Grading of planar areas such as those required for a plaza, parking lots, or other landscape program can be tricky. They need to maintain constant elevation while achieving positive drainage. When conceptualizing the grading of a planar area, one must balance achieving level edges with a drainage strategy.

Inserting a planar area (as might be required for a landscape program or a building footprint) into a sloping terrain produces a terrace.

Grading a terrace produces either a 'fill', 'cut', or 'balance' condition.

Left: Cut; Middle: Fill; Right: Cut & Fill

Cut requires the removal of excess material when proposed grades are lower than existing grades.

Fill requires the addition of new material when proposed grades are higher than existing grades.

Balance is achieved when cut and fill are made to be roughly equivalent in a proposed earthwork. Ideally, this creates the condition to shift soil on site, as opposed to costly removal or addition of soil material. This is generally best option to minimize export or import & strive to shift soils on-site.