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Trauma Economics

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The economics surrounding cleaning and restoring an environment affected by a traumatic event not only include the inputs required to complete these projects but also the pressures of the environment that impede progress towards project completion.  

 

Inputs such as labor, chemicals, regulated biohazard medical waste, equipment, personal protective equipment, and conventional waste are relatively easy to track and to communicate during the accounting process.  These inputs are ultimately found in the billing process.  The pressures of the environment affected by a traumatic event are easy to describe but difficult to quantify when projecting costs during a bid process.  

 

When assessing a project such as a shotgun suicide, decomposition on furniture, or a gross filth affected property, the affects of the traumatic event make it difficult to project costs due to components of the contamination.  Blood and body fluids migrate through layers of carpet and pad or tile (and sometimes through the sub floor), as well as, layers of the materials used to construct furniture, a mattress and box spring, and/or personal belongings.  

 

On gross filth and hoarding projects, the sheer volume of the trash and belongings and the associated residual odor contribute to the difficulty of projecting costs to complete the remediation.  A project bid is produced after directly assessing the environment by taking pictures and/or notes in regards to the contamination present and the concentration of this contamination across surfaces and materials and then estimating the inputs needed for remediation.  

 

This direct assessment is the most refined approach when producing a project bid due to the fact that the contractor who is responsible for the remediation’s completion is also projecting the inputs.  During the direct assessment, the contractor can lift a mattress, peel back carpet, move furniture, and/or experience the odor produced by the traumatic event in order to project the amount of inputs required to complete their job.  

 

Property managers or owners may take a look at the affects of a traumatic event on their property and communicate what they see to the 3rd party contractor who will eventually remediate the environment.  This indirect assessment is often used to get a general idea of costs from the 3rd party contractor over the phone or email.  In both the direct and indirect assessment of traumatic event remediation, there are unknowns to those assessing the environment.  

 

These unknowns include but are not limited to the extent of the contamination plume penetration through layers of material, the difficult task of odor removal in a structure or vehicle, the volume of affected material, and local residents, family of the deceased, or transients that may impede progress during remediation.  

 

Experience in cleaning these traumatic events such as suicides, decompositions, meth labs, and gross filth affected property tends to reduce the unknown factors affecting cost projection.  Each project is different and offers its own obstacles to remediation completion.

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