Accelerating Due Diligence: Ensuring Precision & Speed with TraceAir

Enhancing Due Diligence Efficiency and Precision with TraceAir

Profitable land development projects begin with meticulous due diligence. This critical process involves evaluating numerous factors with input from various stakeholders—inspectors, environmental groups, architects, state and local agencies, and contractors. Ensuring that this assessment is both thorough and timely is vital for project success.

Poor due diligence can lead to missed red flags related to titles, easements, or property conditions, which can lead to financial losses and legal issues. Additionally, delays during this phase could cause you to forfeit valuable opportunities to other interested parties, wasting time, money, and resources.

In this article, we’ll explore how TraceAir enhances due diligence acceleration with advanced tools for comprehensive site analysis, collaboration, and compliance.

Comprehensive Site Analysis

Even before engineers provide a design grade, gaining a clear understanding of the site’s characteristics is essential. TraceAir offers a comprehensive view of the project area through our platform, allowing developers to evaluate key features, pinpoint potential obstacles, and gain a preliminary overview of site conditions. This initial insight lays the groundwork for more detailed planning. Specialized tools for homebuilders and land developers within TraceAir further enhance this analysis:

Quick Visual Assessment: Basic scans from TraceAir provide quick visual assessments that reveal critical site features, such as existing structures, trenches hidden in vegetation, and surface debris. These scans provide an immediate understanding of the site, allowing for rapid identification of potential issues.
LiDAR Technology: For sites with significant vegetation, TraceAir’s LiDAR technology can penetrate through dense vegetation to offer detailed topographic information. This ensures that developers get a precise understanding of the land’s contours and features, which is crucial for analysis and planning during the due diligence phase.
Overlays: Use overlays to compare current site conditions with design plans or historical data, providing clear insights into needed changes, discrepancies, and areas requiring attention.
Lot Viewer: Lot Viewer offers instant insights into individual lots, including cut/fill balance, spot elevations, and more. Effortlessly compare finished lots during land acquisition or prior to pad certification, instantly identifying those that deviate from the Design Grade tolerance with color-coded heat maps for quick, informed decisions.
Cut/Fill Tools: Evaluate earthwork needs by analyzing cut and fill requirements, ensuring efficient site preparation and material management.
Measuring Tools: Accurately measure distances for pipes, perimeters for fencing, areas for amenities, slopes for retention ponds, and more. TraceAir’s precise measurement tools help minimize waste and optimize resource use.

Environmental Compliance

Effective environmental compliance begins long before construction begins with a thorough site assessment. Identify key environmental factors, such as stormwater runoff sources, land slopes, soil types, and natural features. This initial evaluation supports the development of effective management plans and ensures adherence to relevant regulations.

Tools within TraceAir provide detailed slope analysis and precise terrain mapping, helping to identify potential environmental issues and manage them proactively. By integrating these comprehensive assessments into your planning, you ensure overall environmental compliance and promote sustainable development practices.

A big part of my role is to discover any issues with the project before it starts and throughout. TraceAir helps me assess potential challenges related to grading, utilities, SWPPP, permits, and other regulatory compliances. The aerial imagery and tools within TraceAir allow me to do a much more thorough assessment than I could by walking a project.”
– Robert Fitzgerald, Entitlements Analyst, D.R. Horton’s West Central Florida Division

Seamless Collaboration

Effective due diligence requires coordination between internal teams and external stakeholders, including agencies and consultants. TraceAir simplifies this process by providing unlimited licenses, allowing all stakeholders to access and collaborate on project data simultaneously. With centralized information and integrated collaboration tools, team members can annotate and discuss specific details directly within the platform.

TraceAir condenses all data into a single source of truth, ensuring everyone is on the same page. This unified approach reduces miscommunication and ensures everyone operates with the most up-to-date data, accelerating the due diligence process and fostering creative problem-solving and innovative solutions.

I work closely with the city to obtain permits and ensure work is completed up to city codes and ordinances. When a city representative needed clarification of the exact location of where the lateral, service, and riser were installed, I was able to quickly put together an image with markups using TraceAir. The city representative shared that the image was ‘extremely helpful’.”
– David Greenstein, Director of Land Development, Brookfield Properties

Obtain Required Documentation

TraceAir Surveying Inc. offers specialized services in select states to enhance site analysis and provide required documentation. Our streamlined process ensures faster turnaround times and greater affordability, helping you achieve precise results while staying within budget:

ALTA Surveys: Define property boundaries and detail site improvements, including buildings, fences, roads, utility lines, and access points. They also identify easements and other critical property features.
Topographic Surveys: Map all surface features and natural elements of the property, essential for understanding land contours and effective planning.

For properties with finished lots, TraceAir Surveying Inc. provides:

Pad/Lot Certification: Verifies that pads meet grading plans and measures deviations from design grades.
Final Line and Grade Certification: Confirms that parcels conform to grading plans and design grades, ensuring compliance with development standards.

TraceAir Surveying Inc. provides pad/lot certification, ALTA surveys, final line and grade certification, topographic surveys, and boundary surveys to homebuilders and land developers in select states.

Streamlined Permitting

Navigating the complexities of permitting—such as construction bonds, impact fees, and building permits—can be challenging. TraceAir’s partnership with PermitFlow simplifies this process. PermitFlow’s advanced permit management software streamlines workflows and ensures regulatory compliance. By integrating PermitFlow’s solutions with TraceAir’s platform, we enhance project planning and budget management, making the permitting process more efficient and effective. This collaboration helps you manage permits efficiently and focus on executing successful projects.

Learn More

For successful land development, thorough and timely due diligence is key. TraceAir provides comprehensive tools for site analysis, permitting, and environmental compliance. To learn how your projects can benefit, schedule a demo today.