The decisions you make now can significantly impact the final outcome
Hi team, we are going to skip the financial post, as Ben Pauly and the team did an excellent job covering the topic in the recent webinar, with his advice aligning with our finance approach. On that note, this next post is around what happened once we had landed on a massing option that met our brief. We have had a few questions on the massing post about how the massing study turned into our final design concept and why we chose the study we chose.
It is essential to recognise that the massing study, while particularly useful to ascertain overall development intent and allow you to hone in on feasibility line items, is only a draft study of the site. The process of preparing draft concept designs following the massing study should allow for adjustments and iterations to the study as you seek further consultant/council feedback and work towards your final agreed concept for the site.
(Key Learning: The concept design is an early iteration of your final product but be mindful that the design in this stage is draft only and could face challenges as you go through the resource consent stage. Ensure you have a backup option or two if you want to push the planning parameters beyond what is permitted by the operative plan, as your project is not set in stone until you have that approved resource consent in your hand.)
Once the site acquisition was locked in, the next step in our process was to begin working on the draft concepts for the site. This step involved first setting out a clear design brief for our architects and then engaging with numerous consultants to provide technical support to our designers as they worked on designing a concept that met our core objectives.
We then engaged the relevant consultants to provide the details our designers needed. The critical list of consultants for our concept package were:
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Surveyor – to undertake a final topographical survey of the site that was provided to our designers to allow them to begin working on the CAD file
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Civil Engineer – to undertake a detailed review of the service capacity both on-site and in the area, including stormwater, wastewater and water supply. This work was an extension to the desktop study they undertook for us at the site acquisition stage.
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A geotechnical engineer – to undertake a detailed assessment of the ground conditions and provide geotechnical recommendations for foundation design, retaining etc. Again, this was an extension to the work that had already undertook at the site acquisition stage where they’d already completed high-level site testing but we wanted them to ‘drill’ down further on the detail at concept stage.
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A town planner – to provide the designer with all of the relevant planning constraints and potential planning risks.
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A sales/property consultant – to review relevant sales in the area and assist with determining the optimal product for the site
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A traffic engineer – to provide support to the designer so the designer understood the traffic, access and parking implications for the development.
There were definitely a few technical items that caught us out. One being the ground conditions and the other being the capacity of the surrounding wastewater network. While the geotechnical engineer did pick up rock on site in the early stages, the extent of rock was unknown until we started earthworks on site. We quickly discovered large swaths of rock and rock shelfs and impacted on our bulk earthwork costs and construction timeframes.
(Key learning: Ensure you have a strong design brief that clearly sets out your wish list. Create a list of all the specialists you require and tick each one off as the information comes in. Include within the list relevant risks that have been identified within their reports and rate those risks as high, medium or low.)
Once our designers had all the information they needed, they then went to work on designing the draft concept that would be used to further flesh out the feasibility and to present to council at a pre-lodgment meeting.
In our view, the draft concept stages are one of the most essential parts of the process, as you begin to see what the development could look like as you move closer to lodging a resource consent application.
The design brief for us set out in detail what we wanted to achieve on the site based on our target market. The brief included details around no parking (explained further in next post), high stud heights to create comfortable internal living spaces, private gardens for ground floor units and a communal vegetable garden for the future residents to enjoy. We also wanted the development to pay homage to the character of the Mt Eden area through the use of natural materials like brick that represented the historic character of Mount Eden Village. We also wanted to ensure that development was of a scale that sat well within its surroundings. Our brief to the architects was that the bulk of the units needed to have north or west-facing living spaces, balconies and gardens and to take advantage of the views back to the city. We were also of the firm belief that good design should be afforded to all and not just a select few so wanted our project to be bespoke in design. From the outset, this was our Urbizen philosophy – to create affordable architecture for all.
(Key learning: the decisions you make at this stage will impact your outcomes further along the process. Be prepared to adjust your concept if you are pushing the planning envelope, and in the event you receive challenging feedback from council.)
As usual, I hope this post was relevant and insightful to you! Feel free to reach out with any questions or comments. There is not a handbook on how to develop land successfully, but I do think the more we share, the risks can be picked up and used to help mitigate all our risks. See you in the next post where we explain what happened during the Resource Consent stage.
