I alluded to this in another thread, but I'm curious about your thoughts on the following issue:
I have seen firms use the plan check process as a QA/QC of their own work for code-compliance. If you were the owner, wouldn't you expect that other than administrative information such as application numbers and jurisdiction-specific forms that are germane to the enforcement agency reviewing the drawings, that the Architect for a given project would at least get all the other information right / complete upon his/her first submission for a building permit? I know some might explain receiving long plan check letters to a client as the result of a "tactic" of doing the least amount necessary in order to save the owners money, but the flaw in that argument that the per the code, the design professional is still on the hook for designing a code-compliant project. So I'm just curious why Architects would feel entitled to any additional compensation to address extensive plan check letters if they should have gotten most of it correctly to begin with?
On the flip side, in jurisdictions that have a tremendous backlog of applications, I can understand why an Owner may want to go into the plan check process with a half-baked set of CD's, but what do you all think about the Agencies "Grading" permit applicants based on both the completeness of their applications and on the quality of their documents? The grades would over time affect that applicant's review time with top-tier applicants being given priority over other applicants?
Aug 5, 24 7:56 pm ·
·
gwharton
In our analysis, we found that this was not nearly as big of risk factor as everyone seems to assume. The much bigger schedule risk was from poor or non-existent pre-submittal QA.
Regarding the "grading" issue you raise, some jurisdictions already do this. Seattle DCI has a "consistently prepared applicant" rating they track for everyone. You start at zero and build up a good score by successfully completing permit intakes. Otherwise, it's very informal. Plan reviewers know who does good work and who doesn't. My team submits around 9-10 permits per month in about a half-dozen jurisdictions. We get consistent feedback from plan reviewers that they love to see one of our sets come in, because they know it will be easy to review. They are under as much pressure to get things done as we are, so if you make it easy for them they will often expedite your projects. They are not technically supposed to do their reviews "out of order", but if an easy approval on your work lets them clear their inbox faster, they will do it first.
That's interesting -- sounds like a Fedex note that the dogs on the property are friendly...
selfishly, I think it's a great idea (being someone who's trying to do best for the owner by getting thru permitting without any hiccups). I do miss the days of sitting in front of a plans examiner who knows me & knows that I bring thorough stuff so if i'm skirting a gray zone, it is with intention, not ignorance (cuz every so often it is from ignorance & that bump of faith sometimes is enough to provoke a quick, not as thorough review...)
I don't know about your local AHJ, but I would describe my own as a complete clusterfuck. In the past two weeks alone, I've had to argue the following scenarios, once in front of ten city employees who charged $2500 for the privilege:
1) a simple exit through lobby, which is permitted for the project at hand. This was my own former office building, so I know it inside and out. Took a month of increasingly hostile emails with a plan examiner, who finally agreed that I was correct the whole time.
2) an addition to a commercial building, where the occupancies were phased to allow decanting from one space to another. The city initially refused to even answer the phone on this one, because we called them out on the nonsensical code item that required a fire rated wall between addition and existing. Their response? And I wish I was making this up - "why don't you just fake it? Our inspectors wouldn't know the difference anyway."
My point is that for us at least, we can have the most buttoned down set in the universe, and the city will still try to find flaws, even if it means making things up. No, we don't charge our clients for this, but we go into every contract, in writing, stating that we bear no responsibility for however long it takes for the city to release the permit. Could be a month, but it could also be six.
Well the cases you described above I believe are stand-alone and indeed unfortunate. However, I do believe that many architects out there do receive long plan check letters outlining issues that should have been caught during a proper QA/QC process.
I don't doubt that at all. I've seen what my competition submits for permit, and it's usually pretty ugly if I'm being honest. Having said that, their permits are still being issued, which makes me think at times that we're providing almost too much information, and thus more places to find fault
Aug 5, 24 10:06 pm ·
·
gwharton
One thing I see a lot is not just bad QA, but architects not tailoring the information they put in drawing sets to the specific purpose and audience for the set. A permit set has exactly one purpose: to get a permit. It should include all the information necessary to satisfy approval requirements, fully checked so that it is clear, consistent, complete, and coordinated (the QA issue), and NOTHING ELSE. For some reason, I see permit sets which have all sorts of additional stuff in them which is extraneous to permit review. That's wasted work, and creates significant permit review risk from confusing reviewers or opening the door to them raising issues which aren't in their purview.
