Filing fees published in the USCIS fee schedule, professional fees reflecting the evidence work, and internal quality and operations time to extract and organize the records that support the knowledge claim.
Quality department hours, converted into evidence
Read current fees from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, at the time of filing. The distinctive cost in a manufacturing case is the internal effort of turning a quality system into a petition exhibit: locating protocol revisions, retrieving validation and deviation records, assembling training matrices, and having a senior person write and sign a considered statement. That is time from people who are also running production, and it should be scheduled rather than squeezed. Legal fees reflect the same work. If the assignment involves any placement at a site the company does not control, the commercial agreements may need review, which is a separate legal cost. Employers who budget only the filing fee consistently underestimate a first case.
Hypothetical example: Brigitte is a Canadian cybersecurity specialist whose employer wants a short U.S. knowledge-transfer assignment. Her first review should budget the petition charge, document collection, translations, travel, and the cost of maintaining the technical evidence necessary for an extension. The company should decide whether the assignment has a defined training endpoint or requires a longer presence, because that affects both the cost estimate and the remaining five-year allowance. A vague budget often omits time spent preparing detailed evidence of proprietary methods. Paying more for polished letters does not solve a case that lacks records showing how the employee acquired the claimed knowledge.