It is a rare company indeed that has managed through this economic turndown to retain it’s personnel responsible for site development (or off-sites, as some label it). If you aren’t building something, why would you need them? They just constitute additional overhead, something you are desperately trying to economize on in a recession. Site guys don’t sell homes, they don’t build homes, so as far as most developers are concerned, they are just another cost of doing business.

But what would happen if your site guys got involved in your project early on in the design stage? What if they got together with your utility analyst, your civil engineer, your landscape architect, your NPDES specialist AND your marketing people to ensure that your proposed project, whether commercial or residential, worked out all the construction issues beforehand so that your budget wasn’t a guess, so that all the agencies involved knew of the project and were coordinating their efforts, so the City’s requirement for a tree in a particular place didn’t somehow end up on top of a utility box. What would happen if your site guys actually were able to give you budget money back to spend on some items that returned value to your project?