Civil Engineering & Land Surveying
From land acquisition to final plat, Samford Group delivers the civil engineering, land surveying, and entitlements developers need to move from concept to vertical construction — on time and on budget.
Services
Civil engineering and land surveying, working together from day one. One streamlined team built to move your project from concept to construction as fast as the deal allows.
Boundary surveys, platting, construction staking, and lot-level plans — dependable results with a quick turnaround. Our surveyors are integrated into the design process from the start, so nothing falls between the cracks.
Site design, grading, stormwater, utilities, and permitting — sound engineering on a timeline you can trust, with value-driven solutions that protect your budget and get you to vertical construction.
Start Here
Know exactly what you can build, what stands in your way, and how to get to a land disturbance permit — before you spend serious money. Zoning analysis, concept plan, and desktop due diligence delivered in 10 business days. If the site doesn't pencil, you find out before you've committed real capital.
A flat $5,000 fixed fee covering both phases. Residential and commercial developers.
Why Samford Group
We built Samford Group around a simple idea: your engineering firm shouldn't just exist to check a jurisdictional box and get a permit. It should operate within your timeframe and add real value through creative, intentional, and innovative solutions.
A phased process that scales your spend with your certainty. Value-driven design on every sheet. A team you can call when the big problems hit — because we don't see problems as setbacks, we see them as opportunities to engineer a better solution.
In an industry that's been slow to evolve, we're driven to innovate and create within our niche better than anyone else.
A civil engineer designs the infrastructure that makes a subdivision buildable — grading, roads, stormwater drainage, water and sewer utilities, and erosion control. They prepare the construction drawings a contractor needs to break ground and manage the permitting process with the local jurisdiction. At Samford Group, we also handle entitlements, value engineering, and agency coordination so you're not managing three different firms.
Yes. Alabama requires a boundary survey before any land can be subdivided, platted, or entitled. A survey establishes legal property boundaries, identifies easements and encroachments, and provides the base data your engineer needs to design the site. Starting engineering without a survey is one of the most common — and expensive — mistakes developers make.
A concept plan is a preliminary site layout showing proposed lot configuration, density, access points, and major constraints like floodplain, setbacks, and topography. It's the first step in evaluating whether a site will support your target product type and yield. At Samford Group, an engineer-informed concept plan is a core deliverable of the Predevelopment Playbook — the fixed-fee first step developers use to test a site's potential before committing serious capital.
It depends on project complexity and the jurisdiction's review cycle. In Auburn, the DRT (Development Review Team) permit process typically takes 6–12 weeks from submittal to approval. In Opelika, the LDP (Land Disturbance Permit) process is generally faster at 4–8 weeks. The entitlement process — rezoning, planning commission, city council — can add 60–120 days depending on the hearing schedule. Samford Group manages the full submittal and review process on your behalf.
Yes. Samford Group is licensed in both Alabama and Georgia, and over half of our team started their careers in Georgia. We've worked on several projects in south Georgia, west Georgia, and the Atlanta metro. Our Auburn location sits right on the state line, making it an ideal base for serving developers in both states. Having survey and engineering licensed in both means one team handles your project regardless of which side of the line your site falls on.
Contact
Have a project in Auburn, Opelika, Lee County, or anywhere in Alabama and Georgia? Start with a conversation. We respond to every inquiry.
