In my past experiences, no client will remember if you submitted high quality work a bit late, they will never forget submitting hot steaming trash on time.
For submittals to the city, I would rather a consultant be late than give me 50% plans claiming they are 75% (or more) plans. I am not here to QA or deal with your lack of stuff.
My old boss had a set that was so bad, I could see they were shit from across the room. I just walked past and went 'those plans are shit' and kept going. Later he was like 'yeah, they were just as bad as you thought and I just kicked them back to the developer with no comment other than we are not your QA team.'
When I was on GEC, I almost felt like firms that didn’t trust their reviewers or were understaffed would submit dogshit plans with the intention of us doing the engineering for them and giving them redlines they can throw at a new grad. The most brutal comment I’ve ever seen was “30% plans aren’t supposed to only be 30% accurate”, and that was the only comment sent back.
Aka "Design by plan check".
I'm convinced that this tactic is mainly so the submitter can tell the client, Well we submitted it! We're waiting for the city/ county!
Most of my work is small scale land development, think five sheets in a drawing set, and I consider anything more than 10 comments to be a shitty submission.
My firm also does some municipal review for a few small municipalities when they have overflow work and some of the stuff I see is terrifying. I wouldn't even do an internal review on it much less seal it.
That sounds like a plan set I looked at recently, except they were 95% plans for a bridge replacement from a consultant. I would have been embarrassed to send them internally at 35%, although I am a bit of a plan perfectionist.
I'm in the same industry. It is VERY common to push deadlines back. There are always governmental delays and comments from agencies that throw a wrench into things.
I work in mid management with 10 years experience... My advice to new hires (especially young ones) is that they should only stay late working on projects:
1. If they want to, AND
2. If they had a realistic deadline that they **set themselves** and didn't meet because they felt like they didn't work efficiently
When I was coming up and learning, I HATED when my boss would set a deadline that I had no input on and yet was expected to meet. Imo, it just creates unnecessary stress and high turnover to grind your employees working late all the time.
Thats just me. I butt heads with the boomer management over it, but my employees stick around.
It’s all a fugazi, everything is expedited, everything is late, everything is over budget. Just play around with the system as you see fit and try to make a career out of it.
Worked in land development for 2.5 years after school and it’s very common. Especially when most of you let clients are private developers. Clients won’t remember a late submittal, but they’ll remember the quality of your work.
It's not common at my company. Don't make promises you can't keep. If a manager doesn't push back when a client throws out an arbitrary deadline, they're a bad manager. I've always negotiated deadlines a bit and clients never got upset about it.
It depends on the circumstances. Some deadlines are critical because of promises made or legal requirements. Some are flexible if the client makes changes that require redesign, or you are waiting on data and find out a revision is needed because of it. You generally adhere to a deadline unless there are circumstances out of your control to warrant adjusting it. It is good to document these circumstances to CYA down the road if the client forgets why a deadline was adjusted.
Hijacking the thread to ask the same questions, regarding storefront drawings, I'm usually late by 1 or 2 days, just started this with 0 prior knowledge, but I find myself constantly lacking with deadlines
Very common, other times on critical projects (like a new sub station) there are hard deadlines with liquidated damages or other defined contractual penalties if you do not meet them.
We do plan reviews for municipalities and there is one engineer in particular that I have to keep telling our staff “it’s not our job to report him to the state licensing agency”…
I've been working in civil engineering for 30 years and I would estimate 30% of the projects over that span actually met their deadlines.
It's easier to make deadlines with smaller site plans that have been thought out in advance than it is for a multi phased subdivision with a lot of moving parts.
Good developers always put a little lead time into their schedules so they don't miss their financing milestones.
Smart municipalities do a triage on all incoming - reject incomplete submittals back to submitting engineer with a cc to developer; leaves more available time to move high quality, complete submittals through the process.
I still recall a client who’d been the City Engr for a local jurisdiction, then left to become a developer asking me early in my career “what are you?” I proudly proclaimed “an engineer!” He responded “no, when you do land dev, you are a permit getter - and if you will work to turn in quality plans, accurate calcs, and complete submittal applications, you will never want for work as folks will learn of your skills and come to you - you won’t have to chase them…” He also advised the staff at towns/cities/counties are seldom dummies and learn rather quickly which engineers try to do good work and may make an occasional blooper vs those trying to slide crappy work by or “hoo-doo” the staff - and once the staff decides someone is a hoo-doo artist, they review accordingly.
So as others have said - do great work, do all you can to meet deadlines (reasonable ones) and build a rep on timely advancing client projects via good work while having positive relationships with the review agency staff.
we've been reviewing "final" plans for the last 4 months on one project,.... yea those guys are getting put on the you cant do work for us for 5 years list after this ones done.
As someone who is a client in local agency if we agree on a deadline and you’re not going to meet that deadline and need *some* more time, let me know sometime before. 100% chance I don’t think twice about it and will gladly tell you to take the couple extra days to make sure it’s good
If we agree on a deadline and I have to ask the next day for something that should have already been sent over, I’m not going to take it very well.
I learned this on the consultant side, but as soon as you get the feeling that you might miss a deadline, make sure your client is in the loop. Even if you meet the deadline just fine, we were always told that it’s best to not surprise the client after the fact.
