I'm something of a construction-ist myself. Just kidding. I've gone through 3 major home renovations in different parts of California - clearly not an expert, but I'm confident in saying that the biggest obstacle to real estate construction is government regulation, not that there's a lot of it (most, not all, of the regulation makes total sense), but the process around how it's applied is so ass-backwards it makes my head spin.
I've done all my own construction plan reviews with cities/counties. It's mind-blowing how it all works. You sit down with a reviewer, who looks at your plans drafted by an architect. You go back-and-forth with the reviewer about the length of a rafter and the type of wood, grandfathering existing structure, etc. Then, he pages through big-ass books to find the latest codes for insulation R-values or whatever. And the process goes on and on for hours. It's painful how inefficient it is. One reviewer I sat with actually fell asleep during the review. Seriously. I asked him if he was okay and he said he was hungover because he went to the Raiders game the night before. And the funny thing is, he was the toughest reviewer I've ever had. Another lady didn't even look at my plans; she just talked for an hour about her daughter's college graduation, then "stamped" my plans.
I often wonder how people who do lots of large projects deal with this. I assume they just dedicate staff to it, which seems totally unnecessary. As a software/systems guy who's always striving for efficiency, I wonder why all these various "codes" can't just be plugged into a system, then the "plans" be evaluated against those codes, kinda like a series of unit tests. All these "codes" are documented in the big-ass books; it's not magic. Has anyone heard of companies trying to do something like this (plan approvals as unit tests)? Just curious.
However, I'm reminded that city governments have zero incentive to streamline the process. That was painfully obvious during the plan reviews I was involved in.
> However, I'm reminded that city governments have zero incentive to streamline the process.
I closed last year on my new home northwest of Houston. The suburb is one that's growing like crazy, but still is run like the small town it was once was. (We didn't get a water bill for some 3+ months due to a ransomware attack).
The final certificate of occupancy was potentially held up due to the one person who signs off on them, who wears multiple hats and apparently only processed them one day a week. If you got on his bad side (and this included trying to bribe him to hurry up), he'll put yours at the bottom of the stack.
I am under the impression that I’ve read about something in Texas where they would outsource this class of approvals to people who were qualified and able to apply the same rules that the government would. Unfortunately, I can’t find it.
Some municipalities outsource it to Architecture & Engineering firms, for various reasons. It's not just Texas, I assume it happens all over, I'm in New York and have done some of this work.
This is why I never want to build a house. I'd seriously pay someone with superior interpersonal skills and construction knowledge to handle all this shit for me. Startup idea?
I've done all my own construction plan reviews with cities/counties. It's mind-blowing how it all works. You sit down with a reviewer, who looks at your plans drafted by an architect. You go back-and-forth with the reviewer about the length of a rafter and the type of wood, grandfathering existing structure, etc. Then, he pages through big-ass books to find the latest codes for insulation R-values or whatever. And the process goes on and on for hours. It's painful how inefficient it is. One reviewer I sat with actually fell asleep during the review. Seriously. I asked him if he was okay and he said he was hungover because he went to the Raiders game the night before. And the funny thing is, he was the toughest reviewer I've ever had. Another lady didn't even look at my plans; she just talked for an hour about her daughter's college graduation, then "stamped" my plans.
I often wonder how people who do lots of large projects deal with this. I assume they just dedicate staff to it, which seems totally unnecessary. As a software/systems guy who's always striving for efficiency, I wonder why all these various "codes" can't just be plugged into a system, then the "plans" be evaluated against those codes, kinda like a series of unit tests. All these "codes" are documented in the big-ass books; it's not magic. Has anyone heard of companies trying to do something like this (plan approvals as unit tests)? Just curious.
However, I'm reminded that city governments have zero incentive to streamline the process. That was painfully obvious during the plan reviews I was involved in.