CASE STUDY 35 — FM 1485 Industrial Site Montgomery County Industrial Development | Civil Engineering Design

PROJECT OVERVIEW

JRH Engineering provided complete civil engineering design for a new industrial development in Montgomery County, Texas, with a specific goal: avoid triggering detention requirements entirely. JRH designed the project to disturb less than 15,000 square feet of land — keeping it under Montgomery County's detention trigger threshold — and eliminated an entire permitting track with a single design decision.

AT A GLANCE

Site Civil Design

● Full civil design engineered to disturb less than 15,000 square feet of land — staying under Montgomery County's detention requirement threshold

● No detention pond designed, no detention permit required, no drainage district review triggered

● TxDOT coordination for site access

● Site layout optimized within the 15,000 SF disturbance constraint

Permitting & Agency Coordination

● Montgomery County permit secured without detention requirement — under-threshold disturbance documented

● TxDOT access coordination completed concurrently with county permitting

● Simplified permit package — no detention design, no drainage district submittal, no detention review

THE CHALLENGE

Montgomery County's detention threshold is a bright line — cross it, and you owe detention design, drainage district review, and construction. Stay under it, and none of that applies. The question is whether the development program can be achieved within the threshold.

JRH's Approach

JRH designed the project with the 15,000 SF threshold as the governing constraint — optimizing the site layout to achieve the development goal within the disturbance limit. No pond. No drainage district. No detention review. Just a clean, fast county permit.

The Result

A fully permitted industrial development with no detention requirement — achieved by treating the county threshold as a design parameter rather than a constraint to work around.

RESULTS

● Detention requirement eliminated — project designed to disturb less than 15,000 SF, staying under Montgomery County's trigger threshold

● Drainage district review eliminated — no detention means no drainage district submittal

● Fast, clean county permit — simplified package with no detention design or review cycle