In my AHJ, there is no such thing as Permit Documents, there's only Issued For Construction. The IFC set is what gets submitted for permit, and you're supposed to send them updated files if anything significant changes (which is totally fair). They won't issue the Permit if we refer to our set as being issued for permit. Kind of silly and can cause so much extra work
Us as well. We have city planning submittals that are a very short version of the design (site and building elevations). The building permitting set needs to be full CD's.
What you describe is an extremely bad practice and really pisses off clients/owners. The fundamental issue seems to be that architects do not typically price in QA as part of their contracts and fees, but don't ever tell clients that they aren't including it. Clients reasonably assume that part of the architect's service is checking their own work, hence the problem.
The rationale that it is "saving money" on fees shows ignorance of our clients' business needs. Time is money. Using permit reviews as de facto QA actually costs a huge amount of time. Many architects seem to think they can sneak it in as Time & Materials billing during plan review correction reponses in order to get a lower up-front fee number. But that's a kind of bait-and-switch that only generates a lot of anger and wasted time. A few years ago, we did a detailed performance review of our architects' work, and found that spending 1 to 3 extra weeks of effort during design and documentation on QA saved MONTHS in permit review. That's an easy case to make for doing it right.
I would never rely on the AHJ plan check for QA/QC regearing building code compliance. My rezoning for this:
The AHJ dose not have to note everything they find incorrect.
Most AHJ don't check the entire design against the entire code.
Even when the AHJ finds an issue, they are not required to tell you how to fix it.
Often, the AHJ will only check for minimum code compliance. I don't design to the code minimum.
As an architect, I've been hire by the owner to design a code compliant building. It's my responsibility to do so. I shouldn't be relying on the AHJ to do my work.
Aug 6, 24 10:38 am ·
·
Non Sequitur
outsourcing QA & QC for any reason is asinine to me. Relying on an AI tool is equally silly. People actually are this lazy and/or incompetent?
A couple people in our firm will do code reviews and special inspections for projects in our area. Obviously not our own for the special inspection. They NEVER say how to fix any issues that they find.
I am seeing younger plans examiners/planners who have been trained to not cede an inch on the letter of the law cuz "liability", even tho the AHJ states they carry no liability for review completeness. No conversations, no strategizing, just: show me the proposed permit/LU set. And also smaller jurisdictions can sometimes be super irritatingly precise (and surprisingly are sometimes the absolutely most lax).
I do miss being able to game out a difficult issue with the jurisdiction and then being able to rely on the decision going forward. I find only the senior staff will agree or advise in those conversations anymore.
And the biggest pet peeve is not even being able to talk to a plans examiner or planner on the phone because they are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they only respond to email and only after a few business days
Aug 7, 24 11:51 am ·
·
BulgarBlogger
I can understand if you are getting one or two comments like this… but let me ask you- on average how many comments do you receive on a given project? Let’s say there are 15 comments and 5 are a little more nuanced. What about the other 10? Why isn’t the architect diligent enough to get those right to begin with?
I don't know about proto, but in my experience the majority of the comments from AHJ are because the zoning and building codes are open to interpretation.
Aug 7, 24 1:50 pm ·
·
Wilma Buttfit
In my experience, there's rarely more than 1 or 2 legitimate comments. Most are because the plans reviewer can't read plans or doesn't understand the codes. I don't know how much time they have to do their reviews, I doubt it is very much. Or the plans meet code but they want you to prove it meets the code by illustrating a certain aspect of it in another way. For example, a shoring design is required if there are structures within 10 feet of the excavation. I can't just say there are no structures within 10 feet, I have to illustrate it.
And they've stopped responding to my questions. :(
Aug 7, 24 2:57 pm ·
·
proto
@bulgar, usually very few if any during review. I guess my rant is mostly prior to permit submittal when i'm doing my due diligence. I try to engage my jurisdiction exactly so I can have clarity for official submittals.
Plan Check - QA/QC
I alluded to this in another thread, but I'm curious about your thoughts on the following issue:
I have seen firms use the plan check process as a QA/QC of their own work for code-compliance. If you were the owner, wouldn't you expect that other than administrative information such as application numbers and jurisdiction-specific forms that are germane to the enforcement agency reviewing the drawings, that the Architect for a given project would at least get all the other information right / complete upon his/her first submission for a building permit? I know some might explain receiving long plan check letters to a client as the result of a "tactic" of doing the least amount necessary in order to save the owners money, but the flaw in that argument that the per the code, the design professional is still on the hook for designing a code-compliant project. So I'm just curious why Architects would feel entitled to any additional compensation to address extensive plan check letters if they should have gotten most of it correctly to begin with?
On the flip side, in jurisdictions that have a tremendous backlog of applications, I can understand why an Owner may want to go into the plan check process with a half-baked set of CD's, but what do you all think about the Agencies "Grading" permit applicants based on both the completeness of their applications and on the quality of their documents? The grades would over time affect that applicant's review time with top-tier applicants being given priority over other applicants?
In our analysis, we found that this was not nearly as big of risk factor as everyone seems to assume. The much bigger schedule risk was from poor or non-existent pre-submittal QA.
Regarding the "grading" issue you raise, some jurisdictions already do this. Seattle DCI has a "consistently prepared applicant" rating they track for everyone. You start at zero and build up a good score by successfully completing permit intakes. Otherwise, it's very informal. Plan reviewers know who does good work and who doesn't. My team submits around 9-10 permits per month in about a half-dozen jurisdictions. We get consistent feedback from plan reviewers that they love to see one of our sets come in, because they know it will be easy to review. They are under as much pressure to get things done as we are, so if you make it easy for them they will often expedite your projects. They are not technically supposed to do their reviews "out of order", but if an easy approval on your work lets them clear their inbox faster, they will do it first.
That's interesting -- sounds like a Fedex note that the dogs on the property are friendly...
selfishly, I think it's a great idea (being someone who's trying to do best for the owner by getting thru permitting without any hiccups). I do miss the days of sitting in front of a plans examiner who knows me & knows that I bring thorough stuff so if i'm skirting a gray zone, it is with intention, not ignorance (cuz every so often it is from ignorance & that bump of faith sometimes is enough to provoke a quick, not as thorough review...)
I don't know about your local AHJ, but I would describe my own as a complete clusterfuck. In the past two weeks alone, I've had to argue the following scenarios, once in front of ten city employees who charged $2500 for the privilege:
1) a simple exit through lobby, which is permitted for the project at hand. This was my own former office building, so I know it inside and out. Took a month of increasingly hostile emails with a plan examiner, who finally agreed that I was correct the whole time.
2) an addition to a commercial building, where the occupancies were phased to allow decanting from one space to another. The city initially refused to even answer the phone on this one, because we called them out on the nonsensical code item that required a fire rated wall between addition and existing. Their response? And I wish I was making this up - "why don't you just fake it? Our inspectors wouldn't know the difference anyway."
My point is that for us at least, we can have the most buttoned down set in the universe, and the city will still try to find flaws, even if it means making things up. No, we don't charge our clients for this, but we go into every contract, in writing, stating that we bear no responsibility for however long it takes for the city to release the permit. Could be a month, but it could also be six.
Well the cases you described above I believe are stand-alone and indeed unfortunate. However, I do believe that many architects out there do receive long plan check letters outlining issues that should have been caught during a proper QA/QC process.
