A site plan is a single drawing that shows where your property is on a map, show it in relation to the properties that surround it, the streets it connects to, what buildings are on it, how you get to those buildings and property line lengths.
Much like any other area of research, the more the drainage of land is studied the more we learn about where the water will go once it falls on different soil types and in different areas. Also due to the growing population, this leads to changes in the city and county codes which means that what was considered to be okay in the past has been shown not to work. In addition to this, many times there was not an investigation in the past and things may flood in heavy rains with the existing condition. The bottom line is that we have to provide stormwater management because it is a regulation and requirement to get permits, and these plans help to protect you and adjacent properties as it relates to stormwater runoff from being negatively impacted.
A silt fence is on your site only for the duration of construction. It is a very fine mesh that filters out small particles of silt that get caught up in the runoff during construction of your project. If this silt is allowed to leave your site, it causes erosion from your site and creates a mess on the roads and even can block storm drains in the roadway.
A drainage report is essentially a very detailed version of showing your work in school. This report explains to everyone reviewing the project why the designer did what they did and how it meets the requirements of the jurisdiction. This explains what happens with the rain after it falls on your site after it is constructed to its final state.
A CSWPPP is a Construction Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan and it explains what happens with the rain after it falls on your site during construction.
A TESC plan is a Temporary Erosion and Sediment Control plan that provides the layout of erosion control devices and explains what those devices are. This is used by your contractor to follow the requirements of the jurisdiction for storm water during construction.
A grading design shows a contractor how to take your site elevations from what it is pre-construction to where you want it to be. In contrast, a drainage design shows where the water will go, given a site with these elevations and what will be done with it once it gets where it is going.
GIS, or Graphical Information Systems, are a repository for all sorts of data including things such as elevations of land, who owns it, where landslides may occur, wetland locations, etc. This information is only as good as the source and since the satellite mapping of topography and locations varies significantly it cannot be relied on for detailed information gathering or anything that relates to legal lines on a property.
Civil engineering is the design of infrastructure elements that plans and designs the following:
