If you’ve ever had a permit application stall because a tree survey wasn’t completed on time — or because the data the jurisdiction received didn’t hold up under review — you already understand the cost of getting this process wrong. Tree surveys are not complicated in concept, but they involve two distinct professional disciplines that do very different things. Knowing which professional does what, in what order, and when to release them can be the difference between a smooth entitlement process and an avoidable schedule hit.
Evergreen Design Group has been coordinating tree surveys and preparing tree disposition plans for land developers, civil engineers, and architects across more than 40 states since 2005. This post breaks down the practical mechanics of the tree survey process — who should be doing what, where the common inefficiencies live, and how to sequence the work to protect your permit timeline.
What a Tree Survey Actually Requires — and Why Two Disciplines Are Involved
A tree survey for a land development project has two distinct deliverables: spatial data and arboricultural data. These are not the same thing, and they require different professional training, different tools, and different field methodologies.
Spatial data means knowing precisely where each protected tree is located on the site — its coordinates relative to property lines, grading limits, proposed structures, and utility corridors. This is survey work. It requires a licensed land surveyor using survey-grade equipment: total stations, GPS receivers capable of sub-centimeter accuracy, and control established from monumented benchmarks. The output is a tree location map that integrates directly into the project’s base survey and can be used by civil engineers and landscape architects in their CAD environment.
Arboricultural data means knowing what each tree is, how big it is, and what condition it’s in. This is arborist work. It requires a certified arborist who can accurately identify species — including lookalike species that can matter significantly under local ordinance — measure diameter at breast height (DBH) to the standards required by the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ), and assess overall health and structural condition. This data ends up in the tree inventory table that accompanies the tree disposition plan.
The problem arises when either professional is asked to do the other’s job.
Why Surveyors Should Not Be Sizing and Identifying Trees
Land surveyors are highly skilled at what they do — and what they do is spatial measurement. They are not trained arborists, and asking them to identify species and assess tree condition puts them outside their professional lane.
This matters more than it might seem. Tree ordinances in most jurisdictions establish mitigation requirements based on species and DBH. A misidentified species can affect which trees are regulated, which mitigation thresholds apply, and how the jurisdiction’s arborist reviews the submittal. A DBH recorded without applying proper measurement protocol — accounting for multi-stem trees, trees on slopes, trees with abnormal trunk form — introduces data that won’t survive scrutiny.
More to the point: surveyors generally don’t carry the tools or reference materials to make accurate field identifications in the range of conditions present on a development site. That’s not a criticism — it’s simply outside the scope of their professional practice.
The better division of labor is clean and efficient: the surveyor locates and tags the trees. The arborist then uses those tagged, surveyed trees as reference points to collect species, DBH, and condition data. Each professional is doing the work they’re trained to do. The resulting dataset is more accurate, more defensible, and more likely to satisfy a reviewing jurisdiction on the first submittal.
The Cost Efficiency Argument for Using the Surveyor to Locate Trees
There is a genuine cost advantage to having the land surveyor locate and tag protected trees — and it’s worth stating plainly.
The surveyor is already mobilized on the site. They’re establishing control, running the boundary survey, and collecting topographic data. Adding tree location to that scope is incremental work for a crew that’s already in the field. The marginal cost of tagging and surveying trees is significantly lower than a separate mobilization.
From a scheduling perspective, it also eliminates a return trip. Once the surveyor has tagged every protected tree and tied those tags to survey coordinates, the arborist can go directly to each tagged tree, collect their data, and hand off a complete inventory to the landscape architect. The workflow is linear and efficient.
This is the approach Evergreen Design Group recommends for most projects: release the surveyor with tree location in scope, then release the arborist immediately upon completion of the survey fieldwork.
Why Arborist GPS Location Is Less Accurate Than Survey-Grade Equipment
Certified arborists can locate trees — and in some situations, they do. When a client discovers mid-project that a tree disposition plan is required and the surveyor has already completed and demobilized, the arborist may need to handle both location and inventory in a single site visit. That’s a workable solution, and it’s one we’ve executed effectively for clients in exactly that scenario.
However, it’s important to understand the accuracy tradeoff.
Arborists typically use handheld or mobile GPS devices for tree location. Consumer and professional-grade GPS units used in arboricultural practice typically achieve accuracy within one to several meters under good conditions — and that figure can degrade under canopy cover, which is precisely the environment where tree surveys are conducted. Survey-grade GPS and total station equipment, by contrast, achieves sub-centimeter accuracy with proper control and methodology.
For a tree disposition plan, that difference in accuracy has downstream implications. Tree locations that are off by several feet can create conflicts when the data is overlaid on the civil engineer’s grading plan or utility layout. If a tree’s actual location places it within a proposed grading limit — but the GPS-based location placed it just outside — the plan may not accurately represent what’s happening in the field.
When the surveyor has already been on-site and can locate trees precisely, that’s the better tool for the job. The arborist’s GPS capability is a viable contingency, not a preferred workflow.
The Sequencing Problem: Why Timing the Arborist Release Matters
This is where most project teams leave time and money on the table.
The tree survey is viewed as a permitting task — something to be handled when the project is approaching submittal readiness. By that logic, the arborist doesn’t get released until the design is well advanced. The problem is that by the time the arborist completes the inventory, turns it over to the landscape architect, and the landscape architect prepares the tree disposition plan, the permit package is waiting. In jurisdictions with busy review queues, that delay can push a submittal date by weeks. In some cases, it has pushed projects past a seasonal submittal window entirely.
