For more than 25 years the remediation consulting and contracting industry has been providing services using time-and-materials contracting as a means to manage the risks associated with the uncertainties of contaminant behavior and diverse underground conditions of impaired properties. This was a normal learning process, in which the cost of the education was laid at the feet of the parties responsible for the environmental effects. However, as with any learning process a time comes when the lessons must be put to productive use and the money and time invested in learning must be shown to have a greater benefit.

By combining comprehensive risk management, extensive remediation experience, recognition of financial issues and creative cleanup approaches, a new way of contracting environmental cleanup evolved to address the needs of developers. Guaranteed remediation programs, also known as firm, fixed-price remediation with insurance, were developed to address the need for cost-effective, time-certain site cleanup and facilitate the sale and/or redevelopment of contaminated properties. Through guaranteed remediation, an environmental contractor commits to perform, for a fixed-price, all remediation necessary to achieve regulatory closure of the site, covering both known and unknown contamination. This guaranteed contracting approach also permits the contractual assumption of environmental financial liabilities by the environmental contractor. ...

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