Solo Sessions with Jacob: Handling large projects efficiently when your drafting capacity is limited

today though, I want to talk about handling large submittals efficiently when your drafting capacity is limited. so this is really common. I get owners, middleware companies that reach out to us at duct works and often it's: "Hey, I've got this huge job and I can't get it through drafting in time for what the client needs or for production". Or I've got this job that I could land. If I could figure out this problem. And so I want to talk about

that today. Talk about how do you understand the challenge? how do we work through analyzing your current processes? What's the bottleneck. client management aspect of it, coordinating with the GC, some different practical tips. And tools for how you can do this. because that's ultimately how you grow is how do you land a big project? And the first thing you have to figure out is how do I get it drawn? How do we get the submittals done.

That's the first thing that clients usually asking for, especially on the commercial side. one, why am I able to talk to you guys? What's about this? Why do I even think that I have the experience or information to share with you? So aside from my role, CEO of DuckWorks today, this we help clients with this every day. before this. I spent many years over a decade managing engineering departments in commercial millwork, over four or five different companies.

and I also did a stint during COVID actually where I was acting as GM of a facility that we did. I think between. 12 and 20 million just at that facility a year. And, this was my job was how do I, how do we solve this problem so that sales can sell. Our manufacturing capacity and not be worried about drafting or engineering being the bottleneck. And today we help clients our clients every day solve this problem.

So I think it starts first with understanding the challenge. and Very commonly, you might be a shop that's used 200 to $500,000 jobs. And you have an engineering team built to handle that. And a lot of times that looks like. this job gets landed, gets assigned to one engineer and that guy can handle the submittals all by himself. And. Anything bigger than that though. You're not used to. So you haven't had to adjust.

Your team hasn't had to adjust their processes to handle an a million dollar job or a $5 million job that maybe has many multiple phases or. The whole thing still needs to have some middles done within a month or even sometimes two weeks time. And that's just impossible, to have a single engineer, single drafter, cover all that scope and shrink the duration down of the submittals into that period of time. So that's usually the first obstacle. That you're going to experience.

and with that, you're also going to, if you're an owner or you're a sales leader, you're, And the project executive and your. Trying to overcome this challenge and saying, Hey. we want to grow. We have capacity to fill. If I don't, my shop's going to be going home. Or I don't know how we're going to fill the year capacity and I've got a job that's larger than what we've ever done. And I'm experiencing pushback from drafting and engineering team, cause a lot of times this was very common.

sales would come to me or estimated would come to me as engineering managers say, Hey, I've got this job. And with the bid, they're asking, Hey, can we get some middles in, in a certain timeframe? Can you do that? And early on in my career, I would say, Hey, I don't think so. That's going to be a six week draft. And they would say, that's not possible. I needed it in three weeks. I'm like, I don't know what you expect me to do.

That was a problem as engineering manager that I had to figure out how to solve, because the business needed me to solve that. But it's very common for engineers to push back on that. They're going to be. Saying, that's unrealistic that doesn't work with our workflows. I can't put two people on this. We draw the whole job in one thing and it screws everything up. If we split it up, you're going to have mistakes. You're going to have two people, family information. A lot of very common things.

And so that's usually your initial problem is, you're not built to handle that internally. And the team you have is going to tell you that.

how can you build yourself for it. so obviously short-term, we worked with a lot of companies like that and there's plenty of other options out there for, getting help with your submittals. And you can do that. but what I would recommend is there are some things you need to do internally to be able to work with an external partner. On your submittals and not have your team.

Scrapping their work, for us, our biggest obstacle when we partner with a company is if their engineering team doesn't want to work with us. And it's very important from a change management standpoint and from a partner for a long-term relationship that what we're doing our goal is to do it in a way that. The engineers would do it themselves. So let's not do anything that they're going to say. that's great for some middles, but we're going to redo that for engineering.

for example, that's why we work in Microvellum. We work with a lot of clients more than half our clients work in Microvellum. And so we want to draw in Microvellum, if that's what they do. And do it in a way that they're able to take the products that we've put in, take the spec groups we've set up and continue using them through engineering. Not. Delete them or replace them or not start from scratch. Or if we're just drawing in AutoCAD. And you guys use cabinet vision or you use.