The tree survey should be released at the front end of the project — concurrent with, or immediately following, the boundary and topographic survey. Here’s why this sequencing matters beyond just the permit timeline:
Tree data informs design. Once the landscape architect has the tree inventory, that data is overlaid on the site plan. Protected trees — particularly large-caliper specimens with regulated setbacks or critical root zones — directly constrain where grading can occur, where structures can be positioned, and where utility corridors can route. If the civil engineer and architect don’t have that data until they’re preparing construction documents, they’re designing around constraints they can’t see. The result is either a design that conflicts with tree preservation requirements or a redesign cost that could have been avoided.
Mitigation is easier to plan early. If the tree disposition plan reveals significant mitigation obligations — caliper-inch replacement, payments into a municipal tree fund, or both — the client needs that information while the pro forma still has flexibility. A mitigation obligation discovered at permit submission is a budget line with no lead time. One identified early can be planned for, negotiated where possible, and incorporated into the site planning process.
AHJ review takes time. Some jurisdictions do not simply accept the arborist’s inventory. They send their own staff arborist or urban forestry representative to verify the data. That review takes time. In competitive markets, urban forestry review queues can run several weeks. If the client’s arborist is just completing their fieldwork as the permit package is being assembled, there is no buffer for a jurisdictional review cycle.
Evergreen Design Group’s standing recommendation: release the arborist as soon as the surveyor has completed tree location fieldwork. Do not wait until the design is nearly complete.
Two additional sequencing points are worth calling out for developers managing larger or more complex projects.
Confirm jurisdictional requirements before authorizing fieldwork. Before the surveyor mobilizes, verify the AHJ’s exact submittal requirements: DBH thresholds, regulated species lists, preservation standards, and any specific data attributes the disposition plan must include. Unclear or assumed requirements lead to remobilizations and add-service charges when the field crew has to return to collect data that wasn’t in the original scope. A quick pre-application inquiry to the municipality — or a call with an experienced landscape architect who knows the jurisdiction — eliminates that risk entirely.
On phased projects, structure the survey by phase boundaries. There is no reason to pay for tree survey and disposition work on land that won’t be permitted for several years. Scoping the tree survey to match near-term phase boundaries keeps the immediate deliverable focused and cost-proportionate. Later phases can be surveyed when their permitting timeline approaches — with current field conditions rather than data that has aged out of accuracy.
What Happens When the AHJ Sends Its Own Arborist
Some jurisdictions — particularly those with active urban forestry programs — will dispatch their own arborist or urban forestry staff to independently verify the tree inventory submitted with the disposition plan. This is the AHJ’s right, and it’s a legitimate quality-control step in their review process.
The challenge is that jurisdictional arborists reviewing dozens of projects are not always conducting the same level of field rigor as a certified arborist engaged specifically for your site. Species identifications may be made quickly under time pressure. DBH measurements may not account for all the variables a thorough arborist would apply. In some cases, the AHJ’s field review has produced data that differs meaningfully from what a qualified arborist documented — with the discrepancy moving in either direction.
This is not an argument for padding your inventory or expecting conflict. It’s an argument for submitting a defensible, thorough, well-documented tree inventory the first time. When the certifying arborist’s data is methodologically sound, properly documented with field notes and photography, and prepared by a credentialed professional who can defend the findings at a review meeting if needed, discrepancies are far easier to resolve. Jurisdictions generally respond well to a confident, documented professional position. Thin inventories invite revision.
Request Arborist and Landscape Architect Fees After the Tree Survey Is Complete
This is a procurement recommendation that most project managers haven’t heard before — but it consistently produces better outcomes for the client.
The instinct on most development projects is to issue RFPs for all consultants simultaneously: surveyor, arborist, and landscape architect scoped and contracted in parallel, as early as possible. The logic makes sense on the surface. In practice, it produces inflated fees and inaccurate scopes for the arborist and landscape architect specifically.
Here’s the problem. When an arborist is asked to quote a tree inventory before the survey has been completed, they have no reliable basis for estimating the number of trees they’ll need to evaluate. They’re working from an aerial image — satellite or drone photography, a county GIS layer, or whatever imagery is available for the site. Aerial photography cannot accurately count protected trees under canopy, distinguish regulated species from non-regulated ones, or account for the density variations that exist at ground level across a development parcel. The arborist knows this. The landscape architect knows this too, because their scope — and their fee — is directly tied to the number of trees the disposition plan will need to address.
When professionals are asked to price work against data they know is unreliable, they do the only responsible thing: they build margin into their fee to cover the unknown. The quote you receive reflects not just the work they can see, but the additional scope they’re protecting themselves against. You’re paying for ambiguity you don’t need to carry.
The solution is straightforward. Complete the land surveyor’s tree location fieldwork first. Once the surveyor has tagged and located every protected tree on the site, you have a definitive number — not an estimate, not an aerial interpretation, but an actual tagged count tied to survey coordinates. At that point, the arborist can quote against a known quantity: a specific number of tagged trees requiring species identification, DBH measurement, and condition assessment. The landscape architect can do the same, scoping the disposition plan against a tree count that reflects actual site conditions.
The fees you receive after the survey is complete will be materially more accurate than fees requested before it. In most cases, they’ll also be lower — because the consultants aren’t pricing in uncertainty they no longer have to carry.
Evergreen Design Group recommends holding the arborist and landscape architect RFP until the surveyor has completed tree location. The surveyor’s mobilization is the lowest-cost step in the process, and it is the step that makes every subsequent scope more accurate and every subsequent fee more defensible. Release the surveyor first, get the tagged tree count, then go to market for arborist and landscape architect fees.
