Energy and renewables developers
Constraint data rebuilt from scratch on every project. Per-project GIS setups abandoned between consenting stages. No maintained spatial asset across the programme.
Solar site assessment platform, national constraint infrastructure
Why does constraint data get rebuilt every time?
Energy and renewables developers usually rebuild the same constraint data on every project. Grid infrastructure, environmental designations, flood zones, and planning history get sourced and processed again each time a new site enters the pipeline, because the previous project's GIS setup was scoped for that project alone and abandoned once consenting finished. Nothing carries forward. Nothing compounds.
That matters more as a portfolio grows. A developer running five or ten active projects at once is paying the same data-gathering cost five or ten times over, with no shared asset accumulating value across the programme. Consenting stages each demand fresh evidence, and without a maintained spatial layer to draw from, every submission starts closer to zero than it should.
Consenting evidence for site four shouldn't start from the same blank page as site one.
Building it once
We build constraint datasets once, structured and documented so they are reusable across the pipeline rather than rebuilt per project. That covers grid capacity, environmental protections, conservation areas, flood risk, and planning constraints, each validated, standardised, and refreshed on a documented cycle.
Where a client is running multiple active sites, we consolidate to a single maintained platform, an ArcGIS Online environment configured for the project team and stakeholder groups, so consenting evidence for a later site doesn't start from the same blank page as the first.
Common questions
What environmental and planning constraint data is needed for renewable energy consenting?
Consenting evidence typically draws on grid capacity data, environmental designations, conservation areas, flood risk zones, and planning history from the relevant local authority. Each constraint type usually comes from a different source with its own data quality and refresh pattern.
How do you build constraint datasets that work across a whole project portfolio, not just one site?
We source, structure, and document constraint data once, then maintain it on a documented refresh cycle so it stays usable as new sites enter the pipeline. That means consenting evidence for a later project draws on the same maintained dataset instead of starting from scratch.
Can GIS constraint data be reused across consenting stages instead of rebuilt each time?
Yes, if it is set up that way from the start. The common failure mode is a per-project GIS environment that gets abandoned once consenting finishes. Structuring constraint data as a maintained, documented asset means it carries forward into the next stage and the next project.
How does RTC handle planning and constraint data at national scale?
We process large building and constraint datasets into a validated PostgreSQL/PostGIS database, handling topology correction, reprojection, and quality validation systematically. For national planning data, that includes working with the variation in systems and record quality across individual local planning authorities.
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