Some Engineering Aspects in Industrial Site Selection*

To begin with, let us separate industrial site development into two broad categories: (1) that which is decided very early in the study by a corporation in its home office involving the general geographic region in which it wants to locate and (2) those field investigations carried on by personnel such as myself where we actually look at specific potential industrial sites in the field. Although many facts influence a decision by our Company on what region to locate a new plant in, the most pertinent are those factors that directly influence the operational costs of the plant. These are taxes, freight, and labor. These items are recurring year after year and therefore represent the most significant factors in pricing a product. To better understand how the above factors are developed into our site selection activities, I will outline in general how the program itself is initiated