For developers managing multiple projects — whether concurrently or across a pipeline — there is an additional lever available: negotiating unit-rate or per-tree fee structures with your arborist and landscape architect rather than accepting one-off proposals on every job. Once a consultant knows your project type, your standard scope, and your ordinance landscape, they can quote on a per-tree or per-acre basis with confidence. That structure eliminates the mobilization markup that gets priced into every new proposal, reduces the administrative overhead of issuing and negotiating RFPs repeatedly, and gives your project manager a predictable cost model for budgeting tree-related soft costs across the portfolio.
Direct Contracting the Arborist: Another Way to Reduce Consultant Costs
There’s a related fee structure decision worth raising with your project manager or procurement team before contracts are executed.
Most landscape architects are willing to include the arborist in their scope of services — and on the surface, that arrangement looks efficient. One contract, one point of contact, consolidated billing. For some project teams, that simplicity is worth the cost. But there is a cost, and it’s worth understanding before you default to that structure.
When a landscape architect subcontracts the arborist, they are taking on two additional responsibilities that they will price accordingly. The first is coordination: managing the arborist’s schedule, reviewing their deliverables, integrating their inventory data into the disposition plan, and fielding any back-and-forth with the arborist on discrepancies or incomplete field data. That coordination time has value, and it will be reflected in the landscape architect’s fee. The second is financial risk: the landscape architect is now responsible for paying the arborist regardless of when they receive payment from the client. That payment exposure — carrying a subcontractor invoice while waiting on their own draw — is a real cost of doing business, and it gets priced into the markup.
The result is that the arborist’s fee, by the time it passes through the landscape architect’s contract, is higher than what the arborist would have quoted the client directly.
The alternative is straightforward: contract the arborist directly. The developer or civil engineer issues a separate agreement directly to the arborist — scoped after the surveyor has completed tree location, as discussed above — and the landscape architect’s scope covers only plan preparation and mitigation strategy. The landscape architect still coordinates with the arborist in the normal course of producing the disposition plan; they simply aren’t carrying the subcontract or the markup that comes with it.
This structure requires the client to manage one additional contract relationship, which is a minor administrative consideration. For most developers and civil engineers who are already managing multiple consultant agreements on a project, that’s not a meaningful burden. The fee savings — eliminating the markup layer entirely — typically make it the more cost-efficient approach.
Evergreen Design Group is transparent about this tradeoff. We’re happy to include arborist coordination in our scope when the client prefers a consolidated contract structure. But when a client’s priority is cost efficiency and they’re already engaged in managing their consultant team, we’ll tell them directly: contracting the arborist separately will save money. The disposition plan deliverable is the same either way.
What to Do If the Surveyor Has Already Demobilized
Project teams occasionally discover mid-design that a tree disposition plan is required — after the boundary survey has been completed and the survey crew has left the site. This happens more often than it should, particularly in jurisdictions where tree ordinance requirements aren’t always clearly communicated at the pre-application stage.
In this scenario, the arborist can handle both location and inventory in a single site visit. GPS-based tree location by a qualified arborist, while not survey-grade in accuracy, is sufficient for many jurisdictions and provides a workable foundation for the disposition plan. The landscape architect and civil engineer simply need to be aware of the locational tolerance so they can account for it in how tree constraints are applied to the site plan.
If the project is in a jurisdiction that requires survey-grade accuracy — or if the site conditions make locational precision particularly important (tight grading limits, significant protected tree density, complex utility corridors) — it may be worth evaluating whether a limited surveyor remobilization is worth the cost. That’s a project-specific judgment call, and Evergreen can help you evaluate it.
The bottom line: discovering late that a tree disposition plan is required doesn’t mean the process is broken. It means the arborist needs to handle location on their end and move quickly. The more important lesson is to confirm tree ordinance requirements at the earliest possible stage of project planning.
From Tree Survey to Tree Disposition Plan: The Landscape Architect’s Role
Once the arborist has completed the field inventory and delivered a tagged tree inventory with species, DBH, health ratings, and location data, that information moves to the landscape architect for plan preparation.
The tree disposition plan is the document that formalizes all of that data into a permitted deliverable. It does several things simultaneously:
Trees designated to remain: Protected with tree save areas, root zone barriers, construction fencing, and associated notes and specifications. Tree protection fencing (TPF) locations, root zone protection protocols, approved construction methods within the critical root zone (CRZ), and monitoring requirements during active grading and construction phases are all specified.
Trees designated for removal: Identified with species, size, and disposition reason — grading conflict, utility conflict, condition, etc. — with applicable DBH data for mitigation calculation purposes.
Mitigation obligation: Calculated in accordance with local ordinance — whether that’s on-site replacement planting at a specified caliper ratio, payment into a municipal tree fund, off-site planting, or a hybrid combination. The landscape architect calculates the obligation, identifies compliant replacement species, and prepares the documentation the AHJ needs to verify compliance.
The plan is drawn to scale, formatted to the jurisdiction’s submittal requirements, and delivered as a coordinated document set that integrates with the civil engineer’s site plan and grading drawings.
Evergreen Design Group handles every phase of this process — from coordinating the surveyor and arborist through final plan preparation and permit support — providing a single point of accountability for the entire tree disposition planning scope.
Design Decisions That Reduce Total Mitigation Costs
The tree survey is often treated as a regulatory checkbox — something to complete so the permit package can be assembled. That framing undersells what the data can actually do for a project’s bottom line. Used strategically, tree survey data is one of the most cost-effective inputs in the early design process.
The core opportunity is this: mitigation costs are largely a function of how many regulated trees get removed. The fewer trees that fall within grading limits, utility corridors, and building footprints, the lower the mitigation obligation. That equation is influenced directly by design decisions — and design decisions are most flexible early, before grading plans are advanced and building pads are locked.
