Site Feasibility Study Checklist: 12 Things to Assess Before Your Design Brief
A practical 12-point checklist covering planning, physical, environmental, access, and viability factors that should be tested before briefing design work.
Quick answer
Before writing the design brief, test 12 basics: planning context, overlays, flood risk, heritage and ecology, topography, access, solar orientation, neighbouring conditions, utilities assumptions, buildable area, transport performance, and exportable evidence. A feasibility study is useful only when it tells the team whether the proposed brief is realistic, weak, or needs to change before concept design starts.
The best feasibility studies are not verbose. They are decisive.
They tell the architect whether the brief still makes sense after the site is read properly. That matters because clients often arrive with a programme, a unit count, or an ambition level that sounds plausible until the site conditions are tested against it.
Which checks can invalidate the brief fastest?
These are the first four:
- Planning status and allocation
- Flood and environmental risk
- Heritage and ecology triggers
- Access and servicing reality
If any of those four are materially worse than expected, the rest of the brief usually needs rethinking anyway.
Which 12 checks provide a starting point for early feasibility?
Use this as the base checklist:
- planning designation and policy context
- overlays and special review triggers
- flood and drainage risk
- heritage, ecology, and biodiversity constraints
- topography and likely retaining implications
- site access and servicing geometry
- solar orientation and overshadowing risk
- neighbouring buildings and interface sensitivity
- transport and walkability performance
- utilities or infrastructure assumptions
- likely buildable area after constraints
- whether the output is strong enough to brief the design team
That last item matters more than teams think. A feasibility study that cannot be shared and reused becomes another dead document.
How should architects turn the checklist into a go or no-go tool?
Each item should record the source and one of four provisional outcomes:
- supportive on the available evidence
- manageable with a defined change
- material risk
- unverified or insufficient evidence
That forces the architect to stop describing the site and start judging it. A conservation setting issue may be manageable with massing change. A flood-access failure may be a material risk. An unresolved station route needs further evidence; it should not be marked supportive merely because a particular parking assumption has been dropped.
What should the feasibility output look like?
A good output is short:
- one-page summary of opportunities and risks
- mapped constraints and movement layers
- note of what needs specialist verification next
- available outputs, with format and accuracy checks needed before reuse
Review these findings alongside pre-construction due diligence, planning constraints, export to AutoCAD and Revit, and the full pre-construction site analysis workflow.
Define the decision and wider scope
The twelve checks are a starting structure, not complete legal or commercial due diligence. Add title and rights, contamination, cost, market, funding and programme questions where material. Agree who can accept each residual risk. An unresolved input should stay visible even if a preliminary option appears attractive.
Illustrative example
Illustrative scenario: A client requests more floor area. The team records access, height and area assumptions separately, tests alternative options and retains unresolved constraints before agreeing a revised brief.
Frequently asked
What is the purpose of a site feasibility study?
To test whether the proposed brief still makes sense once the planning, physical, environmental, and movement realities of the site are known.
What should be checked before writing the design brief?
Planning context, constraints, flood, access, topography, solar, neighbouring conditions, transport, utilities assumptions, and likely buildable area.
How detailed should feasibility be before concept design?
Detailed enough to expose the main risks and opportunities, but not so detailed that the team mistakes early intelligence for final consultant sign-off.
What is the biggest mistake in feasibility studies?
Describing the site without judging what the findings mean for the actual brief.
What makes a feasibility study useful to the wider team?
A concise summary, traceable evidence, explicit gaps and outputs whose suitability for the next stage has been checked.
Conclusion
A site feasibility study should not just confirm that the team has looked at the site. It should reveal whether the current brief still deserves to survive. That is the point of the exercise.
Use Atlasly to organise the available site evidence, and obtain missing searches, surveys or specialist assessments separately. This checklist does not establish that all twelve topics are automatically covered.
About the author
Shatakshi Patil
Architect writing about pre-construction due diligence, planning context, and site intelligence workflows for design teams using Atlasly.
Sources and references
Authoritative references for the planning policies, regulations, and standards referenced in this article. Always check the publisher for the latest version.
Related articles
Auto-suggested
pre-construction site analysis
Pre-Construction Site Analysis: The Complete Guide for Architects and Engineers
A comprehensive guide to zoning, flood risk, solar, topography, transport, demographics, reports, and CAD-ready outputs in pre-construction workflows.
Read
how to read a zoning map
How to Read a Zoning Map: A Practical Guide for Architects
A practical, workflow-level guide to interpreting zoning maps, planning designations, overlays, and development controls before concept design starts.
Read
pre-construction due diligence for architects
Pre-Construction Due Diligence for Architects: An Early Review Checklist
An early due-diligence checklist for architects covering site evidence, planning questions, physical conditions, specialist investigations and unresolved project assumptions.
Read
Development
Site Due Diligence: 30 Questions Every Developer Should Answer Before Exchange
A working developer checklist of 30 site due diligence questions covering planning, environmental, legal, physical, and market risks before exchange of contracts.
Read