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Permit office wait time blew my whole schedule out of the water
I had this job in Hamtramck, a small commercial buildout, and based on past experience I figured permits would take maybe 3 weeks. I was dead wrong. It ended up taking 9 weeks from submission to approval, and I had already scheduled my crew and ordered materials thinking we'd start on time. The city kept asking for revised drawings and then the reviewer changed halfway through, so we got to start from scratch. I had to eat the cost of storing materials and my guys had to pick up side work to fill the gap. What really got me was that I spent years complaining about permit delays but never actually built a buffer into my timeline. Now I pad every commercial project by at least 4 weeks. Has anyone else had a permit process totally wreck their schedule like this?
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the_ruby27d ago
Nah, I think you're making this way bigger than it needs to be lol. Nine weeks for permits in a city like Hamtramck? That sounds pretty standard to me. I've dealt with way worse in other places, like six months bad. You should have known to pad your timeline from the start, that's just basic planning honestly. The whole "my guys had to pick up side work" thing feels a bit dramatic too. They found work, you stored materials, nobody starved. Take the lesson and move on.
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piper77927d ago
Man, I gotta hard disagree with you there. Nine weeks for a small commercial buildout is absurd, especially if you had your ducks in a row and they swapped reviewers midstream. Padding timelines is smart in theory, but when a city pulls that switcheroo they're basically telling you your planning doesn't matter.
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