The planning phase calls for the involvement of numerous professionals in addition to a building architect, landscape architect, civil engineer and site planner. These include due diligence officer, appraiser, cost estimator, financial analyst, feasibility analyst, market analyst, financial advisor, environmental officer and legal counsel.
The initial activities performed during the planning/pre-construction phase are:
- Property and development due diligence is the comprehensive appraisal performed by the project developer on a property development project to determine the steps required to ready the site for the actual construction and to make investors/lenders aware of the risks and issues associated with the property in order to obtain their financing of the project;
- Needs and use analysis is conducted where decision-makers focus on fundamental market research and real estate analytics to develop a base case model to support their decision, based on the best practices in such key areas as site selection, strategic business expansion and market targeting.