Configure grading and building pads to protect critical root zones. When tree location data is available at the start of site design, civil engineers can orient pads and grading limits to keep heavy cut and fill out of the critical root zones of high-value specimens. A few feet of adjustment at the design stage can be the difference between a tree that’s preservable and one that triggers a mitigation obligation worth thousands of dollars in replacement caliper inches or tree fund payments.
Use mature canopy strategically to offset future landscape costs. Every significant tree preserved on-site is landscape value that doesn’t need to be purchased and installed. Mature shade trees near leasing offices, amenity areas, and main entries provide immediate curb appeal that new plantings can’t replicate for years. When your tree disposition plan is designed with this in mind — preserving the right trees in the right locations, not just the ones that happen to fall outside grading limits — it can meaningfully reduce the large-caliper planting quantities required in the landscape plan.
Request a pre-application meeting with the AHJ before finalizing the tree approach. Many municipalities will meet with a project team prior to formal submittal to discuss the proposed preservation and mitigation strategy. This is one of the highest-value hours available in the tree disposition planning process. Confirming that the jurisdiction agrees with your proposed approach before plans are completed — rather than discovering a fundamental objection at first review — avoids the most expensive kind of rework: revising a disposition plan, a grading plan, and potentially a site layout because the AHJ’s expectations weren’t understood upfront. Evergreen Design Group routinely participates in these pre-application discussions on behalf of our clients.
None of these decisions require additional budget. They require early data and a design team that knows how to use it. That’s the argument for getting the tree survey done at the front end of the project — not just to satisfy a permitting requirement, but to give the project team the information it needs to make better, less expensive decisions.
FAQ: Tree Surveys and Tree Disposition Plans for Land Development
The land surveyor is the most accurate and cost-efficient option for tree location when they’re already mobilized on the site. Surveyors use survey-grade equipment that achieves sub-centimeter accuracy — significantly more precise than the handheld GPS units typically used by arborists. Since the surveyor is already collecting boundary, topographic, and site data, adding tree location to their scope is incremental in cost and eliminates the need for a separate mobilization.
Species identification and DBH measurement require arboricultural training that falls outside a land surveyor’s professional expertise. Tree ordinances in most jurisdictions establish mitigation thresholds based on species and size — meaning errors in identification or measurement can produce a tree inventory that doesn’t survive AHJ review. Keeping the work within each professional’s licensed expertise produces more accurate, more defensible data.
As early as possible — immediately after the surveyor completes tree location fieldwork. Delaying the arborist until the project is near permit-ready is one of the most common causes of avoidable permit delays in the tree disposition planning process. Early tree data also allows civil engineers and architects to incorporate tree constraints into grading and site plans before design conflicts become expensive to resolve.
Some jurisdictions, particularly those with active urban forestry programs, will field-verify the submitted tree inventory. AHJ arborists conducting rapid field reviews don’t always apply the same methodological rigor as a dedicated project arborist, and discrepancies in species ID or DBH are not uncommon. A well-documented, methodologically sound inventory prepared by a credentialed arborist is the best defense against review conflicts. When discrepancies arise, thorough documentation allows your team to engage the jurisdiction from a position of professional confidence.
Yes. If the survey has already been completed and the surveyor has demobilized, a certified arborist can locate and tag trees using GPS equipment and then collect the species, DBH, and condition data in a single visit. This is a workable contingency. The accuracy tradeoff versus survey-grade equipment should be understood and accounted for when the landscape architect integrates tree data into the site plan.
The tree disposition plan formalizes the inventory data into a permitted deliverable. It designates trees to remain — with associated protection measures including TPF layout, root zone protection, and CRZ construction protocols — and trees to be removed, with applicable mitigation calculations. Mitigation strategies may include on-site replacement planting, payment into a municipal tree fund, off-site planting, or a combination. The plan is formatted to the AHJ’s submittal requirements and coordinated with the civil engineer’s grading and site plans.
Significantly — which is exactly why early release of the arborist matters. Protected trees impose real constraints on grading limits, structure setbacks, and utility routing. When that data is available early, the project team can incorporate tree constraints into design before conflicts arise. When it arrives late, the team is redesigning around constraints that were always present but not visible in the drawings.
After — always. When arborists and landscape architects are asked to quote before the surveyor has located and tagged trees, they’re scoping their work based on aerial imagery that cannot reliably reflect actual tree counts, species distribution, or canopy density on the ground. To protect themselves against scope creep, they price in a contingency buffer. Once the surveyor has completed tree location fieldwork, both consultants can quote against a definitive tagged tree count — and their fees will be more accurate and typically lower as a result. Releasing the surveyor first is the most cost-efficient sequencing for the client.
Generally, yes. When a landscape architect subcontracts the arborist, they will typically apply a markup to cover their coordination time and the financial risk of carrying a subcontractor payment obligation. Contracting the arborist directly eliminates that markup layer entirely. The client takes on one additional contract relationship, but the arborist’s fee reflects their actual scope — not a fee passed through another consultant’s contract. For developers and civil engineers already managing multiple consultant agreements, direct contracting of the arborist is usually the more cost-efficient structure.
Get Started with a Tree Disposition Plan
If your project involves a site with existing trees, the question isn’t whether to conduct a tree survey — it’s how to sequence it efficiently so it supports your schedule rather than threatens it. The answer almost always involves a surveyor for location, an arborist for inventory, and a landscape architect to turn that data into a compliant, permitted plan.
Evergreen Design Group has delivered tree disposition plans for developers, civil engineers, architects, and design-build contractors across more than 40 states. Our licensed landscape architects coordinate the survey and arborist scopes directly and handle every phase of the disposition plan from first site visit to final submittal.
Contact Evergreen Design Group to discuss your project and request a proposal— or call us directly at (800) 680-6630.
