Bringing Lot Inventory to Life with Latapult

In Charleston, South Carolina, a special island town has emerged – a place where traditional neighborhoods, nationally ranked golf courses, and a vibrant downtown combine in a spectacular coastal setting. Surrounded by rivers, creeks, and stunning marsh views, Daniel Island is a place where people live and work, where children walk to school, and where opportunities for active recreation abound.

It’s no wonder that Daniel Island has become a sought-after community, but this popularity came with challenges, including the need for real-time, seamless inventory management.

Large Scale, Highly-Visible Project Requires Real-Time Data

The first residents moved to Daniel Island 20 years ago with a vision for a master-planned community complete with residential neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, commercial office space, and more. That vision has since become a reality. This in-demand, high-end coastal community required the nimbleness to track and analyze property ownership, availability, and land development status in real-time, while also creating detailed property maps that reflected the most up-to-date information for the property owner, developer, builders, and prospects. Yet the development team found they were spending an inordinate amount of time on this process – and that their information and maps were often outdated.

Simple Research and Analysis Took Extraordinary Time Resources

Using ArcGIS, Daniel Island was also making critical land decisions that required manually configuring multiple databases for basic information, with lots of back and forth with their civil engineering team – burning valuable development management and planning hours. Additionally, tracking lot availability and sales was a tedious process, requiring multiple systems that weren’t updated with the pace needed to keep up with the demand at Daniel Island.

Hours of Research in Minutes

Upon adopting Latapult (formerly geothinQ) in 2012, Daniel Island was immediately able to access and analyze property data on-demand, while also being able to share critical documents, such as builder files and site infrastructure documents, across teams – eliminating constant back-and-forth. Armed with real-time data and an enhanced ability to collaborate, the Daniel Island team could track lot construction status, see lots under contract, and better manage inventory and timelines within minutes. Important property data such as parcel numbers and property lines were also visualized on Daniel Island’s Latapult application. With this new project management and property analysis process, Daniel Island made better decisions on when to start new phases and determine phase boundaries. In addition, they can create compelling property maps to show builders what will be available and when – streamlining the land acquisition process. Following the addition of property-specific data the team began mapping data layers with environmental, topography, and soil data to make better land planning decisions.

“With 7,500 residential units, as well as commercial and public structures, Daniel Island is an immense undertaking,” said Bill McKenzie, ‎vice president of development at The Daniel Island Company. “From inventory tracking and management to the development of future phases and amenities, Daniel Island’s deployment of the Latapult application makes them a pioneer of harnessing GIS data for development processes in the Charleston area.”

With Latapult, we’re making smarter decisions with real-time data about how quickly different development types are moving off the market.

Bill McKenzie, Vice President of Development at The Daniel Island Company

The development team behind Daniel Island is now using Latapult for planning, project management, budgeting, and scheduling for its latest project as well – Carnes Crossroads.

Latapult is a pioneer of an on-demand geographic land mapping and data visualization platform that is accelerating smart, data-driven decisions about valuable land like never before. To see how Latapult can help drive your development, get started here.