No. L-1B contains no labour-market or cost test. Evidence about how long internal training takes is useful because it shows the knowledge is not readily acquired, but it functions as proof of specialization rather than as an economic justification for the transfer.
Time-to-competence is evidence; cost is not a test
Employers often prepare a comparison showing what a U.S. hire would cost and how long recruitment would take, on the assumption that the petition must justify itself economically. It does not.
The adjudication asks whether the beneficiary possesses specialized knowledge as defined and whether the U.S. position requires it. Where training evidence helps is on the first question: if the company's own records show that a competent industrial technologist takes eighteen months of internal work before being trusted to requalify a formulation, that is direct evidence the knowledge is advanced and company-specific.
Presented as a cost argument it adds nothing; presented as a competence timeline it is among the better exhibits available. The actual immigration costs are the Form I-129 filing fee, the fraud prevention and detection fee and optional premium processing, from the USCIS fee schedule, Form G-1055, together with the family's admission charges. Hypothetical example: a Hope glass-fabrication company says its proprietary tempering routine will save the U.S.
affiliate months of trial runs. The first review converts that assertion into evidence rather than a dollar claim: internal training logs, corrective-action records, and the assignment’s technical milestones. Those records settle why the transferee is needed; a forecast of avoided losses does not replace them.
The company should budget filing charges separately from the engineering launch budget and decide whether expedited adjudication is useful only after the specialized-knowledge narrative and exhibits are ready for filing.