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If you’ve ever had a permit application stall because a tree survey wasn’t completed on time — or because the data the jurisdiction received didn’t hold up under review — you already understand the cost of getting this process wrong. Tree surveys are not complicated in concept, but they involve two distinct professional disciplines that do very different things. Knowing which professional does what, in what order, and when to release them can be the difference between a smooth entitlement process and an avoidable schedule hit.
Evergreen Design Group has been coordinating tree surveys and preparing tree disposition plans for land developers, civil engineers, and architects across more than 40 states since 2005. This post breaks down the practical mechanics of the tree survey process — who should be doing what, where the common inefficiencies live, and how to sequence the work to protect your permit timeline.
What a Tree Survey Actually Requires — and Why Two Disciplines Are Involved
A tree survey for a land development project has two distinct deliverables: spatial data and arboricultural data. These are not the same thing, and they require different professional training, different tools, and different field methodologies.
Spatial data means knowing precisely where each protected tree is located on the site — its coordinates relative to property lines, grading limits, proposed structures, and utility corridors. This is survey work. It requires a licensed land surveyor using survey-grade equipment: total stations, GPS receivers capable of sub-centimeter accuracy, and control established from monumented benchmarks. The output is a tree location map that integrates directly into the project’s base survey and can be used by civil engineers and landscape architects in their CAD environment.
Arboricultural data means knowing what each tree is, how big it is, and what condition it’s in. This is arborist work. It requires a certified arborist who can accurately identify species — including lookalike species that can matter significantly under local ordinance — measure diameter at breast height (DBH) to the standards required by the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ), and assess overall health and structural condition. This data ends up in the tree inventory table that accompanies the tree disposition plan.
The problem arises when either professional is asked to do the other’s job.
Why Surveyors Should Not Be Sizing and Identifying Trees
Land surveyors are highly skilled at what they do — and what they do is spatial measurement. They are not trained arborists, and asking them to identify species and assess tree condition puts them outside their professional lane.
This matters more than it might seem. Tree ordinances in most jurisdictions establish mitigation requirements based on species and DBH. A misidentified species can affect which trees are regulated, which mitigation thresholds apply, and how the jurisdiction’s arborist reviews the submittal. A DBH recorded without applying proper measurement protocol — accounting for multi-stem trees, trees on slopes, trees with abnormal trunk form — introduces data that won’t survive scrutiny.
More to the point: surveyors generally don’t carry the tools or reference materials to make accurate field identifications in the range of conditions present on a development site. That’s not a criticism — it’s simply outside the scope of their professional practice.
The better division of labor is clean and efficient: the surveyor locates and tags the trees. The arborist then uses those tagged, surveyed trees as reference points to collect species, DBH, and condition data. Each professional is doing the work they’re trained to do. The resulting dataset is more accurate, more defensible, and more likely to satisfy a reviewing jurisdiction on the first submittal.
The Cost Efficiency Argument for Using the Surveyor to Locate Trees
There is a genuine cost advantage to having the land surveyor locate and tag protected trees — and it’s worth stating plainly.
The surveyor is already mobilized on the site. They’re establishing control, running the boundary survey, and collecting topographic data. Adding tree location to that scope is incremental work for a crew that’s already in the field. The marginal cost of tagging and surveying trees is significantly lower than a separate mobilization.
From a scheduling perspective, it also eliminates a return trip. Once the surveyor has tagged every protected tree and tied those tags to survey coordinates, the arborist can go directly to each tagged tree, collect their data, and hand off a complete inventory to the landscape architect. The workflow is linear and efficient.
This is the approach Evergreen Design Group recommends for most projects: release the surveyor with tree location in scope, then release the arborist immediately upon completion of the survey fieldwork.
Why Arborist GPS Location Is Less Accurate Than Survey-Grade Equipment
Certified arborists can locate trees — and in some situations, they do. When a client discovers mid-project that a tree disposition plan is required and the surveyor has already completed and demobilized, the arborist may need to handle both location and inventory in a single site visit. That’s a workable solution, and it’s one we’ve executed effectively for clients in exactly that scenario.
However, it’s important to understand the accuracy tradeoff.
Arborists typically use handheld or mobile GPS devices for tree location. Consumer and professional-grade GPS units used in arboricultural practice typically achieve accuracy within one to several meters under good conditions — and that figure can degrade under canopy cover, which is precisely the environment where tree surveys are conducted. Survey-grade GPS and total station equipment, by contrast, achieves sub-centimeter accuracy with proper control and methodology.
For a tree disposition plan, that difference in accuracy has downstream implications. Tree locations that are off by several feet can create conflicts when the data is overlaid on the civil engineer’s grading plan or utility layout. If a tree’s actual location places it within a proposed grading limit — but the GPS-based location placed it just outside — the plan may not accurately represent what’s happening in the field.
When the surveyor has already been on-site and can locate trees precisely, that’s the better tool for the job. The arborist’s GPS capability is a viable contingency, not a preferred workflow.
The Sequencing Problem: Why Timing the Arborist Release Matters
This is where most project teams leave time and money on the table.
The tree survey is viewed as a permitting task — something to be handled when the project is approaching submittal readiness. By that logic, the arborist doesn’t get released until the design is well advanced. The problem is that by the time the arborist completes the inventory, turns it over to the landscape architect, and the landscape architect prepares the tree disposition plan, the permit package is waiting. In jurisdictions with busy review queues, that delay can push a submittal date by weeks. In some cases, it has pushed projects past a seasonal submittal window entirely.
The tree survey should be released at the front end of the project — concurrent with, or immediately following, the boundary and topographic survey. Here’s why this sequencing matters beyond just the permit timeline:
Tree data informs design. Once the landscape architect has the tree inventory, that data is overlaid on the site plan. Protected trees — particularly large-caliper specimens with regulated setbacks or critical root zones — directly constrain where grading can occur, where structures can be positioned, and where utility corridors can route. If the civil engineer and architect don’t have that data until they’re preparing construction documents, they’re designing around constraints they can’t see. The result is either a design that conflicts with tree preservation requirements or a redesign cost that could have been avoided.
Mitigation is easier to plan early. If the tree disposition plan reveals significant mitigation obligations — caliper-inch replacement, payments into a municipal tree fund, or both — the client needs that information while the pro forma still has flexibility. A mitigation obligation discovered at permit submission is a budget line with no lead time. One identified early can be planned for, negotiated where possible, and incorporated into the site planning process.
AHJ review takes time. Some jurisdictions do not simply accept the arborist’s inventory. They send their own staff arborist or urban forestry representative to verify the data. That review takes time. In competitive markets, urban forestry review queues can run several weeks. If the client’s arborist is just completing their fieldwork as the permit package is being assembled, there is no buffer for a jurisdictional review cycle.
Evergreen Design Group’s standing recommendation: release the arborist as soon as the surveyor has completed tree location fieldwork. Do not wait until the design is nearly complete.
Two additional sequencing points are worth calling out for developers managing larger or more complex projects.
Confirm jurisdictional requirements before authorizing fieldwork. Before the surveyor mobilizes, verify the AHJ’s exact submittal requirements: DBH thresholds, regulated species lists, preservation standards, and any specific data attributes the disposition plan must include. Unclear or assumed requirements lead to remobilizations and add-service charges when the field crew has to return to collect data that wasn’t in the original scope. A quick pre-application inquiry to the municipality — or a call with an experienced landscape architect who knows the jurisdiction — eliminates that risk entirely.
On phased projects, structure the survey by phase boundaries. There is no reason to pay for tree survey and disposition work on land that won’t be permitted for several years. Scoping the tree survey to match near-term phase boundaries keeps the immediate deliverable focused and cost-proportionate. Later phases can be surveyed when their permitting timeline approaches — with current field conditions rather than data that has aged out of accuracy.
What Happens When the AHJ Sends Its Own Arborist
Some jurisdictions — particularly those with active urban forestry programs — will dispatch their own arborist or urban forestry staff to independently verify the tree inventory submitted with the disposition plan. This is the AHJ’s right, and it’s a legitimate quality-control step in their review process.
The challenge is that jurisdictional arborists reviewing dozens of projects are not always conducting the same level of field rigor as a certified arborist engaged specifically for your site. Species identifications may be made quickly under time pressure. DBH measurements may not account for all the variables a thorough arborist would apply. In some cases, the AHJ’s field review has produced data that differs meaningfully from what a qualified arborist documented — with the discrepancy moving in either direction.
This is not an argument for padding your inventory or expecting conflict. It’s an argument for submitting a defensible, thorough, well-documented tree inventory the first time. When the certifying arborist’s data is methodologically sound, properly documented with field notes and photography, and prepared by a credentialed professional who can defend the findings at a review meeting if needed, discrepancies are far easier to resolve. Jurisdictions generally respond well to a confident, documented professional position. Thin inventories invite revision.
Request Arborist and Landscape Architect Fees After the Tree Survey Is Complete
This is a procurement recommendation that most project managers haven’t heard before — but it consistently produces better outcomes for the client.
The instinct on most development projects is to issue RFPs for all consultants simultaneously: surveyor, arborist, and landscape architect scoped and contracted in parallel, as early as possible. The logic makes sense on the surface. In practice, it produces inflated fees and inaccurate scopes for the arborist and landscape architect specifically.
Here’s the problem. When an arborist is asked to quote a tree inventory before the survey has been completed, they have no reliable basis for estimating the number of trees they’ll need to evaluate. They’re working from an aerial image — satellite or drone photography, a county GIS layer, or whatever imagery is available for the site. Aerial photography cannot accurately count protected trees under canopy, distinguish regulated species from non-regulated ones, or account for the density variations that exist at ground level across a development parcel. The arborist knows this. The landscape architect knows this too, because their scope — and their fee — is directly tied to the number of trees the disposition plan will need to address.
When professionals are asked to price work against data they know is unreliable, they do the only responsible thing: they build margin into their fee to cover the unknown. The quote you receive reflects not just the work they can see, but the additional scope they’re protecting themselves against. You’re paying for ambiguity you don’t need to carry.
The solution is straightforward. Complete the land surveyor’s tree location fieldwork first. Once the surveyor has tagged and located every protected tree on the site, you have a definitive number — not an estimate, not an aerial interpretation, but an actual tagged count tied to survey coordinates. At that point, the arborist can quote against a known quantity: a specific number of tagged trees requiring species identification, DBH measurement, and condition assessment. The landscape architect can do the same, scoping the disposition plan against a tree count that reflects actual site conditions.
The fees you receive after the survey is complete will be materially more accurate than fees requested before it. In most cases, they’ll also be lower — because the consultants aren’t pricing in uncertainty they no longer have to carry.
Evergreen Design Group recommends holding the arborist and landscape architect RFP until the surveyor has completed tree location. The surveyor’s mobilization is the lowest-cost step in the process, and it is the step that makes every subsequent scope more accurate and every subsequent fee more defensible. Release the surveyor first, get the tagged tree count, then go to market for arborist and landscape architect fees.
