Prepare for a contractor site visit
Most of what makes a site visit productive cannot be gathered on the day. This is the preparation, in the order it is worth doing.
59 preparation items across 10 sections, ordered so the things with a lead time come first. A contractor who arrives to find the boundary marked, the locate filed, and the access measured can quote the job rather than guess at it.
0 of 59 prepared.
Decide what the land has to do
A contractor can price four different jobs on the same acre. Which one you need is the only question that settles the rest, and it is yours to answer.
Describe what is growing
Contractors price the volume of material, not the acreage. Four concrete measures move a quote from a guess to a number.
Record the ground and the water
Ground conditions decide what can work and when. Most of this is only visible at certain times of year, so it cannot be gathered on the day.
Measure the way in
A machine that cannot reach the work is a mobilisation charge for nothing. Six measurements prevent that, and they take twenty minutes.
Deal with what is buried and overhead
This is the section with a lead time and the highest consequence. A locate request covers registered utilities and nothing private.
Establish the limits
Clearing across a line cannot be undone, and the dispute is with a neighbour you keep. This is the one preparation step with no remedy afterwards.
Ask the questions that are not a contractor’s to answer
Permits, wetlands, protected trees, and burning are decided locally, by bodies that are not on your site. Establishing them before work costs a phone call.
Decide the outcomes you want
These four decisions account for most of the divergence between quotes on the same parcel. Leaving them open means every bidder assumes something different.
Run the visit itself
A walk done in order surfaces access problems before anyone has formed a view about the clearing. Done as a stroll, it produces a quote built on two sets of assumptions.
Write down what is still open
A stated unknown gets an allowance. An unstated one gets a defensive contingency you cannot see, or a change order later.
It does not replace an onsite evaluation, a utility locate, a boundary survey, an environmental review, permitting research, or professional advice. Ticking an item records that you have done something; it does not establish a fact about your land. Land Clearing Authority has not seen your property and makes no determination about it.
Next
- Work through the project planner if you have not settled what the ground has to do afterwards
- Decode the estimate once the quotes arrive
- Read how to run the walk itself — the route to take and the order to take it in