I’ve been consulting with land developers for 14 years now and I’m fed up. I keep seeing bright people get “hood-winked” by their consultants. In this market, I’m surprised that it’s allowed to continue. The costs are hidden, but enormous, maybe that explains it. Or, maybe as an industry we’ve just come to accept it. In any case I think the money wasted by this practice is ridiculous.

“Just Submit it and Take a Comment”

If you’re a developer, you may not have heard that statement before. Those seven little words form the dirtiest secret in land development consulting, and they cost you big money on nearly every project. For 14 years I’ve heard my peers say this and it gets me hopping mad! I heard it again last week and had to write this.

Here’s how it works: A consultant–engineer, surveyor, planner, architect–is stretched too thin to get all of his work done on schedule. He’s got 5 or 10 or 20 clients and projects going at the same time all with different priorities to HIS firm. HIS highest priorities get the attention and the others move forward based on the volume of screaming from the clients.

Usually, the client can be silenced temporarily by submitting a plan to the local government. The client sees this as progress. But, the consultant knows what he submitted is incomplete and will GET A COMMENT (or many comments).

Several weeks go by and the comments finally come. The consultant explains to the client that the municipal reviewers are way out of line and overly picky, and it will take a month to resolve the comments and cost an additional $3,000. And the project goes on the back burner until the client screams again. 

Rinse and repeat.

Sounds like a pretty good deal for the consultants, right?

This practice drives me crazy for two reasons: 1) I was taught early in life that if you’re going to do something, do it right; 2) Working on a team with consultants who do this costs me money, because projects drag on too long and scopes creep larger and larger.

I don’t think this happens at the firm CEO level. It’s the project engineer or surveyor or planner who’s trying to keep up that make the decision to submit an incomplete plan. 

What I’ve done to address this in our firm is set a 1 comment per page performance standard. We haven’t hit it yet, but we’re getting real close. Reality is that you’ll probably never get to zero comments, but when the number per plan page is just a few, you can submit a revised plan for approval (not re-review) within days, not weeks.

Look out for this pattern on your development projects…it’s costing you money.