Some companies will seek outside advice on measuring environmental liability. The associated risks of brownfield development can hinder, or even kill, real estate deals. In high-risk situations, certain companies are choosing to team up with firms that offer risk transfer of impaired assets and liability. These firms offer real estate professionals protection against the risks associated with brownfield development. Such companies add value to impaired real estate by bringing a variety of risk-management strategies to bear, including insurance, guaranteed fixed price remediation programs, liability buy-outs, and other risk transfer mechanisms.
   Factors to consider when assembling a remediation team include remediation experience, extent of contamination, types of contamination and available technologies. The team should include general counsel, accounting firms and an environmental consulting firm with a real estate client focus. The environmental consultant needs to be proficient in the evaluation of environmentally impaired assets, investigations, compliance auditing and monitoring, risk mitigation, remediation, due diligence and the support of acquisition and disposition of contaminated real estate. The environmental consultant can help develop and implement a strategy to identify, manage, mitigate and monitor contingent environmental liabilities. Additionally, the right environmental consulting firm can help transfer identified liabilities to reduce the impact to a company's ledgers.
   Whereas some developers might otherwise have walked away from a risky but potentially lucrative investment, they now have the option of collaborating with firms that will assume full responsibility for potentially costly projects. By offering liability protection and transferable indemnification for future cleanup costs and third-party claims, risk transfer groups allow contaminated assets to more readily be transacted, financed, cleaned up and put back into productive use.