For developers managing multiple projects — whether concurrently or across a pipeline — there is an additional lever available: negotiating unit-rate or per-tree fee structures with your arborist and landscape architect rather than accepting one-off proposals on every job. Once a consultant knows your project type, your standard scope, and your ordinance landscape, they can quote on a per-tree or per-acre basis with confidence. That structure eliminates the mobilization markup that gets priced into every new proposal, reduces the administrative overhead of issuing and negotiating RFPs repeatedly, and gives your project manager a predictable cost model for budgeting tree-related soft costs across the portfolio.
Direct Contracting the Arborist: Another Way to Reduce Consultant Costs
There’s a related fee structure decision worth raising with your project manager or procurement team before contracts are executed.
Most landscape architects are willing to include the arborist in their scope of services — and on the surface, that arrangement looks efficient. One contract, one point of contact, consolidated billing. For some project teams, that simplicity is worth the cost. But there is a cost, and it’s worth understanding before you default to that structure.
When a landscape architect subcontracts the arborist, they are taking on two additional responsibilities that they will price accordingly. The first is coordination: managing the arborist’s schedule, reviewing their deliverables, integrating their inventory data into the disposition plan, and fielding any back-and-forth with the arborist on discrepancies or incomplete field data. That coordination time has value, and it will be reflected in the landscape architect’s fee. The second is financial risk: the landscape architect is now responsible for paying the arborist regardless of when they receive payment from the client. That payment exposure — carrying a subcontractor invoice while waiting on their own draw — is a real cost of doing business, and it gets priced into the markup.
The result is that the arborist’s fee, by the time it passes through the landscape architect’s contract, is higher than what the arborist would have quoted the client directly.
The alternative is straightforward: contract the arborist directly. The developer or civil engineer issues a separate agreement directly to the arborist — scoped after the surveyor has completed tree location, as discussed above — and the landscape architect’s scope covers only plan preparation and mitigation strategy. The landscape architect still coordinates with the arborist in the normal course of producing the disposition plan; they simply aren’t carrying the subcontract or the markup that comes with it.
This structure requires the client to manage one additional contract relationship, which is a minor administrative consideration. For most developers and civil engineers who are already managing multiple consultant agreements on a project, that’s not a meaningful burden. The fee savings — eliminating the markup layer entirely — typically make it the more cost-efficient approach.
Evergreen Design Group is transparent about this tradeoff. We’re happy to include arborist coordination in our scope when the client prefers a consolidated contract structure. But when a client’s priority is cost efficiency and they’re already engaged in managing their consultant team, we’ll tell them directly: contracting the arborist separately will save money. The disposition plan deliverable is the same either way.
What to Do If the Surveyor Has Already Demobilized
Project teams occasionally discover mid-design that a tree disposition plan is required — after the boundary survey has been completed and the survey crew has left the site. This happens more often than it should, particularly in jurisdictions where tree ordinance requirements aren’t always clearly communicated at the pre-application stage.
In this scenario, the arborist can handle both location and inventory in a single site visit. GPS-based tree location by a qualified arborist, while not survey-grade in accuracy, is sufficient for many jurisdictions and provides a workable foundation for the disposition plan. The landscape architect and civil engineer simply need to be aware of the locational tolerance so they can account for it in how tree constraints are applied to the site plan.
If the project is in a jurisdiction that requires survey-grade accuracy — or if the site conditions make locational precision particularly important (tight grading limits, significant protected tree density, complex utility corridors) — it may be worth evaluating whether a limited surveyor remobilization is worth the cost. That’s a project-specific judgment call, and Evergreen can help you evaluate it.
The bottom line: discovering late that a tree disposition plan is required doesn’t mean the process is broken. It means the arborist needs to handle location on their end and move quickly. The more important lesson is to confirm tree ordinance requirements at the earliest possible stage of project planning.
From Tree Survey to Tree Disposition Plan: The Landscape Architect’s Role
Once the arborist has completed the field inventory and delivered a tagged tree inventory with species, DBH, health ratings, and location data, that information moves to the landscape architect for plan preparation.
The tree disposition plan is the document that formalizes all of that data into a permitted deliverable. It does several things simultaneously:
Trees designated to remain: Protected with tree save areas, root zone barriers, construction fencing, and associated notes and specifications. Tree protection fencing (TPF) locations, root zone protection protocols, approved construction methods within the critical root zone (CRZ), and monitoring requirements during active grading and construction phases are all specified.
Trees designated for removal: Identified with species, size, and disposition reason — grading conflict, utility conflict, condition, etc. — with applicable DBH data for mitigation calculation purposes.
Mitigation obligation: Calculated in accordance with local ordinance — whether that’s on-site replacement planting at a specified caliper ratio, payment into a municipal tree fund, off-site planting, or a hybrid combination. The landscape architect calculates the obligation, identifies compliant replacement species, and prepares the documentation the AHJ needs to verify compliance.
The plan is drawn to scale, formatted to the jurisdiction’s submittal requirements, and delivered as a coordinated document set that integrates with the civil engineer’s site plan and grading drawings.
Evergreen Design Group handles every phase of this process — from coordinating the surveyor and arborist through final plan preparation and permit support — providing a single point of accountability for the entire tree disposition planning scope.
Design Decisions That Reduce Total Mitigation Costs
The tree survey is often treated as a regulatory checkbox — something to complete so the permit package can be assembled. That framing undersells what the data can actually do for a project’s bottom line. Used strategically, tree survey data is one of the most cost-effective inputs in the early design process.
The core opportunity is this: mitigation costs are largely a function of how many regulated trees get removed. The fewer trees that fall within grading limits, utility corridors, and building footprints, the lower the mitigation obligation. That equation is influenced directly by design decisions — and design decisions are most flexible early, before grading plans are advanced and building pads are locked.
