Pre-Purchase/Planning Phase

 

Clients are becoming increasingly aware of the need for reliable preliminary information when acquiring development sites. In addition, financial lenders often require answers to key questions before agreeing to advance funds for acquisition and development loans. CETCO offers a number of valuable services which provide answers to critical questions in the early decision making process of site acquisition and project planning.

Consider a developer who purchases a tract of land for a shopping center or subdivision without preliminary investigation, then learns that half of the site is comprised of wetlands, the groundwater is contaminated by leachates from buried drums, and a soft, compressible soil layer underlies the tract requiring deep foundations for the proposed structures. The security of this investment has now become severely impaired by unforeseen conditions.

Often during site selection, our engineers simply walk over a proposed development site with an owner to identify all the visible characteristics from an engineer’s eye which might impact the development plans, giving them some preliminary ideas about any problems which might be encountered. Sometimes this might be expanded to include a review of files from investigations of nearby sites, or several widely-scattered preliminary soil borings.

The preliminary services offered by CETCO substantially reduce the potential for surprises which can turn a property from an asset into a liability.

 

Scope of Services

•“WALK-OVER” SITE EVALUATION AND CONSULTATION

•FILE REVIEW OF PREVIOUS NEARBY SITE INVESTIGATIONS

•PRE-CLOSING ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT (Phase I ESA)

•PRELIMINARY SUBSURFACE INVESTIGATION