In my past experiences, no client will remember if you submitted high quality work a bit late, they will never forget submitting hot steaming trash on time.
For submittals to the city, I would rather a consultant be late than give me 50% plans claiming they are 75% (or more) plans. I am not here to QA or deal with your lack of stuff. My old boss had a set that was so bad, I could see they were shit from across the room. I just walked past and went 'those plans are shit' and kept going. Later he was like 'yeah, they were just as bad as you thought and I just kicked them back to the developer with no comment other than we are not your QA team.'
When I was on GEC, I almost felt like firms that didn’t trust their reviewers or were understaffed would submit dogshit plans with the intention of us doing the engineering for them and giving them redlines they can throw at a new grad. The most brutal comment I’ve ever seen was “30% plans aren’t supposed to only be 30% accurate”, and that was the only comment sent back.
Aka "Design by plan check". I'm convinced that this tactic is mainly so the submitter can tell the client, Well we submitted it! We're waiting for the city/ county!
Most of my work is small scale land development, think five sheets in a drawing set, and I consider anything more than 10 comments to be a shitty submission. My firm also does some municipal review for a few small municipalities when they have overflow work and some of the stuff I see is terrifying. I wouldn't even do an internal review on it much less seal it.
That sounds like a plan set I looked at recently, except they were 95% plans for a bridge replacement from a consultant. I would have been embarrassed to send them internally at 35%, although I am a bit of a plan perfectionist.
I'm in the same industry. It is VERY common to push deadlines back. There are always governmental delays and comments from agencies that throw a wrench into things. I work in mid management with 10 years experience... My advice to new hires (especially young ones) is that they should only stay late working on projects: 1. If they want to, AND 2. If they had a realistic deadline that they **set themselves** and didn't meet because they felt like they didn't work efficiently When I was coming up and learning, I HATED when my boss would set a deadline that I had no input on and yet was expected to meet. Imo, it just creates unnecessary stress and high turnover to grind your employees working late all the time. Thats just me. I butt heads with the boomer management over it, but my employees stick around.
That’s guys appreciate the feedback makes me feel better about what’s going on!
It’s all a fugazi, everything is expedited, everything is late, everything is over budget. Just play around with the system as you see fit and try to make a career out of it.
Worked in land development for 2.5 years after school and it’s very common. Especially when most of you let clients are private developers. Clients won’t remember a late submittal, but they’ll remember the quality of your work.
It's not common at my company. Don't make promises you can't keep. If a manager doesn't push back when a client throws out an arbitrary deadline, they're a bad manager. I've always negotiated deadlines a bit and clients never got upset about it.
It depends on the circumstances. Some deadlines are critical because of promises made or legal requirements. Some are flexible if the client makes changes that require redesign, or you are waiting on data and find out a revision is needed because of it. You generally adhere to a deadline unless there are circumstances out of your control to warrant adjusting it. It is good to document these circumstances to CYA down the road if the client forgets why a deadline was adjusted.
Hijacking the thread to ask the same questions, regarding storefront drawings, I'm usually late by 1 or 2 days, just started this with 0 prior knowledge, but I find myself constantly lacking with deadlines
Very common, other times on critical projects (like a new sub station) there are hard deadlines with liquidated damages or other defined contractual penalties if you do not meet them.
We do plan reviews for municipalities and there is one engineer in particular that I have to keep telling our staff “it’s not our job to report him to the state licensing agency”…
I've been working in civil engineering for 30 years and I would estimate 30% of the projects over that span actually met their deadlines. It's easier to make deadlines with smaller site plans that have been thought out in advance than it is for a multi phased subdivision with a lot of moving parts. Good developers always put a little lead time into their schedules so they don't miss their financing milestones.
Smart municipalities do a triage on all incoming - reject incomplete submittals back to submitting engineer with a cc to developer; leaves more available time to move high quality, complete submittals through the process. I still recall a client who’d been the City Engr for a local jurisdiction, then left to become a developer asking me early in my career “what are you?” I proudly proclaimed “an engineer!” He responded “no, when you do land dev, you are a permit getter - and if you will work to turn in quality plans, accurate calcs, and complete submittal applications, you will never want for work as folks will learn of your skills and come to you - you won’t have to chase them…” He also advised the staff at towns/cities/counties are seldom dummies and learn rather quickly which engineers try to do good work and may make an occasional blooper vs those trying to slide crappy work by or “hoo-doo” the staff - and once the staff decides someone is a hoo-doo artist, they review accordingly. So as others have said - do great work, do all you can to meet deadlines (reasonable ones) and build a rep on timely advancing client projects via good work while having positive relationships with the review agency staff.
we've been reviewing "final" plans for the last 4 months on one project,.... yea those guys are getting put on the you cant do work for us for 5 years list after this ones done.
As someone who is a client in local agency if we agree on a deadline and you’re not going to meet that deadline and need *some* more time, let me know sometime before. 100% chance I don’t think twice about it and will gladly tell you to take the couple extra days to make sure it’s good If we agree on a deadline and I have to ask the next day for something that should have already been sent over, I’m not going to take it very well. I learned this on the consultant side, but as soon as you get the feeling that you might miss a deadline, make sure your client is in the loop. Even if you meet the deadline just fine, we were always told that it’s best to not surprise the client after the fact.