. We then assemble all needed monitoring equipment & methods, and supporting expertise from the laboratory analyst who will do the analyses. This will produce the most relevant information from the lowest cost analyses first. Our report of findings contains results, recommendations, and a plan to proceed, including piecemeal ways and alternatives to accommodate stated goals on tight budgets. We also respond to new questions free. Services are complete when follow up analyses verify goals, and standards have actually been met.

Five weeks were spent in Deutschland gathering information on German indoor air quality (IAQ) standards. During this trip a meeting was held with the Laboratory Director of the Bavarian Environmental Protection Agency in Augsburg, Bayern. International colleagues have provided state of the art methods for the analyses of smoke residues from Colorado forest fires in an amazingly fast technology transfer by meeting with the right professional. Currently we are gathering standards from the Danish Building Society, at www.sbi.dk. We know U.S. colleagues doing research in many different locals, in such things as feed lot odor analyses, toxicology, and control; indoor air quality (IAQ); and railroad emission monitoring; who provide assistance. We consult and refer mature, experienced Microbiologists and an Environmental Physician when medical effects are of concern.

Renewable Energy. We closely follow and specify solar and renewable energy solutions whenever possible. We regularly keep abreast of renewable energy developments and activities from numerous resources including the nearby National Renewable Energy Laboratory, formerly called The Solar Energy Research Institute. This technology and applications typically have a short return on investment from energy savings alone and can recover all costs associated with IAQ optimization. This is particularly important to those with tight budgets such as sick schools and organ transplant recipients. For problems that have cost constraints but ample time, we can provide piece meal solutions which tend to lower overall costs and improve quality. This method frequently improves overall solution quality too, from developments in technology.

Return on investment (ROI) for IAQ optimization costs that implement renewable energy, excluding the value of litigation prevention, pain, suffering, and loss of life, is sometimes less than two years from energy savings alone. Results are usually immediate and completely free of harmful side effects.

Proactive Prevention Services. In optimizing workplace environmental quality, our discreet procedures minimize disturbance, lost efficiency, and litigation risks; while increasing morale of your staff. It has been found that poor IAQ alone costs American businesses $60,000,000,000.00 per year (that's sixty thousand million dollars per year!)²⁵, while the costs to permanently fix this is only about $5,000,000,000.00 per year for 20 years.^25.1 Have you recovered your share? Our firm's low cost, routine surveillance of your key risks precludes costly, adverse situations with environmental, health, & safety problems, red tape, and regulators. We have programs and processes to screen employees or if you suspect you have a need for employee substance abuse testing.

Innovative, New and Emerging Technologies. You benefit from our extensive contacts and sources of development in the fields of monitoring, sampling, automation, laboratory analyses, regulatory compliance, and toxicology, and ancillary fields such as Engineering and R & D. We can tap into vast local sources: the nearby National Renewable Energy Laboratory, formerly the Solar Energy Research Institute (we are very strong advocates of solar energy applications to solve IAQ problems at low cost), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology; the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); the University Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR); National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); and the National Jewish Medical and Research Center. These organizations offer the latest expertise and solutions when asked the right questions of the right people, whom we know or can quickly locate. We also attend their technical seminars and training courses. We welcome and employ novel solutions for projects from firms with novel ideas. We have excellent communication skills and can put on fascinating presentations in Science and new & emerging technologies.

Knowledge and Expertise. We are senior experts with educations from the time when incompetent students were promptly expelled; long before the dumbing down of tests to accommodate complainants, political goals, grade & course level inflation were the norm; and to keep phony 'trade schools' as profitable as possible. Marsh became fully aware of these phenomena after teaching in the Department of Chemistry in a major Denver Community college and an old, local trade school, founded in 1895.

Extending the Envelope. Services we offer extend the envelope of IAQ and quality of life in many environments that are not regulated: above medical effects while Below Regulatory Concern (see BRC under definitions), nor deemed worthy of the cost and effort, e.g., schools, homes and nonindustrial workplaces. We draw on low cost elements of `clean room' technology for serious indoor air quality optimization of special environment for the super sensitive. On well field projects we can employ unique software to control optimized pumping rates as well as analyses of electro-magnetic exploration data to identify the presence of deep aquifers.

Marsh's knowledge has included predicting the need to phase out chromium, copper, arsenic (CCA) treated wood products in 1989 (litigation for this control started 12/02, with phase out just starting); lead crystal for potable liquids phase out in the mid 1980s; phase out of leaded gasoline in the 1970s; and control of second hand tobacco smoke and volatile chlorinated solvents in the late 1960s. He predicted the cessation of trigger (atomic bomb) production at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons SuperFund MegaSite in the Spring of 1990. We care about our clients' well being and the well being of society as a whole.

We travel to your job site world wide.