The New Rules of Corporate Site Selection

Why Site Selection Has Changed

In today’s environment, incentives still matter—but certainty matters more. Winning locations are those that de-risk operations, accelerate timelines, and provide credible delivery governance.

Industry Context: What We’re Seeing

Macroeconomic volatility, tighter capital markets, and supply-chain recalibration have elevated uptime, reliability, and schedule predictability. Remote and hybrid work expanded labor sheds, but did not eliminate skills constraints—companies still need role-specific talent within practical commute and training windows.

As a result, power capacity and reliability, water and wastewater, logistics redundancy, and permitting certainty now weigh more heavily than one-time subsidies. Decisions increasingly rest on who can deliver operational readiness in a 6–18 month window—not who promises the most headline benefits.

Where Communities and Clients Struggle

Across projects, three gaps appear repeatedly:

1. Data gaps: outdated or inconsistent utility, entitlement, or parcel information that damages credibility.
2. Process gaps: sequential permitting and unclear decision rights that extend schedules.
3. Alignment gaps: stakeholders pulling in different directions without a single accountable owner.

Corporate end users also struggle to compare sites when information is presented narratively instead of as verifiable specifications—especially for power redundancy, water availability, wastewater permits, road/rail improvements, and workforce pipelines tied to specific roles.

LDG Frameworks That Translate Claims Into Proof

1) Core Suitability model

Core Suitability screens locations using the criteria real decision teams apply during early-stage filtering:

• Resilience: power reliability and redundancy, water security, climate exposure
• Readiness: entitlements, permitting SLAs, contractor availability, assemblage clarity
• Workforce: skills match and training velocity
• Operating cost: risk-adjusted total cost (not just headline cost)
• Brand/ESG alignment: compliance and reputational fit

2) Strategic Sites Inventory (SSI)

SSI complements Core Suitability by helping regions manage a portfolio of sites with governance discipline. It classifies sites by time-to-readiness and fit:

• Core sites: near-term readiness
• Growth sites: mid-term readiness
• Venture sites: longer-horizon readiness

SSI also emphasizes named accountable owners, quarterly data audits, and delivery scorecards that can withstand corporate due diligence.

Practical Implications for Communities

If you want to compete for modern projects, build readiness as a delivery system—not a slogan:

• Create a single source of truth: a live (or frequently updated) data room with utility specifications, parcel status, permitting pathways, and role-based workforce pipelines.
• Parallelize permitting where feasible: environmental, zoning, and utilities should advance concurrently—with pre-negotiated SLAs.
• Designate one accountable owner empowered to coordinate agencies and escalate decisions within 24–72 hours.
• Pre-engineer improvements where sensible: pad grading plans, stormwater strategies, and off-site utility upgrades with funding mechanisms identified (TIF, grants, bonds).

Practical Implications for Corporate End Users

Request verifiable specifications over narratives, and anchor early diligence to:

• Utility reliability profiles (capacity, redundancy, outage history)
• Water balance and discharge permits
• Logistics options by mode (road/rail/port/air) with redundancy
• Workforce capability by role, plus training velocity
• Governance SLAs and escalation pathways

Favor communities with SSI-style portfolio discipline—regions that can show performance history, realistic schedules, and aligned stakeholders. Use risk-adjusted comparisons that prioritize time-to-operation and predictability over incentive magnitude alone.

Key Takeaways

• Certainty is the new incentive—and speed is the new differentiator.
• Modern site selection is risk-adjusted and schedule-driven, not purely cost-driven.
• Communities win when they prove operational readiness through data integrity, governance alignment, and executable timelines.
• Core Suitability + SSI help translate marketing claims into measurable thresholds and defensible delivery plans.