Big Tap

I recently did my oil filer housing gaskets on my '09 535i since they were toast. However I still had an annoying oil leak that I couldn't figure out. Looked as if it was the oil pan, but wasn't sure. Just got the diagnosis from my indy mechanic and he told me that the oil pan was slightly dripping around two of the bolts, however the worse culprit was actually the timing cover gasket, near the water pump.
I'm pretty mechanically inclined and have done extensive work on my domestic cars, however I'm a relative novice to these cars. He told me to do the oil pan gasket, the entire rack and pinion had to be dropped out of the car, which seemed a little nuts to me, but somewhat reasonable seeing as the pan is in that vicinity. I was COMPLETELY blown away when he told me to do the timing cover gasket, the engine had to be removed from the car! Again, I'm not very savy with this car, but that doesn't seem right to me. He told me that he looked it up and saw the service bulletin from BMW that told him this was the protocol to do this repair, and that he wasn't able to do that level of work.
Can anyone verify what he is saying? He's always been honest with me in the past on other things, but I almost get the impression that he may be out of his element with BMW's. If it's that much work to do this, I'm considering just getting rid of the car and moving on.

AutohausAZ-Mike

Here is a good link for the same problem that other people ran into.

Valve Cover Gaskets Leaking Oil - Bimmerfest - BMW Forums