I don't doubt that at all. I've seen what my competition submits for permit, and it's usually pretty ugly if I'm being honest. Having said that, their permits are still being issued, which makes me think at times that we're providing almost too much information, and thus more places to find fault
One thing I see a lot is not just bad QA, but architects not tailoring the information they put in drawing sets to the specific purpose and audience for the set. A permit set has exactly one purpose: to get a permit. It should include all the information necessary to satisfy approval requirements, fully checked so that it is clear, consistent, complete, and coordinated (the QA issue), and NOTHING ELSE. For some reason, I see permit sets which have all sorts of additional stuff in them which is extraneous to permit review. That's wasted work, and creates significant permit review risk from confusing reviewers or opening the door to them raising issues which aren't in their purview.
In my AHJ, there is no such thing as Permit Documents, there's only Issued For Construction. The IFC set is what gets submitted for permit, and you're supposed to send them updated files if anything significant changes (which is totally fair). They won't issue the Permit if we refer to our set as being issued for permit. Kind of silly and can cause so much extra work
Us as well. We have city planning submittals that are a very short version of the design (site and building elevations). The building permitting set needs to be full CD's.
What you describe is an extremely bad practice and really pisses off clients/owners. The fundamental issue seems to be that architects do not typically price in QA as part of their contracts and fees, but don't ever tell clients that they aren't including it. Clients reasonably assume that part of the architect's service is checking their own work, hence the problem.
The rationale that it is "saving money" on fees shows ignorance of our clients' business needs. Time is money. Using permit reviews as de facto QA actually costs a huge amount of time. Many architects seem to think they can sneak it in as Time & Materials billing during plan review correction reponses in order to get a lower up-front fee number. But that's a kind of bait-and-switch that only generates a lot of anger and wasted time. A few years ago, we did a detailed performance review of our architects' work, and found that spending 1 to 3 extra weeks of effort during design and documentation on QA saved MONTHS in permit review. That's an easy case to make for doing it right.
I like the way you think, and that you're quantifying the effort. Well done
I would never rely on the AHJ plan check for QA/QC regearing building code compliance. My rezoning for this:
outsourcing QA & QC for any reason is asinine to me. Relying on an AI tool is equally silly. People actually are this lazy and/or incompetent?
A couple people in our firm will do code reviews and special inspections for projects in our area. Obviously not our own for the special inspection. They NEVER say how to fix any issues that they find.
rezoning or reasoning? lol
Both! ;) I can tell I've been dealing with a lot of city submittals. I do have solid reasoning for my rezoning though.
I am seeing younger plans examiners/planners who have been trained to not cede an inch on the letter of the law cuz "liability", even tho the AHJ states they carry no liability for review completeness. No conversations, no strategizing, just: show me the proposed permit/LU set. And also smaller jurisdictions can sometimes be super irritatingly precise (and surprisingly are sometimes the absolutely most lax).
I do miss being able to game out a difficult issue with the jurisdiction and then being able to rely on the decision going forward. I find only the senior staff will agree or advise in those conversations anymore.
And the biggest pet peeve is not even being able to talk to a plans examiner or planner on the phone because they are so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they only respond to email and only after a few business days
I can understand if you are getting one or two comments like this… but let me ask you- on average how many comments do you receive on a given project? Let’s say there are 15 comments and 5 are a little more nuanced. What about the other 10? Why isn’t the architect diligent enough to get those right to begin with?
I don't know about proto, but in my experience the majority of the comments from AHJ are because the zoning and building codes are open to interpretation.
In my experience, there's rarely more than 1 or 2 legitimate comments. Most are because the plans reviewer can't read plans or doesn't understand the codes. I don't know how much time they have to do their reviews, I doubt it is very much. Or the plans meet code but they want you to prove it meets the code by illustrating a certain aspect of it in another way. For example, a shoring design is required if there are structures within 10 feet of the excavation. I can't just say there are no structures within 10 feet, I have to illustrate it.
And they've stopped responding to my questions. :(
@bulgar, usually very few if any during review. I guess my rant is mostly prior to permit submittal when i'm doing my due diligence. I try to engage my jurisdiction exactly so I can have clarity for official submittals.
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