Feasibility
Feasibility and site reviews
The cheapest stage of any project to find bad news in.
Every project has a moment where it becomes expensive to be wrong. On most of the ones that go badly, that moment arrived long before anyone noticed — at exchange, or at the point a full design was commissioned on an assumption nobody tested.
A feasibility is the work that happens before that. What the controls permit, what the site's constraints impose, which approval pathway is open, and whether the numbers support the scheme. It costs a fraction of a design package and it is the only stage where the answer "don't" is still cheap.
Three levels
| What you get | Fee | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Free site review | No charge | Zone, constraints, which pathways are open, and what the site will broadly carry. Enough to know whether there is a project. |
| Desktop planning feasibility | from $990 + GST | The controls, the pathway and the constraints on one address, in writing. Something you can act on, or hand to a bank or a partner. |
| Concept feasibility and yield test | from $2,800 + GST | A tested envelope and an indicative yield — how many dwellings, at what size, in what form — before you commit to a scheme. |
Most people start with the free review. It answers the binary question — is there something here — and about a third of the time the answer is no, which saves everybody a lot of time.
What a site review actually checks
- Zone and permissibility — what uses are permitted, and whether a state policy permits something the LEP doesn't
- The constraint screen — heritage item or conservation area, flood, bushfire, coastal, acid sulfate soils, landslide risk, contamination, easements, and the biodiversity layers
- Which pathway is open — complying development, DA, or neither, and the single reason any of them is closed
- The numeric envelope — minimum lot size, floor area, height, setbacks, landscaped area, parking, and what they leave you
- The LMR question — whether the site sits in a low- and mid-rise catchment, which band, and what that unlocks. See the LMR reforms
- Subdivision potential — usually the value driver on a dual occupancy or a multi-dwelling site
- What it will cost to approve — the consultant and statutory stack the site's constraints will trigger
The output names the binding constraint. That is the useful part: not a list of everything that applies, but the one thing that decides the project.
Before you buy
Slope, a sewer main through the middle of the block, a flood classification, a heritage conservation area boundary running down the street, an easement, a minimum lot size that makes the subdivision you were counting on impossible — none of these are visible at an inspection, and all of them change the number you should be bidding.
We do these regularly for buyers on a contract, sometimes inside a cooling-off period. Send the address and the contract if you have it.
The same applies to an amalgamation. What two adjoining lots unlock together is often materially more than either does alone, and knowing which neighbour matters is what decides whether an approach is worth making.
Pre-DA, where the answer is genuinely uncertain
On a constrained site or a scheme that needs a variation, a pre-DA meeting with council is worth having before the application is prepared rather than after it's refused. It surfaces the assessing officer's view while the design can still respond to it.
We prepare the pre-DA statement and attend. It is not free advice — councils charge for the meeting — but it is considerably cheaper than a refusal.
Where feasibility leads
Into a design, usually. Where a feasibility leads to an engagement, its fee is credited against the design fee, so the work isn't paid for twice.
Where it leads nowhere, you have a documented answer and the reasoning behind it, and you keep both. We would rather write that than draw a scheme for a site that can't take it.
Our fees across the other services, and the cost estimator for the whole project number.
Weighing up a site?
Send us the address. The first look is free and you keep the answer either way.