Filing fees follow the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, and depend on the forms and the employer's size, with optional faster processing at extra cost. The bigger investment is internal: the hours spent documenting knowledge that lives in one person's head and has never been written down.
Count the documentation time honestly
Ask the technician and his manager to estimate the hours needed to produce the internal evidence, then double it, because writing down what someone knows is slower than anyone expects and it usually happens between service calls. That time is not wasted regardless of the outcome: a company that documents its own commissioning procedure has reduced the risk of losing that knowledge entirely. Add professional fees for preparing the petition and reviewing any customer contracts that would be referenced. Confirm current government amounts when filing. Then weigh the total against the alternative of hiring and training an American technician directly, which for some small manufacturers is the better commercial answer even though it is slower.
Hypothetical example: the author of a conveyor-safety algorithm is needed for several customer upgrades, yet the company has never documented its internal training. A first review estimates staff time for repository extracts, training materials, customer project plans and translations where needed. The useful record is a written scope from the people preparing those items, not a generic legal-fee figure. Decide whether the projected U.S. assignment justifies that internal effort before paying for a rushed filing. Costs can also rise if customer confidentiality terms require careful redaction.