Get the building ready. Then get the bids.

Usually yes — and the reason people get this wrong is that three separate rules apply and only one of them has the exemption everybody's heard about.

EGLE, the asbestos NESHAP. This is the exemption. A privately owned house of four or fewer dwelling units falls outside the definition of a regulated facility, so the inspection and the ten-day notification aren't triggered. But it falls away if the house is part of an urban renewal, public or commercial project, if it's one of several buildings under common ownership coming down as one job, or if there are five or more units.

MIOSHA, worker protection. No residential exclusion at all. In buildings constructed by 1980, flooring, insulation and surfacing materials are presumed to contain asbestos unless testing says otherwise, and the employer has to identify the presence, location and quantity before work begins. NESHAP exempts the building. Nobody exempted the crew — which is why a lot of contractors won't quote a pre-1980 teardown without a survey in hand.

Your local building department. Many require a survey regardless of the state rule, and some landfills want documentation before they'll take the debris. This varies town to town in ways an owner has no reasonable way to know in advance.

So the honest answer is that a 1962 ranch is usually exempt on paper and still gets inspected in practice. Finding out which of the three actually bite on your specific address and jurisdiction is the first thing we do, and it's part of the free review.

Eight to twelve weeks is typical for a small structure, and the utility disconnect is almost always what sets the length. The removal letter is what most municipalities want before they'll issue a demolition permit, and utilities measure that turnaround in weeks — the request has to be filed, the property has to be vacant, and a crew has to be scheduled.

Asbestos notification adds its own floor: Michigan requires it at least ten working days before regulated demolition begins. If abatement is needed it usually runs alongside, not after. The single best thing you can do is get the utility applications filed on day one.

For regulated demolitions, yes — the notification requirement is triggered by the demolition itself, not by finding asbestos. A clean inspection doesn't remove the paperwork, it just simplifies it. Michigan takes these notifications through EGLE's MiEnviro Portal, and the ten-working-day clock runs from a complete, correct filing — a notification with the wrong dates or scope restarts it.

That's a good outcome and it still pays for itself. A clean report in the bid package is a document contractors can price against, which means they stop carrying a contingency for something that isn't there. Without it, they either pad the number or write an exclusion that becomes a change order the week they start.

No, and that's deliberate. We sit on your side of the table. If we also swung the excavator, every recommendation we made about scope would be a recommendation about our own revenue. We coordinate the prep, run the bid competition, and manage the contractor you choose.

Your demolition contractor does, in their own name, on their own license — that's how it should work, and it's how the building department expects it. Same with the asbestos notification, the sewer cap and the physical disconnect work: the licensed parties responsible for each of those file and perform them, not us.

What we do is make sure it all actually happens — in the right order, to code, with correct dates and scope, and nothing missing when it goes in. A notification with the wrong dates restarts your clock; a permit rejected for a missing form costs you two weeks; a sewer cap that fails inspection costs you a crew standing around. Our value is that none of those happen.

It depends entirely on what's found, how much of it there is, and how hard it is to reach — siding and floor tile are a different job from pipe insulation in a crawlspace. We won't guess before the inspection. What we will do is put the abatement out to multiple licensed contractors on a defined scope, which is generally a very different number from letting it sit inside a demolition contractor's lump sum as an allowance.

The property address, proof of ownership (deed, tax bill or closing papers), a recent utility bill for each service so we have the meter numbers, any inspections or reports you already have, and your target date. If the property is tenanted or occupied, tell us — it has to be vacant before utility crews will schedule.

Yes. Half of what we do is picking up a stalled file: an application that was rejected for a missing meter number, an inspection report that never got sent to the bidders, a permit clerk waiting on a form nobody knew about. Send us where you are and we'll tell you what's actually left.