Planning to Build in Houston? Don't Skip These 7 Site Development Steps
It started as a straightforward commercial project. A property owner in northwest Houston had the land, the vision, and a contractor ready to mobilize. They'd done their homework, or so they thought. The site looked simple. Flat, open, easy access from the main road. The kind of land that looks like it builds itself. Four months later, they were sitting on an approved architectural plan that couldn't receive permits because the civil drawings hadn't accounted for a detention requirement that consumed 18% of the site. The contractor was demobilized. The architect was back at the drawing board. And the carrying costs were stacking up on a project that hadn't moved an inch of dirt. The painful part? Every single problem they encountered was predictable. Everyone was avoidable. And everyone traces back to the same root cause: site development engineering was treated as a step to handle later, not a foundation to build on first. If you're planning to build anything in ...