When should ground investigation start on an undeveloped site?

Before price is agreed, not after. A desk study of historical land use costs very little and frequently changes what a buyer is willing to pay or how the contract is structured. Intrusive work follows, sized to the process: heavy foundations and deep drainage need more coverage than a light assembly building. Where a prior industrial use is documented, plan for the possibility that remediation obligations attach to the land and factor the assessment period into the acquisition timetable rather than the build.

Who carries responsibility for contamination already present on a site?

That depends on the jurisdiction and on how the transaction is structured, and it is one of the few site questions where local legal advice is genuinely unavoidable. Regimes differ over whether liability attaches to the polluter, the current owner, the occupier, or some combination, and over what triggers an obligation to act. What is consistent everywhere is that discovery during construction is the worst moment to find out. Establish the position through pre-acquisition investigation and reflect it in warranties, indemnities or price.

Can converting an existing building end up costing more than building new?

It can, and the pattern is recognisable. Conversions overrun when structural capacity, fire strategy or services need wholesale replacement, when the layout forces process compromises that carry an operating cost for the life of the plant, or when a change of use pulls the whole building into current standards. The comparison worth making is not build cost against fit-out cost, but total cost of occupation including the efficiency of the layout you end up operating for years afterwards.

Empty site or existing shell: what each decision locks in

This gets presented as a cost comparison and is really a comparison of constraints. An open site lets you draw the process flow first and wrap a building around it, priced in programme length, ground risk and a full consenting cycle. An existing shell hands you a roof, a power supply and an industrial labour catchment already in place, priced in fitting your process around somebody else's column grid, haunch height and drainage runs.

Comparison criteria

Criteria are stated explicitly and neither option is declared a winner: which one fits depends on the constraint that binds hardest in your operation.

Criterion	Greenfield: build on an undeveloped or cleared site	Brownfield: occupy and convert an existing industrial facility
Freedom over process layout	Flow direction, bay widths, crane runs, floor loading and the expansion axis are all design decisions taken to suit the process.	The process is fitted into a fixed envelope; column spacing, clear height, slab capacity and door positions dictate what equipment can stand where.
Programme to first saleable output	Long and largely sequential: land, consent, ground works, structure, fit-out, commissioning, with each stage able to hold up the next.	Shorter, sometimes dramatically, because structure and services exist — though a deep conversion can consume the whole advantage.
Consenting and permit path	A full application: planning, environmental permits, discharge and emissions consents, and usually a transport assessment.	May inherit an existing use consent and permits, which shortens matters where your process resembles the last occupier's and lengthens them where it does not.
What is inherited unseen	The ground is the unknown: contamination from a prior land use, bearing capacity, groundwater, buried services, archaeology.	The building is the unknown: asbestos, roof condition, slab cracking, obsolete distribution boards, drainage of unrecorded routing, plus whatever is in the soil.
Utility provision	Connections get specified for the process, but capacity has to be secured from the network, and grid connection queues can set the whole programme.	Existing supplies may be generous or sized for a business that left decades ago; upgrading an incoming connection becomes a project in its own right.
Workforce formation	An entire workforce must be recruited and trained, often in a location chosen for land availability rather than labour supply.	Established industrial areas carry relevant skills, and a departed occupier may have left trained people who would rather not relocate.
Capital profile and where overrun hides	Heavy early spend on a long-life asset, financed against land and building value, with overrun risk concentrated in construction.	Lower entry outlay with spend pushed into fit-out, but conversion cost stays hard to estimate until walls and floors are opened up.
Residual value and exit	A purpose-built plant resells easily to someone doing similar work and poorly if the process was unusual enough to shape the structure.	A conventional industrial shell has a wide pool of future occupiers; a heavily specialised conversion narrows that pool again.

Choose Greenfield: build on an undeveloped or cleared site when

The process needs floor loading, headroom or lifting capacity that no available building offers
Emissions or discharge permits require a site selected for what surrounds it
Demand is committed far enough ahead to absorb a construction programme without losing the order
Expansion in defined phases is planned and adjacent land must be secured before it is needed

Choose Brownfield: occupy and convert an existing industrial facility when

A customer award carries a start date no construction programme can meet
The process fits inside a conventional industrial envelope without structural alteration
Capital is constrained and spend needs to follow demand rather than precede it
The skills the plant needs are concentrated in an existing industrial area

Ground risk and building risk are both discovered late and priced badly

Site investigation on an open plot samples a handful of points and interpolates between them; the trial pit that would have found the old fuel tank is the one nobody dug. Building surveys work the same way, reporting on what could be accessed without taking the roof off or breaking the slab. Both disciplines are honest about their limits, and both get read as if the report were a warranty. Budget accordingly: hold a contingency sized for the discovery you have not made yet, and structure the acquisition so that a material finding reopens the price. On a conversion, the highest-value survey money usually goes into intrusive investigation of the slab and the roof structure before contracts are signed.

