Civiltech’s Transportation Planning team works on both planning-level and engineering studies, examining how our projects fit within the overall fabric of the community. Looking at an engineering project through a planning lens brings expanded considerations that ensure our projects are tied to the overall community such as land use, economics, demographics, and connections to other neighborhoods or regions. While the team works on planning-specific projects, they also actively collaborate with disciplines and departments across Civiltech for a comprehensive approach to making improvements to our clients’ infrastructure and transportation networks.

Transportation Planning can be viewed as a preliminary stage of a project ─ before the engineering begins. Planning looks at feasibility and options and provides a holistic perspective to a project’s parameters. A good plan helps communities pursue grant funding opportunities and prioritize projects for municipal budgeting. Civiltech’s Planning Team can work with our engineers to provide community perspective and regional connectivity to help guide design considerations and details.

Unlike Phase I environmental and design studies that tend to develop and analyze specific design solutions and the impacts they may create, a Planning study tends to be more conceptual and include multiple options. Planning studies can be used as a roadmap for a community to help them prioritize and determine the best uses for their resources. Our team will develop a strong working relationship with our clients and their departments and work with them to implement the components of the planning recommendations, helping them determine short, mid, and long term implementation.

The Planning Team collaborates with the Phase I engineers in a variety of ways. Planners bring an additional level of expertise to the Public Engagement process. Civiltech’s Phase I Team has the expertise on the public engagement requirements of regulatory agencies. The Planning Team brings additional perspective experience with engagement on planning related studies.  The planners bring innovative approaches and strategies, graphic applications to clearly depict big picture ideas, and a strong understanding of the community at large. Our Planning Team will manage the public engagement on a planning project, but often also assist our Phase I Team in their public engagement efforts.

In addition to public engagement, the Planning Team can support the engineering staff in the collaboration across agencies often required for large transportation projects. The Planning Team can ensure that thoughts, ideas, and concerns of all stakeholder agencies are heard.

The Planning Team also may work closely with Phase I engineers on environmental and safety studies. The planners may look to the engineers to understand what solutions are feasible from a traffic data perspective or may work closely with the engineers to analyze crash data. The planners also are involved in GIS analysis when GIS is being utilized by an agency.

Grant writing often involves collaboration between the Planning Team and the Phase I engineers.  Civiltech planners and engineers work together to identify funding opportunities for our clients and help identify priorities with which to apply the available funds.

Collaboration with Design Engineers can assist the Planning Team in ensuring their recommendations in planning studies are technically feasible and constructable and will be ready for the next phase of engineering.  This can include considerations such as roadway geometrics, structures, storm water management, ADA compliance, and railroad coordination.

Civiltech’s Transportation Planning Team and cross company collaboration are a unique benefit to our clients. All the pieces of a project are well integrated enhancing our design studies and engineering with engagement, planning, and landscape design.  The Civiltech Teams do not work in silos, the direct collaboration between our planners and the other professionals across the company helps our teams remain nimble and responsive in creating future-forward solutions.

The cross company collaboration also allows Civiltech to take a truly multi-modal and Complete Streets approach to all of our projects. Our teams are integrated and uniquely skilled at guiding projects through all phases of planning, design, and construction, and bring overlap of expertise with all types of projects. When our planners collaborate with our engineers, they ensure that their ideas and recommendations are realistic and implementable, and when our engineers collaborate with our planners, they ensure their design projects work within the larger context of connecting with the overall community.

Below are examples of the sort of projects that he Planning team works on:

• Municipal pedestrian and bike plans
• Multimodal corridor studies that consider the interaction of transportation, land use and market conditions
• Trail plans across agencies
• Regional truck routing and transit studies
• ADA transition plans
• GIS analyses and infographics for engineering studies
• Public engagement for engineering studies
• Grant writing and municipal funding/project prioritization strategies