Partner Engineering and Science is a national provider of environmentaland engineering due diligence services. Under the terms of the transaction, Partner receives all of LandAmerica Assessment Corp.'s accounts receivable,digital assets, existing environmental reports and LAC's "best-in-industry" software systems. Additionally four senior LAC executives will join Partner as principals.

Derhake describes Land America Assessment as "arguably one of the market leaders in providing building engineering and environmental site assessment services to the commercial real estate market." He adds that the combination of LandAmerica's national reach, its industry best software systems and Partner's reputation and technical expertise "will create a very strong and dependable company going forward."

Partner Engineering is one of the fastest growing environmental due diligencefirms in the US, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, New York Dallas, Chicago, Charlotte, NC and Corona, CA. In February the firm acquired the environmental site assessment practice of Loveland, CO-based US-Reports, a leading provider of Phase I Environmental Site Assessments to SBA Lenders across the US.

The four senior LAC executives who will join Partner as principals are TerryDungan, national client manager and director of construction services andmonitoring, who will be located in the firm's Irvine, CA office; Melissa Dahl, national client manager and Sean H. Daly, director of engineering due diligence, who join partner in the firm's Ramsey, NJ office; and Kimberly K. Houston, national client manager and environmental engineer, who will head Partner's newly opened office in Charlotte. Terms of Partner's acquisition of the LandAmerica subsidiary were not disclosed.