It is essential to prepare for the site developer/client detailed reports characterizing the landscape, property ownership, and local permitting guidelines in a search area resulting from a visit to the neighborhood, meetings with property owners, and a thorough evaluation of alternatives. This is the process of documenting site candidates. In the initial site search stage, a summary of critical factors is necessary to document each site in the SAR. Once a location is selected for project development, more detail is documented in the SCIP.

The client uses site-specific considerations to judge each site’s worthiness for development with respect to the other choices. The quality of the data provided is directly related to the quality of the choice as to which site gets selected by the carrier to develop. If the information is not soundly based, the decision of which site to select is faulty.

The data in the SAR and SCIP come from original research. You are compensated not only for quickly and efficiently developing bankable site leases and permits but also for fostering positive company relationships in the field, understanding local personalities, sifting out valuable insights, and continuing due diligence work, as appropriate. You scout new wireless sites; that is, you go ahead of the rest of the project team to collect decision-making intelligence, also known as field reconnaissance. The privilege to go ahead comes with added responsibility.

The site selection process involves the site acquisition consultant disseminating relevant due diligence findings to pertinent members of the project team. The team will use this information to determine which candidate location to invest capital resources for facility development. As discussed in Module 13 Search Area Report (SAR), SARs define variables regarding a shortlist of the most RF-suitable, zone-able, constructible, and leasable properties in the search area.