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NM Landscape study materials
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NM Landscape: Inventory, Analysis, and Project Management

NM Landscape · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Inventory, Analysis, and Project Management

What this domain tests

The Inventory, Analysis, and Project Management domain covers how you assemble reliable site data, turn it into defensible analysis, and run a landscape architecture project on scope, schedule, and budget. Expect questions on base-map sources, site constraints, slope and suitability mapping, work breakdown structures, critical-path scheduling, and earned-value tracking.

Inventory

  • An ALTA/NSPS land title survey is the boundary and easement base; USGS 7.5-minute quadrangles are 1:24,000 (about 1 in = 2,000 ft) and are regional context, not design-grade.
  • Pull zoning, setbacks, easements, utilities, FEMA flood zones, NWI wetlands, NRCS soils, vegetation, views, noise, and solar/wind data. Wetland jurisdictional boundaries are confirmed by the USACE; cultural resources trigger Section 106 review.

Analysis

  • Convert inventory into opportunities and constraints. Slope classes are commonly 0–3% (easily developed), 3–8% (graded), 8–15% (terraced/retaining), and over 15% (severe constraint).
  • Overlay maps and a weighted suitability matrix make the recommendation traceable; watershed and viewshed delineation turn topography into design evidence.

Project management

  • Decompose scope with a WBS, sequence with a Gantt or CPM network, and manage the critical path where float equals zero. Fast-tracking overlaps design and construction; crashing adds resources.
  • Earned value: CPI = EV/AC and SPI = EV/PV; a CPI below 1.0 means over budget.

Worked example

A site falls from elevation 108 ft to 96 ft over a 300-ft run. Average slope = (108 − 96) / 300 × 100 = 4.0%. A proposed accessible route at that grade is under the 5% running-slope limit, but the designer must still check cross slope (2% max) and landings. If the same plan is printed at 1:2,400 and a boundary measures 62 mm, ground distance = 62 mm × 2,400 = 148,800 mm = 148.8 m.

Traps

  • Treating GIS or a USGS quadrangle as a boundary survey.
  • Reading a PDF at 100% after it has been rescaled.
  • Calling the longest-duration activity the critical path when float, not duration, defines it.