Nick, typically the CSS’s are performed by licensed engineers. It takes a bit of training to understand what you have to meet regarding the IRS requirements for the asset classes and methods in the report, and then you need the career experience to prepare a complete soup to nuts construction estimate for the property, including buildings, finishes, site work, drainage, utilities, etc, in CSI MasterFormat, in order to feed the calculations. I’ve taken the training and have the career experience and I’ve prepared these CSS’s. Then there’s a massive set of spreadsheets that drives it all, and folks that do CSS’s like to keep them proprietary. There are a couple of good books out there on the subject if you wanted to start from scratch. But I would be happy do any CSS’s that you come across, and happy to direct the members to guys in my U.S. network that do CSS’s.
Commercial property buyers need to know about these and what a CSS can do for them, because they’re missing out on significant first-year accelerated depreciation come tax time. Sometimes it boggles my mind what buyers are missing out on.