Utility Connections And Authority Approvals

On a conventional build, connections are usually arranged during a long construction period and are ready before the building is.

On a modular project the building is finished sooner, which means the connections frequently become the item everything waits for. Not because they are harder, because they were started at the same point in the process as always.

What has to be applied for

**Electrical supply,** which for anything beyond a single small dwelling involves a load assessment, possibly a new connection point, and in some cases network upgrade works the project pays for.

**Water,** including the meter, the size of the service, and any requirement for a backflow device.

**Sewer,** including the connection point, and where the building sits over or near a sewer main, an approval that can impose design conditions on the structure.

**Stormwater,** which is where the discharge goes, and whether [on-site detention](/blog/water-tanks-and-on-site-detention) is required.

**Communications,** which is usually straightforward and occasionally is not, particularly on a greenfield or [remote](/blog/modular-for-regional-and-remote-sites) site.

**Gas,** where an all-electric design has not been adopted, which for most new accommodation now it has.

Why they take so long

Because each one is a separate organisation with its own assessment process, its own queue and its own design requirements.

An electrical connection may need a design submitted, assessed, revised and approved before any work is scheduled, and the work itself may need an outage arranged weeks ahead. A sewer connection may need a build-over approval that sets conditions the structural design has to accommodate.

None of that responds to a project deadline, and none of it can be compressed by asking.

Where it interacts with design

This is the part that catches projects.

A build-over approval can dictate footing positions. An easement can move the building. A required substation or pillar needs a location, an access path and sometimes a separate approval. A detention tank needs volume, invert levels and a position that works with the [foundations](/blog/groundworks-and-foundations-for-modular).

All of which means connection applications are not an administrative task to be done later. They are a design input, and starting them early changes the design less than starting them late.

The programme approach

**Apply at the start of design.** Before documentation is complete, because the responses may change it.

**Track each application separately,** with the authority's own reference and its own expected date. One list, reviewed weekly, held by one person.

**Assume the longest one sets the date.** Usually electrical, occasionally sewer.

**Identify upgrade triggers early.** A project that pushes a local network past its capacity pays for the upgrade and waits for it. Finding that out in month one is a design decision. Finding it out in month eight is a delay.

**Get the connections in before the modules arrive,** capped and surveyed, as part of [site establishment](/blog/site-establishment-before-modules-arrive).

The honest position

This is the part of a modular project that is not faster.

Fabrication is faster, installation is faster, weather matters less. Authority approvals take exactly as long as they take, and on a short programme they occupy a larger share of it.

Which is why they get started first, and why a builder who raises connections at the first design meeting is telling you something useful about how the programme will run.

Discuss a project.

MADEmodular / MADEbetter.