One of the first things clients ask when they book an appointment is, “when will I have the results?” Whether the project is a real estate transaction that is up against a looming inspection period deadline or a post-remediation project with eager homeowners who want to get back to their home, turnaround time is important for many people.
Our “Standard” Turnaround
For our company, after performing a typical indoor air quality or mold inspection the standard turnaround time for a written report is 1 week from the time of the assessment. This means that in 5 business days from when we inspect your property, you will receive your full written report. Most often we receive lab results back in 3 days from the lab, and then we use the next two days to interpret and analyze the results, compile the information into a report, and provide you with meaningful conclusions and recommendations.
Budget
Probably the biggest consideration for turnaround time is cost. In a perfect world, money would be of no concern, however, for most of our projects, this isn’t the case. While the lab may have the capability to analyze your results on the same day, they are going to charge accordingly for it. Just like how Disney World charges people for their “Fastpass” service to be able to jump the line on many of their attractions, the lab has a cost for each jump in turnaround time. For the most urgent of projects, laboratories will open on holidays or weekends (for an astronomical fee).
Types of Samples
The expedited analysis charge is also dependant on the type of samples you want to speed up. For example, mold air samples typically incur only a moderate cost to speed up the turnaround time; whereas the cost of some chemical analyses can be doubled or tripled to speed up the process only a few days. Some analyses can not be sped up at all. For example, viable mold or bacteria samples, such as Legionella, require the samples to be grown on a petri dish. No amount of money can encourage the microbes to grow up faster, so we are at the will of how fast the cultures grow.
On-Site Results
For mold samples and asbestos clearance projects, we can uniquely offer the service of on-site analysis. We can bring our microscope to the field to collect, process, and analyze the samples right there on-site. This option is ideal for projects that need a quick clearance or projects where the crew is on-site to reclean any areas if our testing deems it necessary. It might even be possible for us to wait while areas are re-cleaned so we can immediately retest the areas on the same day.
If you have a project that needs a quick turnaround time, reach out to us to discuss what we can do for you.