Project Due Diligence & Land Planning

Clients purchasing property for development, whether vacant land or land for re-development, need to know if the property will yield the revenue that they envision in order to make the project feasible.  To accomplish this, the client needs to know how much of the property is usable, how many units can be permitted on the property and how much the total development cost will be.

Due diligence refers to all of the investigations into a property before purchase to determine these parameters.  On vacant land or land that will be re-developed, due diligence investigations provide the client with critical information and opinions from a qualified civil engineer on the viability of the purchase for its intended use.  The due diligence process typically includes researching and completing the following:

• Size, shape, locational setting and topography of the property
• Property’s legal encumbrances due to easements, rights of way acquisition, covenants or eminent domain
• Property’s current and/or future land use designation and zoning and whether it will be necessary to re-zone the property
• Review of zoning ordinance regulations and the subdivision and land development code
• Uses and characteristics of adjacent properties
• Parking requirements
• Presence and extent of wetlands and required buffers
• Presence of threatened and endangered species
• Soils types and the depth to seasonal high water table
• Floodplain and Floodway considerations (link to FEMA Floodplain Service page)
• Availability of utility infrastructure
• Storm water management and drainage criteria and how these regulations will impact the civil engineering design
• Traffic and transportation characteristics and regulatory requirements including site access / driveway access for PennDOT HOP permit (link to HOP page)
• Landscaping requirements
• Preparation of sketch plan(s) to determine the yield of the property relative to the property’s proposed use as either a residential, multi-family, commercial, industrial or mixed use real estate development
• Pre-application meetings with the regulatory agencies that will have jurisdiction on the project
• Refine the preliminary sketch plan based on meetings with the regulatory agencies

JMR Engineering due diligence and land planning services include:

• Feasibility Studies
• Sketch Plans
• Yield Plans
• Colored Plan Renderings
• Zoning Ordinance Analysis and Review
• Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance Analysis and Review
• Stormwater Management Ordinance Analysis and Review
• Environmental and Sensitive Features Research

For more information, contact: Matthew Bush, PE
Office: 484-880-7342 ext. 102, email: [email protected]