The incoming utility connection often sets the date, not the builder

Steel goes up quickly and a power connection does not. Where a process needs a substantial electrical supply, a gas connection, process water or a trade effluent discharge consent, the lead time on those approvals frequently exceeds the construction period, and the network operator's programme is not something a contractor can compress. This applies to conversions too: an existing building with an existing supply may still need a reinforced connection for modern equipment, and the queue is the same queue. Start the utility conversation before the site is chosen, and treat a confirmed connection date as a selection criterion between candidate sites rather than a detail to sort out later.

A conversion budget is worth exactly as much as the survey underneath it

Converting an industrial building rarely fails on the visible work. It fails on the sequence of small discoveries that each force a redesign: a slab that cannot take the press foundation, roof steelwork that will not carry a new crane rail, a fire strategy that no longer works once you subdivide, welfare and access provisions that need bringing up to current requirements the moment a material alteration is made. Any one is manageable. Arriving together, they can push the cost past a purpose-built alternative while leaving you with a compromised layout. The defence is a full technical due diligence covering structure, services, fire, and the regulatory consequences of change of use.

Frequently asked questions

When should ground investigation start on an undeveloped site?: Before price is agreed, not after. A desk study of historical land use costs very little and frequently changes what a buyer is willing to pay or how the contract is structured. Intrusive work follows, sized to the process: heavy foundations and deep drainage need more coverage than a light assembly building. Where a prior industrial use is documented, plan for the possibility that remediation obligations attach to the land and factor the assessment period into the acquisition timetable rather than the build.
Who carries responsibility for contamination already present on a site?: That depends on the jurisdiction and on how the transaction is structured, and it is one of the few site questions where local legal advice is genuinely unavoidable. Regimes differ over whether liability attaches to the polluter, the current owner, the occupier, or some combination, and over what triggers an obligation to act. What is consistent everywhere is that discovery during construction is the worst moment to find out. Establish the position through pre-acquisition investigation and reflect it in warranties, indemnities or price.
Can converting an existing building end up costing more than building new?: It can, and the pattern is recognisable. Conversions overrun when structural capacity, fire strategy or services need wholesale replacement, when the layout forces process compromises that carry an operating cost for the life of the plant, or when a change of use pulls the whole building into current standards. The comparison worth making is not build cost against fit-out cost, but total cost of occupation including the efficiency of the layout you end up operating for years afterwards.

Data limitations

Manufacturing figures are operator-supplied inputs, not market data. GeoBusinessIQ holds no factory costs, production volumes, yields, cycle times, tooling prices or capacity data and does not estimate them — every result reflects only the figures you enter.
No manufacturer, supplier, vendor or factory is recommended, rated or ranked anywhere in this cluster, and no directory of them is published. Selection material describes how to run your own assessment; the assessment itself remains yours.

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Sources

United Nations Industrial Development Organization — UNIDO (accessed 2026-08-30)
Covers: Industrial development analysis, industrial statistics methodology, and manufacturing capability programmes across member states.
Does not cover: Company-level data, factory costs, supplier information, or real-time production statistics.
Why it matters: The United Nations agency for industrial development; used for structural framing of how manufacturing sectors develop, never for point figures.
Review cadence: annual
United States Environmental Protection Agency — US EPA (accessed 2026-08-30)
Covers: United States environmental regulation covering industrial emissions, effluent, waste and chemical reporting.
Does not cover: Permit decisions for a specific facility, or requirements outside United States jurisdiction.
Why it matters: The regulator that owns United States industrial environmental duties; cited directly for the mechanism.
Review cadence: annual
OECD — OECD — economic and tax statistics (accessed 2026-05-14; reviewed 2026-05-18)
Covers: Comparable corporate tax, statutory rate, and economic indicators across member and partner economies.
Does not cover: Effective tax rates, deductions and incentives, local surtaxes, and personal residency rules.
Why it matters: Used as a cross-country baseline to sanity-check rates against primary tax-authority figures.
Review cadence: Annual, plus on major statutory changes.

Educational and operational information only — not legal, engineering, safety, customs, tax, or financial advice. Requirements vary by jurisdiction, product, process, and contract; confirm with the relevant authority or a qualified professional before acting.

Last updated: 2026-08-30