Depends on the job & location. Be more specific.

LA is a pain in the ass...is Seattle?

I've worked on both large, public projects and single family residences here and yes, it is extremely frustrating.

Public projects: Heavily scrutinized by the city council, design review board, and every other bureaucratic local agency often resulting in several presentations to the community whose automatic reaction is that said project is too cold and modern and doesn't accurately portray the ideals of the northwest. Usually followed by comments that direct the architect to emulate the REI flagship store as "perfect" example of what a northwest building should look like. Of course, everyone shuts up when a name like Koolhaas or Gehry is attached to the project. As an addendum, schlock garbage dryvit condos sprout unchecked like weeds, as long as they meet the zoning code for height and "modulation"...

SF Residential: Seattle likes to put on the air that it is a diverse and welcoming city, but once the neighbors find out you're building modern, all the nimby's come out of the woodwork. The zoning code actually gives special concessions and bonuses to houses designed with gabled/hip/sloping roofs.

There is a fair amount of attention to detail and craft, but the recent influx of all the tech money has driven the cost of real estate and construction thru the roof. It almost impossible to do a lean, efficient, and modern house with very modest finishes for less than $300/sf.

yeah or you could just do builder's houses like a certain someone here in seattle...
that way, it looks twice as expensive as it actually is!

(ok, ok... $900/sf but it would have been $1200/sf if it wasn't the builder doing his own house...)

OF, done any projects in san juan/whidbey?
had a review of over 6 months due to undermanned positions about 18 mos. back.

Don't get me started on the incompetence that plagues the DPD. I think I've been black-flagged up there after going postal on them a number of times. They're borderline negligent. I've had them lose complete drawing sets and have failed to route the project to the proper reviewer, resulting in months of delays which cost our client big bucks.

One of our clients somehow found a link to the pay scales at DPD. A level one plans examiner starts at 60K. Ridiculous. I wouldn't hire those idiots to cut my lawn.

OF - do you have any contacts for permit expeditors? If the DPD can sub out their work to outside consultants, I sure as hell am too...

Holz - You're right, Schuchart's house is pretty ridiculous from a cost standpoint. It killed me when it won the Honor Award and the jury praised it for it's economy...

Don't get me started on the incompetence that plagues the DPD. I think I've been black-flagged up there after going postal on them a number of times. They're borderline negligent. I've had them lose complete drawing sets and have failed to route the project to the proper reviewer, resulting in months of delays which cost our client big bucks.

One of our clients somehow found a link to the pay scales at DPD. A level one plans examiner starts at 60K. Ridiculous. I wouldn't hire those idiots to cut my lawn.

OF - do you have any contacts for permit expeditors? If the DPD can sub out their work to outside consultants, I sure as hell am too...

Holz - You're right, Schuchart's house is pretty ridiculous from a cost standpoint. It killed me when it won the Honor Award and the jury praised it for it's economy...

starf*cks and key(stone) bank... two of my fave corporations!

nice pick up on the shuchart res. don't get me wrong, it's phenomenal. but there is nothing economical in that project except for the material palette.

on a sidenote, anyone else notice cobb's "cantilever house" was entered for like the third year in a row @ last year aia (oh, and it's been for sale for over a year)?

i think i've been lucky in that most of my dpd projects have been STFI's or small enough to be expedited through rather quickly.

the larger projects have all been out of k.c.

holz - we can talk about the cantilever house at the next Seattle Archinect summit. I know it very well... :)

one thing that mdler is talking about is the 4 month line to get your plan check corrections back in l.a.

the other is plan checkers are so caught up with the word of the law and covering their asses that they require you to add certain bullshits on the plan...for example, on one of our projects we had a roof deck on the same surface as the roof and they wanted us to put a fence on the roof just to separate roof deck vs. roof...plan checker made us add a gate on the dividing line just to "make sure" that the roof is inaccesible...first of all, no fence is gonna stop someone from hopping over but that's not the point...the point is adding a damn fence is just dumb...

i'm not explaining the situation properly but they're a bitch...

now we're working on designing some condominiums and the damn beureau of engineering stiff guy is requiring us to design bullshit firetruck turn around..we have proposed something that works but according to the "word of the law" we have to do such and such, that doesn't even work...