Land Viability
Background: A Time-Consuming and Risk-Prone Process
Property developers face a significant challenge in the earliest stages of their workflow: assessing whether a site is financially and technically viable. This process has traditionally been manual, slow, and inconsistent—heavily reliant on fragmented data sources, spreadsheets, and external consultants. Common pain points included:
- Weeks spent compiling planning data, sales values, and build costs
- Uncertainty around local planning requirements and policy compliance
- Inability to quickly test different housing mixes, densities, or construction methods
- Limited capacity to assess more than a handful of sites at a time
- High risk of costly errors or missed opportunities due to incomplete information
For developers trying to move quickly and confidently, particularly in competitive land markets, this outdated process created delays, introduced risk, and constrained growth.
The Solution: Scalable, Automated Site Viability Analysis
We built a PropTech platform specifically designed to automate and accelerate the site appraisal process—enabling developers to go from red line boundary to data-rich feasibility study in minutes.
Core capabilities include:
- Automated viability studies that generate real-time assessments of planning and financial feasibility
- Flexible build cost modelling, including support for Modern Methods of Construction such as timber frame, and variable finish levels
- Interactive site design tools to draw, merge, or modify title boundaries and explore housing layouts
- Policy-aware analysis, surfacing local authority requirements for housing mix, density, and affordable housing thresholds
- Built-in sensitivity testing that quantifies the impact of changing values or costs on development margins
- Marketplace access to connect with offsite construction suppliers for early-stage cost and design alignment
The platform was built from the ground up using modern, modular technology, integrating spatial data and planning policy intelligence to deliver high-speed, high-accuracy results with minimal user input.
Impact: Widely Adopted by Developers Across the UK
This PropTech solution has been used by hundreds of UK developers, including some of the country’s leading housebuilders, to assess site viability at scale. It has supported feasibility assessments for sites representing billions of pounds in Gross Development Value (GDV).
The platform enabled users to:
- Identify viable sites faster, unlocking opportunities that would have been missed using traditional methods
- Assess dozens of sites in a fraction of the time, scaling their pipeline and reducing acquisition risk
- Build more efficiently and sustainably, with visibility into cost-effective modern construction options
- Standardise early-stage due diligence, making it repeatable, scalable, and less consultant-dependent
By removing friction from the viability process, the tool helped accelerate housing delivery, de-risk development, and empower both small and large firms to operate with greater confidence and speed. It stands as a clear example of how targeted PropTech innovation can directly support better outcomes in both business performance and the built environment.
