Future-ready with site development planning

The site devel­op­ment plan is a strate­gic instru­ment for ensur­ing the com­pet­i­tive­ness and effi­cien­cy of com­pa­nies. 

Site devel­op­ment plan­ning com­pris­es the sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis, plan­ning and design of com­pa­ny loca­tions. Among oth­er things, capac­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, tech­nol­o­gy and effi­cien­cy are analysed. The fol­low­ing fac­tors play an impor­tant role here: 

• Expect­ed sales growth
• Changes in the prod­uct range
• Tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments
• New oper­a­tional and logis­ti­cal require­ments
• Need for ren­o­va­tion of the build­ing and tech­ni­cal sub­stance
• Amend­ments to the law
• Changes in own­er­ship 

Essen­tial­ly, it is about trans­lat­ing a company’s strate­gic goals into the infra­struc­ture required to achieve them. 

The chal­lenge here is to pro­vide the appro­pri­ate build­ing and site infra­struc­ture for ever short­er prod­uct and tech­nol­o­gy life cycles and increas­ing­ly indi­vid­u­alised prod­ucts with decreas­ing pro­duc­tion batch sizes.

Strategic guidelines for a company location 

Experts and users from the fields of con­struc­tion, oper­a­tions, logis­tics and infra­struc­ture are joint­ly devel­op­ing this inte­gral, strate­gic plan for the future of the plant. They make the site “ready for the future”. 

A site devel­op­ment plan 

• cre­ates the guide­lines for upcom­ing invest­ments (be ready for the next projects)
• Enables long-term, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment (don’t obstruct any­thing)
• increas­es the val­ue and usabil­i­ty of the area
• demon­strates the adapt­abil­i­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty and lim­it­ing capac­i­ties of the infra­struc­ture
• Increas­es the effi­cien­cy of oper­a­tions through bet­ter func­tion­al struc­tures 

A site development plan creates transparency 

Dur­ing plan­ning, infor­ma­tion on the cur­rent sta­tus and the asso­ci­at­ed frame­work con­di­tions is col­lect­ed, analysed and aggre­gat­ed into an over­all pic­ture. The site devel­op­ment plan thus cre­ates trans­paren­cy. 

On the oth­er hand, the site devel­op­ment plan trans­lates the strate­gic devel­op­ment goals into spe­cif­ic require­ments, i.e. facil­i­ties, capac­i­ties, space, jobs, etc. The mon­e­tary and sched­ul­ing cor­re­la­tions of var­i­ous devel­op­ment sce­nar­ios serve as a basis for direc­tion­al deci­sions. 

Aspects of site development planning 

Dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives result in an over­all strate­gic pic­ture: 

• Suit­able loca­tions for new plants or the expan­sion of exist­ing sites
• Pro­duc­tion capac­i­ties required in the future to meet expect­ed demand
• Organ­is­ing the lay­out of machines, sys­tems and work­sta­tions to make pro­duc­tion process­es more effi­cient
• Invest­ments in new plants, tech­nolo­gies and infra­struc­ture to increase com­pet­i­tive­ness
• Opti­mis­ing the use of resources such as per­son­nel, mate­ri­als and ener­gy in order to reduce costs and take sus­tain­abil­i­ty aspects into account
• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and min­imi­sa­tion of poten­tial risks, e.g. nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, mar­ket changes, leg­is­la­tion or tech­no­log­i­cal upheavals
• Ensure flex­i­bil­i­ty to respond to future changes in demand, tech­nol­o­gy or oth­er oper­a­tional issues 

A site devel­op­ment plan is an inte­gral con­sid­er­a­tion of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, require­ments and future pro­jec­tions, in which indi­vid­ual aspects can be focussed more strong­ly depend­ing on require­ments — for exam­ple 

• Logis­tics mas­ter plan
• Site energy/media mas­ter plan
• Urban land-use plan
• Traf­fic man­age­ment plan 

How do we proceed? 

