When manufacturers decide where to build a new facility, the site is often chosen with minimal consideration given to its preparedness for building a massive project. Incentives, land cost, or availability tend to drive the decision, while critical factors like utilities, logistics, or existing conditions are left for later. Too often, those early shortcuts show up later as budget overruns, schedule problems, and operational risks.

Involving the design and construction team early in the site selection process prevents problems. With the right guidance, the team can set accurate budgets from the start, anticipate risks, and develop solutions together. A flat site might look perfect on paper, but it could be sitting atop poor soils, groundwater, and located in an area where construction labor is difficult to come by. The anticipatory expertise construction partners bring to the table helps every project mitigate these types of risks, paving the way for every project to begin with a solid foundation.

The Foundations of a Good Site

A manufacturing site needs more than acreage and access to roads. Stakeholders must consider:

Utilities: Battery plants, for example, place enormous demand on local power and water systems, and many cities lack the infrastructure to support new, significant demand. Power availability and redundancy are equally critical for energy-intensive operations. When engaged early, JE Dunn can coordinate on behalf of the client with local utilities, trade partners, and vendors to ensure no schedule delays. In some cases, JE Dunn can also source temporary power options to meet more aggressive schedules.

Land and Logistics: A site must have space not just for the current footprint, but also for future expansion. JE Dunn analyzes every site with this type of flexibility in mind, ensuring the master plan includes avenues for future growth. When building, local access for employees and materials is often more important than global connections. A site that is hard to reach will face long-term recruitment and retention challenges.

Workforce: Even when the land and utilities align, the local labor pool can make or break success. In some cases, companies have been forced to offer above-market incentives to draw workers to remote sites, an ongoing cost that can be circumvented during site selection. To get a firm understanding of workforce resources before a project begins, JE Dunn’s labor division can conduct studies of what well-qualified labor options exist in an area being considered.

Permitting: Permitting can vary dramatically from one location to another, and it can be a huge, hidden schedule and cost driver. Environmental permits in some states can take months or years for approval, while other states streamline approvals with standardized processes. Some jurisdictions are also far ahead of others in terms of special fire codes that can delay the permitting process. As a nationwide company, JE Dunn leverages its team of experts in cities coast to coast to coast to guide clients through this process using a permitting matrix, eliminating common hiccups, and maximizing speed to market.

The Cost of Overlooking Site Conditions

Some risks are visible only to those who have been through projects before. Inexpensive and available land can have potential red flags when viewed through a long-term lens. Land can sit too low to allow for gravity drainage of wastewater. In a scenario like this, a solution may be to raise the entire site with imported soil. This can cost tens of millions of dollars, a preventable problem that an early site evaluation would have flagged.

Geotechnical surprises create similar challenges. Without thorough soil studies, foundations are often designed incorrectly. In some cases, foundations planned can be unsuitable when voids are discovered. When this happens, redesigning the site requires cased piles, adding significant cost and time to a project.

These examples have a common thread: budget constraints become risks, and risks become schedule problems when the site does not meet the project’s needs.

The Bottom Line

Site selection is one of the most consequential choices for any project. Get it right, and the project starts on solid ground. Get it wrong, and the costs can multiply before construction even begins. Sites should not be selected based solely on availability or incentives. They must be chosen with an understanding of the utilities, land conditions, workforce, and long-term operating realities.

The best way to avoid those risks is simple: involve your construction partners early. When engaged at the start, design-builders bring expertise from dozens of projects, including lessons learned from mistakes. JE Dunn applies a proven playbook to help owners identify

hidden risks, build strategies to manage them, and set realistic budgets. Most importantly, we collaborate across teams — real estate, engineering, construction, and operations — to ensure decisions made in meetings align with the realities on the ground and position our clients for long-term success.