Good development management is not waiting for assessment comments and then redrawing. It is knowing from day one where the Code leaves room for a better answer and where it does not — what will add cost, and what is worth holding. CPM sits on the owner’s side and puts planning strategy, design coordination, engineering, council liaison and build cost at one table, because the goal is more than a beautiful set of drawings. It is a project that gets approved, gets built, and makes the numbers work.
Case 01 · Southern suburbs · 5 townhouses · Planning consent granted
Five townhouses on a parcel sliced apart by protected trees and an easement
The constraint. Several regulated mature trees, each with a statutory protection zone, and a service easement crossing the site with tight limits on building over it — two layers of statutory constraint slicing the workable land into fragments.
What CPM did. The critical information on sites like this usually arrives piecemeal, and the design gets redrawn each time. CPM assembled every exclusion onto one plan before concept design began, so the design team worked on the true developable land from day one — the masterplan was organised around the constraints once, not revised towards them.
All five townhouses approved, with no compromise to how each home lives.
Case 02 · Sloping site, southern suburbs · 5 townhouses · Planning consent granted
A floor level raised by millimetres moves a whole chain of cost
The constraint. The finished floor level had to rise to meet the applicable requirements. On paper, one number changes; in engineering terms, footings, retaining, earthworks, driveway grades and solar access all move with it.
What CPM did. The most cautious way to meet a level requirement is usually also the most expensive way. CPM brought design, engineering and cost management together to reason through how the level should be achieved across each part of the site, then took the full technical case to council for confirmation. The requirement was met in full; the way of meeting it had been properly reasoned.
Requirement fully met, FFL treatment optimised, all five townhouses approved.
Case 03 · Established suburb · 4 detached dwellings · Planning consent granted
Just over 600 sqm. The usual answer is 2–3 dwellings. This one got four.
The constraint. A fourth dwelling on a parcel this size is not one more floor plan: setbacks, driveways, private open space, daylight and privacy all have to be renegotiated at once — and a fourth is never earned by finding gaps in the rules, only by meeting every standard outright.
What CPM did. CPM judged that the breakthrough was in vehicle movement, not the floor plans, and set the design priorities in that order. Working to that brief, the design team reorganised circulation, recovered the ground traffic was consuming, and gave each of the four dwellings its setbacks, open space, daylight and privacy in full. The fourth dwelling was not squeezed in — it was recovered from wasted ground.
Four detached dwellings approved.
