What Is Master Planning?
October 17, 2024
Master Planning Expertise from Stanley Consultants
Master planning is the foundation for creating efficient, adaptable and sustainable engineering projects. At Stanley Consultants, we apply decades of experience to guide your project from vision to reality. Through our collaborative and data-driven approach, we tailor each plan to meet current demands while accommodating future growth and challenges. Our expertise spans a wide range of industries, from military installations to large-scale public infrastructure, making us a trusted partner for federal agencies, municipalities and private entities alike.
What Is Master Planning?
At its core, master planning is the connection of community, environment and client needs through many separate but intertwined disciplines. It’s a holistic process that brings together various disciplines, including:
● Natural resource protection
By engaging stakeholders and assessing comprehensive data, this process delivers a flexible framework that can adapt to future changes, contributing to a project's long-term success and sustainability.
Why Is Master Planning Important?
Master planning is the linchpin of effective decision-making and mission success within military installations and government facilities by providing timely and precise planning information and physical property support. It fosters collaborative relationships across governmental agencies, branches or municipalities, promoting synergy and shared resources.
By incorporating infrastructure planning, climate resilience and impact analysis, master planning helps make installations and facilities resilient and secure in the face of evolving challenges. It also supports sustainable and energy-efficient development while maximizing facility utilization and encouraging efficient land use.
Master planning safeguards an infrastructure’s long-term viability by facilitating growth and flexibility. It can accommodate changes to missions, user or community needs. This process also encourages community engagement to mitigate encroachment and maximize joint-use opportunities while supporting federal energy mandates.
Additionally, master planning creates visually appealing and user-friendly environments. These improvements can enhance quality of life and contribute to project success.
Our Master Planning Process
Stanley Consultants provides full-service planning and engineering expertise at all phases of the master planning process. We know that engaging with key stakeholders is critical to a project’s success and understand that planning requires a highly collaborative approach. We establish operationally feasible, resilient and constructible plans within given constraints and budgets.
Your project is unique, whether it involves creating an installation development plan, a wastewater treatment facility in an environmentally sensitive area, or unique military standards or host nation complexities.
Al Dhafra Air Base
Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates involved developing the master plan and 100% designs for a $1.8 billion expansion to transition the U.S. portion of the base from expeditionary to enduring facilities.
Stanley Consultants provided conceptual planning, cost estimating, time-phased designs, construction scheduling, planning and programming documentation, and 3D brochure vision planning using Building Information modeling (BIM) technology to fully support this complex, large-scale project.
Camp Lemonnier
Camp Lemonnier is a U.S. Navy base in Djibouti. It's the main base for U.S. Africa Command in the Horn of Africa. The Navy hired Stanley Consultants to use geospatial asset management to find, identify, list, map and model the camp's utility infrastructure for its master plan expansion. A 12-member team worked onsite for two six-month deployments. They recorded information on 3,400 assets. This included subsurface utility verification, data collection and field surveys. They also built a geodatabase and developed mapping for base utilities and structures utilizing ArcGIS. This work gave the installation a complete understanding of its utility systems for operations, maintenance and future planning.
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture – Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Campus Master Plan
Stanley Consultants designed a site master plan for a former Air Force base, now a USDA campus, focused on invasive Mexican fruit flies. The plan involved a thorough assessment of existing facilities, utilities and client needs to anticipate future requirements. It addressed issues such as flooding and drainage while setting goals for future development. The master plan included critical research goals and assessed the current state of the base and infrastructure. Stanley proposed a 20-year development strategy, outlining which buildings should be demolished, the specifications for new facilities and utilities, necessary paving and drainage adjustments and a phased approach with projected expenses.
Campus Master Plan
A large Midwestern city needed a new master plan for its water treatment plant campus and called upon the experts at Stanley Consultants to deliver. The project required new and improved facilities, a redesigned entrance with enhanced security, upgraded drainage systems, and alignment with green infrastructure best practices with a construction value of $35 million. Our process included 12 visioning workshops highlighting the opportunities and challenges of the new campus.
