Deployment due diligence for fiber routes and small cell sites
Know what the jurisdiction will require before you commit.
A fiber route crosses municipal, county, state, railroad, utility, and private interests. A small cell site turns on right-of-way eligibility, pole ownership, existing agreements, and design standards. Most teams price and schedule the work before any of that is confirmed.
JIC confirms it first.
The problem
The rules arrive after the estimate is locked.
The conditions that govern a corridor or site are scattered across municipal codes, DOT engineering manuals, fee resolutions, franchise and ROW agreements, design standards, permit applications, and agency practices that may never have been published.
Because the information is fragmented and time-consuming to verify, it is often not assembled until the route is drawn, the candidate site is selected, or the estimate is already taking shape.
Then something surfaces:
- A restoration standard that materially exceeds the permit fees
- A franchise, agreement, or council approval that adds months to the assumed schedule
- A pole location or structure type that was never eligible in the first place
The design changes. The estimate no longer holds. The delivery date was based on assumptions no one had tested.
What you get
A decision brief, not a data dump.
For a proposed corridor or set of candidate sites, JIC delivers:
- Decision brief — what your team should account for, authority by authority — including the relevant public agency or infrastructure owner, required instrument, financial obligations, construction and design prerequisites, approval path, and schedule drivers
- Open-questions list — where the available record does not answer a material question, we identify the gap, the office or authority most likely to resolve it, and the recommended next step. We do not fill the gap with an inference
- Findings walkthrough — a working session with your engineering, estimating, market-development, real estate, or deployment team
When to engage JIC
- A proposed route crosses unfamiliar jurisdictions
- An estimate or bid is due before detailed permitting work begins
- You’re comparing route or market alternatives
- A customer delivery date depends on multiple approval processes
- The team suspects the published requirements don’t tell the whole story
Two engagements
Fiber Corridor Review
Jurisdictional conditions along a proposed route — controlling authorities, right-of-way access and instruments, permits, fees and recurring charges, bonds and insurance, construction and restoration requirements, crossings, moratoria, and approval timelines.
Supports — route selection · bid and estimate assumptions · market-entry decisions · contingency allocation
Small Cell Site Review
Jurisdictional and site-specific conditions for proposed wireless pole locations — right-of-way eligibility, pole ownership and existing agreements, permitted structure types, design and concealment standards, undergrounding rules, utility coordination, approvals, and fees.
Supports — candidate-site screening · pole and structure selection · MLA and right-of-way agreement requirements · deployment sequencing
How it works
- ScopeYou send the proposed corridor or the candidate site list. We identify every authority it touches and agree the fee and the delivery date.
- ResearchWe pull from the authorities directly — DOT manuals, adopted ordinances and fee resolutions, franchise agreements, and public records requests where the record isn’t published. Technology handles acquisition and evidence management.
- VerificationAn infrastructure practitioner reviews every finding against the source before it ships. Nothing goes in the brief that isn’t cited or explicitly flagged as unresolved.
- WalkthroughWe take your team through it and answer what the brief raised.
Why expert-led
No platform to adopt. No seats to buy.
Your team doesn’t need another permitting system. It needs an answer about the project in front of it.
Each engagement is a specific corridor or a specific set of sites. Technology supports the research and the evidence trail; an experienced practitioner owns the analysis and signs off on what’s in the brief.
You get a document your estimator can price against and your engineer can design against.