AEI Consultants - Walnut Creek, California

Dusty Dunkle

Beware of AEI Consultants.

We hired AEI for a Phase 2 environmental study on my commercial building in April of 2019. The report came back with four elevated levels of "soil vapor" contaminants, including Benzene. Their report stated "For purposes of providing context to the data" and went on to compare the results to 4 different criteria. However, although the building is and has always been 100% office space (and the new owners intended to keep it office space), their comparison values were not applicable to an office building for commercial use. The following is from another well-established environmental company after they reviewed the AEI report:

I reviewed the sub-slab soil gas data. It looks like AEI compared the soil gas lab data to the two published state criteria, one of which applies to residential use and one of which applies to industrial use. Your building is an office building right? Neither the residential nor industrial criteria are applicable to an office building (which is considered commercial use). Ecology allows for adjustment of the residential criteria in commercial use scenarios (which is based on an exposure adjustment of 8 hours instead of 24 hours).

AEI is willing to mislead in order to generate business. When they reported to me, they said I now needed to have them perform an air analysis in my building "to stay compliant". They emailed the quote and said "sign and return ASAP". I was not happy about this sales pressure and so I backed off and obtained bids from 3 additional companies. This is when I learned that their report was misleading. They knew this was an office building and my buyers' bank would have also appreciated an accurate screening comparison, especially knowing the buyer intended to keep it an office space.

Furthermore, the air study they wanted to perform would have tested for 87 VOC's, including VOC's that are present in cleaning supplies, paper, paint, etc. I'm glad I did my homework and found an ethical company that pointed this out. I was informed that most buildings would have elevated levels in several of these 87 VOC's. I had two elevated soil contaminants, NOT 87.

The only reason I had to have an air study performed was due to a misleading Phase 2 report that convinced a bank more analysis needed to be performed. I then caught them again, attempting to uncover completely unnecessary VOC's in the air study.

The red flag with AEI should have been the title of my account rep, Mike, who's the "Sr. Business Development Manager". He and AEI did everything possible to generate revenue and they were blatant about it. They didn't get an extra dime out of me, only reviews that will tell the world of their unethical practices.

Jacob Henry

Victor Garibay

Jonathan McIntyre

Adriana Pavia Sanders