Our expertise in green infrastructure gave us the insight to recommend building energy audits, water-filtering bioswales, electric vehicle charging stations and bicycle storage, among other improvements.
Jeddah City, Air Defense
Saudi Arabia's military base in Jeddah is being relocated inland to boost the economy. Stanley Consultants is helping plan the move and future of the base. Stanley created a plan for a new base on a 2,175-acre site. The plan included a defense institute, housing, support services, a soccer stadium and mosques. These facilities were designed to meet the needs of four military divisions and be within walking distance for base residents and visitors.
Who We Are
We put people first. While our master planning process relies on decades of experience and technical know-how, we understand that people make the difference. Our experienced team of professionals is highly collaborative and offers an added level of service that comes with continuity, confidence and trust.
What We Do
Our comprehensive range of services spans 10 key areas designed to support efficient, resilient and sustainable project development. From master planning and asset management to cutting-edge geospatial services and cost estimation, our expert teams deliver tailored solutions that address both current needs and future challenges.
Our services are offered in 10 key areas:
● Master Planning – The process of designing comprehensive blueprints for the development of a location, including all stages from beginning to end. This includes implementing guidelines such as real property and area development master plans (UFC 2-100-01), space utilization planning, installation energy and water plans, utility master plans, transportation planning, range and explosive safety planning, project programming documents (DD 1391) and real property records (DD 1354).
● Asset Management & Condition Assessments – A systematic approach to inventorying, managing, and understanding physical assets is crucial for evaluating the current states and conditions of existing assets. Life-cycle asset management and condition assessments are key components of a well-run installation, enabling the monitoring, modeling, planning, and budgeting for efficient operations and future capital improvements. We have expertise in: BUILDER, PAVER, ROOFER, iNFADS, SDSFIE, Maximo.
● Resiliency Planning – The process of anticipating, preparing for and adapting to future challenges or changes to a system or community. Climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, power and other infrastructure disruptions impact operations. Our resiliency plans help our clients prepare for and recover from events, minimizing operational disruptions and unnecessary recovery costs.
● Environmental Planning – The integration of sustainable and environmentally conscious planning solutions into the design and development of engineering projects is essential. Stanley Consultants provides a range of environmental services focused on operational sustainability and compliance with local, state and federal regulations. Our team of experts examines environmental impacts and recommends design solutions. The team has years of experience in state and federal permitting, including USACE permitting, NEPA assessments and low-impact development standards.
● Risk & Encroachment Management – Identifying and responding to potential risks and threats before they occur. Effective risk and encroachment management enable compatible use, mission security, environmental hazard mitigation and sustainable development with the local community.
● 3D Visualization & Virtual Reality – Leveraging the most innovative technologies to deliver the highest quality outcomes for clients. We create professional visual and technical models of your project using state-of-the-art software to create illustrative plans, 3D imaging, 3D animation and virtual reality tours.
● Geospatial Services – The collection and analysis of advanced geospatial data to model, map and solve unique challenges while optimizing solutions for clients. Services include GIS mapping, field data collection, land surveying, 3D LiDAR scanning, drone remote sensing, SDSFIE compliance, utility modeling, application development and data hosting.
● Charrettes & Workshop Facilitation – Bringing together the best and brightest minds to workshop solutions to complex problems for stakeholders.
● Smart Cities & Installations – Leveraging technology and innovation to create resilient cities and military installations designed for sustainability involves various key components. These include energy resiliency program analysis and design, electric vehicle charging program designs, renewable energy design and integration, smart grid and technology at the edge analysis and integration, concepts for electric utilities of the future and considerations for right-of-way of the future.
Partner With Us for Your Next Project
Learn more about all the planning and consulting services offered at Stanley Consultants. If you have any questions, contact us, and a member of our expert team will work with you to determine the best approach for your project. You can also search for a Stanley Consultants office near you.
We are looking forward to helping bring your vision to life.