Configure grading and building pads to protect critical root zones. When tree location data is available at the start of site design, civil engineers can orient pads and grading limits to keep heavy cut and fill out of the critical root zones of high-value specimens. A few feet of adjustment at the design stage can be the difference between a tree that’s preservable and one that triggers a mitigation obligation worth thousands of dollars in replacement caliper inches or tree fund payments.
Use mature canopy strategically to offset future landscape costs. Every significant tree preserved on-site is landscape value that doesn’t need to be purchased and installed. Mature shade trees near leasing offices, amenity areas, and main entries provide immediate curb appeal that new plantings can’t replicate for years. When your tree disposition plan is designed with this in mind — preserving the right trees in the right locations, not just the ones that happen to fall outside grading limits — it can meaningfully reduce the large-caliper planting quantities required in the landscape plan.
Request a pre-application meeting with the AHJ before finalizing the tree approach. Many municipalities will meet with a project team prior to formal submittal to discuss the proposed preservation and mitigation strategy. This is one of the highest-value hours available in the tree disposition planning process. Confirming that the jurisdiction agrees with your proposed approach before plans are completed — rather than discovering a fundamental objection at first review — avoids the most expensive kind of rework: revising a disposition plan, a grading plan, and potentially a site layout because the AHJ’s expectations weren’t understood upfront. Evergreen Design Group routinely participates in these pre-application discussions on behalf of our clients.
None of these decisions require additional budget. They require early data and a design team that knows how to use it. That’s the argument for getting the tree survey done at the front end of the project — not just to satisfy a permitting requirement, but to give the project team the information it needs to make better, less expensive decisions.
FAQ: Tree Surveys and Tree Disposition Plans for Land Development
The land surveyor is the most accurate and cost-efficient option for tree location when they’re already mobilized on the site. Surveyors use survey-grade equipment that achieves sub-centimeter accuracy — significantly more precise than the handheld GPS units typically used by arborists. Since the surveyor is already collecting boundary, topographic, and site data, adding tree location to their scope is incremental in cost and eliminates the need for a separate mobilization.
Species identification and DBH measurement require arboricultural training that falls outside a land surveyor’s professional expertise. Tree ordinances in most jurisdictions establish mitigation thresholds based on species and size — meaning errors in identification or measurement can produce a tree inventory that doesn’t survive AHJ review. Keeping the work within each professional’s licensed expertise produces more accurate, more defensible data.
As early as possible — immediately after the surveyor completes tree location fieldwork. Delaying the arborist until the project is near permit-ready is one of the most common causes of avoidable permit delays in the tree disposition planning process. Early tree data also allows civil engineers and architects to incorporate tree constraints into grading and site plans before design conflicts become expensive to resolve.
Some jurisdictions, particularly those with active urban forestry programs, will field-verify the submitted tree inventory. AHJ arborists conducting rapid field reviews don’t always apply the same methodological rigor as a dedicated project arborist, and discrepancies in species ID or DBH are not uncommon. A well-documented, methodologically sound inventory prepared by a credentialed arborist is the best defense against review conflicts. When discrepancies arise, thorough documentation allows your team to engage the jurisdiction from a position of professional confidence.
Yes. If the survey has already been completed and the surveyor has demobilized, a certified arborist can locate and tag trees using GPS equipment and then collect the species, DBH, and condition data in a single visit. This is a workable contingency. The accuracy tradeoff versus survey-grade equipment should be understood and accounted for when the landscape architect integrates tree data into the site plan.
The tree disposition plan formalizes the inventory data into a permitted deliverable. It designates trees to remain — with associated protection measures including TPF layout, root zone protection, and CRZ construction protocols — and trees to be removed, with applicable mitigation calculations. Mitigation strategies may include on-site replacement planting, payment into a municipal tree fund, off-site planting, or a combination. The plan is formatted to the AHJ’s submittal requirements and coordinated with the civil engineer’s grading and site plans.
Significantly — which is exactly why early release of the arborist matters. Protected trees impose real constraints on grading limits, structure setbacks, and utility routing. When that data is available early, the project team can incorporate tree constraints into design before conflicts arise. When it arrives late, the team is redesigning around constraints that were always present but not visible in the drawings.
After — always. When arborists and landscape architects are asked to quote before the surveyor has located and tagged trees, they’re scoping their work based on aerial imagery that cannot reliably reflect actual tree counts, species distribution, or canopy density on the ground. To protect themselves against scope creep, they price in a contingency buffer. Once the surveyor has completed tree location fieldwork, both consultants can quote against a definitive tagged tree count — and their fees will be more accurate and typically lower as a result. Releasing the surveyor first is the most cost-efficient sequencing for the client.
Generally, yes. When a landscape architect subcontracts the arborist, they will typically apply a markup to cover their coordination time and the financial risk of carrying a subcontractor payment obligation. Contracting the arborist directly eliminates that markup layer entirely. The client takes on one additional contract relationship, but the arborist’s fee reflects their actual scope — not a fee passed through another consultant’s contract. For developers and civil engineers already managing multiple consultant agreements, direct contracting of the arborist is usually the more cost-efficient structure.
Get Started with a Tree Disposition Plan
If your project involves a site with existing trees, the question isn’t whether to conduct a tree survey — it’s how to sequence it efficiently so it supports your schedule rather than threatens it. The answer almost always involves a surveyor for location, an arborist for inventory, and a landscape architect to turn that data into a compliant, permitted plan.
Evergreen Design Group has delivered tree disposition plans for developers, civil engineers, architects, and design-build contractors across more than 40 states. Our licensed landscape architects coordinate the survey and arborist scopes directly and handle every phase of the disposition plan from first site visit to final submittal.
Contact Evergreen Design Group to discuss your project and request a proposal— or call us directly at (800) 680-6630.
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