The ini­tial sit­u­a­tion and the chal­lenges involved in draw­ing up a site devel­op­ment plan are very dif­fer­ent. Every site is indi­vid­ual: 

from	until
Strate­gi­cal­ly clear­ly posi­tioned	Future sig­nif­i­cance of the loca­tion open (reduc­tion, relo­ca­tion, expan­sion, sale)
Con­di­tion of the build­ing fab­ric known	Remain­ing ser­vice life of build­ing fab­ric and invest­ment require­ments unclear
Expan­sion pos­si­bil­i­ties and lim­it capac­i­ties of pro­duc­tion, logis­tics etc. analysed	Reserves, adapt­abil­i­ty and expand­abil­i­ty must be analysed
Clear­ly struc­tured area	Grown build­ing and infra­struc­ture
Exist­ing space reserves	Site com­plete­ly built over
Build­ing and infra­struc­ture plans avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly	No or only incom­plete, old plan­ning doc­u­ments avail­able

1. project setup: Determine starting position and goal 

The first step is to assess and har­monise the ini­tial sit­u­a­tion, prob­lem state­ment and gen­er­al objec­tive. It is also impor­tant to have a clear under­stand­ing of the lev­el of detail of the analy­sis. Site devel­op­ment plans are at a strate­gic lev­el. Nev­er­the­less, it can be use­ful to cre­ate added val­ue by analysing the data in more detail or to exam­ine the fea­si­bil­i­ty of spe­cif­ic projects in greater depth. In prin­ci­ple, how­ev­er, site devel­op­ment plan­ning means assess­ing the site from a “heli­copter per­spec­tive”.  

2. Inventory and needs analysis 

The project set­up is fol­lowed by two main areas of work, which can also be tack­led in par­al­lel if nec­es­sary: 

Inventory analysis 

The fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion is col­lect­ed in the inven­to­ry analy­sis: 

• Prod­uct and per­for­mance analy­sis (includ­ing pro­duc­tion quan­ti­ties, capac­i­ties)
• Expe­ri­ence the func­tion­al rela­tion­ships
• Build­ing fab­ric analy­sis (includ­ing build­ing con­di­tion, main­te­nance mea­sures)
• Analysing the infra­struc­ture (includ­ing media sup­ply con­cepts, roads)
• Site analy­sis (includ­ing trans­port con­nec­tions, expan­sion reserves)

This includes detailed site inspec­tions in order to assess the sit­u­a­tion in the best pos­si­ble way. 

Needs analysis 

The needs analy­sis is based on inter­views and fore­cast fig­ures. It the­ma­tis­es, among oth­er things: 

• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of pos­si­ble changes in the prod­uct and ser­vice range
• Sur­vey of growth fore­casts for site func­tions
• Deter­mi­na­tion of pos­si­ble changes to exter­nal fac­tors (e.g. changes to leg­is­la­tion, zon­ing plans)
• Analysing the future site strat­e­gy 

3. Development plan 

Once the results of the inven­to­ry and needs analy­sis are avail­able, the indi­vid­ual devel­op­ment mea­sures can be con­cre­tised and woven into sce­nar­ios to form a con­sis­tent devel­op­ment plan. 

This goes hand in hand:

• Set­ting the struc­tures for site devel­op­ment
• Def­i­n­i­tion of con­struc­tion sites with spe­cif­ic func­tions
• Real­i­sa­tion of the require­ments with­in the area as expan­sion areas
• Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of nec­es­sary build­ing devel­op­ments
• Medi­um and long-term plan­ning of nec­es­sary invest­ments
• Illus­trat­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion of the “site devel­op­ment plan” 

This is where the work­shop method comes in handy, in which the par­tic­i­pants exam­ine a wide range of per­spec­tives and aspects togeth­er and arrive at agreed results in the short­est pos­si­ble time. The cre­ative dis­cus­sion of the top­ic with­in the team can also lead to new, pos­si­bly uncon­ven­tion­al solu­tions.  

Success factors in site development planning 

Expe­ri­ence shows that the plan­ning process and the asso­ci­at­ed align­ment of stake­hold­ers is a key suc­cess fac­tor in becom­ing future-ready. The coher­ent doc­u­men­ta­tion is not only a work­ing instru­ment, but also a com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool for all upcom­ing deci­sion-mak­ing process­es. 

Site development planning: Duration 

Depend­ing on the depth and scope of pro­cess­ing, 3 to 9 months can be expect­ed for the entire inves­ti­ga­tion.

As expe­ri­enced indus­tri­al plan­ners, we offer you method­ol­o­gy, exper­tise, project man­age­ment, net­work part­ners, resources and a great deal of com­mit­ment. Take a look into the future of your site with us. Find out more about our site devel­op­ment plan­ning ser­vices!

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