Biarri Networks’ Approach to Feasibility, Design, and Permitting Optimisation
The demand for hyperscale data center capacity is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. As these facilities come online across the United States, their owners face an immediate and critical challenge: connecting them to the broader internet and to each other as quickly as possible. Every week of delay in network connectivity is a week of lost revenue and competitive disadvantage.
To meet this demand, hyperscalers and data center owners are increasingly turning to large Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) companies to build and own long-haul fiber networks, leasing back the dark fiber or lit capacity they need. These EPC firms excel at large-scale construction management, but long-haul fiber network builds present a distinct set of engineering and planning challenges that fall outside their core competency.
Assessing hundreds of miles of route options, navigating complex permitting landscapes, and optimising construction sequencing to minimise time-to-capacity requires deep technical expertise and purpose-built technology. Getting these decisions wrong — choosing a suboptimal route, underestimating permitting lead times, or sequencing construction inefficiently — can add months to a project and significantly inflate costs.
This is where Biarri Networks adds decisive value. We are a technology-driven trusted partner, embedding specialist network engineering capability alongside EPC teams to ensure that every long-haul build is planned, designed, and permitted in the most efficient way possible.
The foundation of every successful long-haul build is selecting the right route. For each leg of the network — defined by its A-point origin and Z-point terminus — Biarri Networks applies a rigorous, data-driven feasibility process that goes well beyond drawing a line on a map.
For each A-to-Z leg, we generate multiple distinct route options, each optimised for a different set of criteria. Where existing fiber infrastructure must be avoided for diversity requirements, those constraints are incorporated from the outset. Our technology platform draws on a wide range of geospatial and regulatory datasets to evaluate and score route candidates, including:
Every route option Biarri Networks generates is accompanied by a standardised set of route indicators, calculated automatically by our platform from the geometry of the route and the underlying geospatial datasets. Because each option is measured against the same indicators, using the same methodology, partners can compare options directly and objectively rather than relying on qualitative judgement. Indicators are reported across four categories.
Route and jurisdiction profile. Total route length, together with a breakdown of that length by inferred road jurisdiction (Federal, state DOT, county, city and private roads). Any length running outside the road network is reported separately. This quantifies exactly how much of each option can be permitted through DOT right-of-way and how much will require county, municipal or private agreements.
Permitting footprint. The number of states, counties and incorporated cities traversed, and the number of distinct jurisdiction categories involved. These measures give an early, quantified view of how many permitting authorities each option will engage. That view directly informs the permit research and scheduling work described in Phases 2 and 3.
Crossings. Estimated counts of railway, waterway (including rivers, reservoirs and aquifers) and bridge crossings. Each crossing type carries distinct permitting authorities, lead times and construction methods, so these counts are among the strongest early predictors of schedule risk.
Ground conditions. Using SSURGO soil survey data, we report the shallowest bedrock depth encountered on each route. We also report the proportion of route length falling into bedrock-depth bands (0–2 ft, 2–4 ft, 4–6 ft and deeper than 6 ft). Where survey data is incomplete, the proportion of route with unknown bedrock depth is reported explicitly. This shows partners not only where rock risk exists, but where field investigation should be targeted to close data gaps.
Alongside these indicators, each option is accompanied by a preliminary bill of materials covering cable (including slack and slackloops), conduit, microduct, handholes and splice closures. When unit rates are applied, this produces a comparable construction cost for every option.
The result is a single comparison summary in which cost, permitting burden, crossing exposure and ground risk can be weighed side by side. Because the indicators are generated by our platform rather than compiled by hand, they can be recalculated quickly as routes are refined, constraints change, or new options are introduced. They are also produced at the segment level, which supports the segmented optimisation approach described below.
Route selection is rarely a binary choice between a small number of complete paths. In practice, candidate routes converge and diverge at multiple points along their length. Biarri Networks applies a segmented analysis approach to take full advantage of this structure.
For each section of the route where meaningful alternatives exist, we perform a detailed comparative analysis of the options, evaluating cost, risk, construction complexity, and permitting burden for that specific segment. The optimal choice for each segment is then assembled into a complete recommended route from A to Z. A shorter route with limited alternatives may resolve to a single segment; a major interstate build may involve four or five discrete decision points, each with its own set of trade-offs.
This segmented approach delivers a recommended route that is genuinely optimised rather than simply the least-bad complete path. It also produces an initial bill of materials and preliminary construction cost estimate, giving EPC partners the data they need to bid confidently and identify key construction risks before committing to a project.
Once a recommended route is established and the decision to proceed is made, Biarri Networks moves directly into the detailed design and engineering phase. This phase runs in parallel with early permitting activity rather than sequentially, compressing the overall project timeline.
Before detailed design work begins in earnest, Biarri Networks initiates comprehensive permit research across the entire proposed route. This involves identifying every permitting authority along the proposed route — state DOTs, municipal authorities, railroad operators, the Army Corps of Engineers for waterway crossings, and others — and establishing a clear picture of each entity’s requirements, typical review timelines, and submission format preferences. Because the number of states, counties and cities traversed is already quantified during feasibility, permit research begins with a known scope of authorities rather than a blank sheet.
Long-lead permits — particularly those involving major river crossings, active railway corridors, and high-pressure gas line crossings — are identified and prioritised early. Understanding these constraints before the design is finalised allows the team to make informed engineering decisions that reduce permitting risk rather than creating it.
Drawing on Biarri’s nationwide datasets to generate geospatial expected Right-of-way routes, Biarri Networks produces a detailed initial design for the full route. This design includes a comprehensive bill of materials and full expected construction cost, providing the EPC partner with the financial visibility needed for project financing, procurement planning, and stakeholder reporting.
As long-lead permit applications are submitted and underway, Biarri Networks begins field validation of the design. Construction teams are deployed along the route to verify pit locations and access points, confirm construction methodology assumptions, and capture any site-specific conditions that were not apparent from desktop analysis. This field data feeds directly back into the engineering process, to produce the low-level, construction-ready design that will be built.
The permitting phase is where many long-haul builds lose time unnecessarily. A naïve approach — submitting permits sequentially or in arbitrary geographic batches — leaves construction crews waiting and creates expensive idle periods. Biarri Networks takes a fundamentally different approach, treating the permitting process as an optimisation problem in its own right.
Because Biarri Networks has mapped every permitting entity along the route at the start of the design phase, we can build a detailed model of the full permitting landscape: which authorities have four-to-five-week review cycles, which operate on two-to-three-week timelines, and which allow bulk submissions covering 100,000+ feet versus those that require smaller batches of 10,000 to 20,000 feet.
This intelligence allows us to sequence permit submissions and, in turn, construction activities, to ensure that approved segments are available for crews as continuously as possible. The result is a construction map that minimises idle time, maximises crew utilisation, and drives the fastest possible delivery of a complete, operational network.
Long-haul hyperscale network builds are complex, high-stakes projects where the cost of poor planning compounds with every passing week. Biarri Networks brings together the technology platform, the geospatial and regulatory expertise, and the engineering rigour needed to get these projects right from the first decision to the last permit approval.
We work as a true partner to EPC companies, augmenting their construction strength with the specialist network engineering capability that hyperscale builds demand. Our clients gain confidence at every stage — from bid through to handover — that the network they are building is the right one, designed efficiently, and on the fastest credible path to completion.