I X or something else that at very least we're drawing in your template and your processes the same way your team would use them. And a lot of times the first thing we. Discover when we start partnering with a company that's not used to. working on projects, that scale is that. Even internally, they do things differently. Engineer A does things this way. Engineer B does things this way. And that's one of the first things you really need to overcome in general, whether you outsource or not.

To be able to scale to larger jobs.

You've got to have a standard process. It's just like in your shop in production. If you have, saw operator A and cyber B takes over the next day and he's totally doing things different. Or edgeband operator A sets up with this pre-mill and edge brand and operator B sets up with a different pre-mill things are going to go bad. You can't have a consistent product. And it's just the same for engineering.

you've got to do things, have a consistent process that things can be consistent and that you have a next man up mentality. That's I have a process and a workflow that works to where. If engineer a is sick or out on vacation or unavailable engineer, B can jump in those files. And answer a client's question or continue the drawings or whatever it might be. So that's usually the first thing we're going to do is extract from your team. Hey, What is your ideal workflow? And what's your template.

What's your process? Do you have construction standards? Hey, how do you detail these things? we wanna make sure that what we're drawing is not going to be questioned later by production or engineering or purchasing saying, why did you do it that way? But we need you guys to be able to tell us that, and you guys really need to be able to tell yourself internally that. and that's an obstacle to scaling in general. whether you're growing your team to self. perform these things or not.

And so that's usually what we're going to do first is we're going to work with your team. We're gonna understand your current process. We're going to force you to make some decisions if needed of. Okay. sometimes it's simple things like, what is your countertop overhang at finished ends? What's your Tokic recess at finished ends. might be, things like that, that you haven't even discussed internally and are handled differently. do you show.

Field joints in your countertops in plan, view, or elevation, or at all? things that, affect the outcome and then may not matter to the project manager or client or giving her notice those things with the engineer has. And he's going to have to answer that question to be able to process things. So those are the things that are important, that if you don't have defined ask your engineering team, Hey guys, do we have these written down somewhere? Do have, are we doing them the same way?

And then ask your production team, Hey, are you getting same results? And a lot of times you're going to find. Talking to production. Well, I know when I get it from engineering, it comes this way and I like it the way engineer beat as a better. To overcome this, coming back to the challenge at hand is. How do you handle large jobs submittals efficiently. The biggest key to that is to shrink duration. You have to scale. Your capacity.

So. If you have one person on a job at a time, and that's the only, your process is dependent on that. Like we draw the whole project and when CAD file. It's only one person who work in it at a time. You're going to be limited to that person's capacity per day. You can only scale the job as much as one person in eight. Hours a day can get done. And that's your limit, that's your bottleneck. And so we have to first. Figure out. Hey, how can I put 3, 4, 5 people on this per day?

And that allows me to shrink the duration because if it's a thousand hour draft, it's just math. Okay. I, if I divide a thousand. Ours by eight hours a day. That's how many days it's going to take. I'm looking for my calculator so I can do the math for you. I should be able to do that in my head. So that's going to be 125 days. we have jobs that we estimate right now that maybe 2,500 hours. And so the way we shrink the duration is by. Scaling the number of people on the job.

And fundamentally that means your process is to support that. Okay. Every room is in its own drawing. this is one of the first obstacles we have with clients and their engineers. I don't like that. Yeah. there's things you might not like that we have to build as your standard process. And if you need to sometimes, and you need to do it all the time. There's other benefits from that. your files are smaller, easier to manage. it also breaks the job into work order size groupings.

when you have the whole job in one drawing, then later the engineer has to say, okay, now how are we going to break this down into work orders? or a lot of times you have all plans and elevations in one drawing and all typical sections in another. And then again, Hey, I'm releasing this room, my room. So now I have to grab pages from different parts of the drawings and print them together. So this is. Another discussion, there's, benefits to structuring this way.

That yield better results down the road for scaling in general. and again, this same concept you guys do in manufacturing every day, we've figured this out, but how most companies haven't brought this into the office and engineering of assembly line thinking. lean thinking. And so that's the first thing I recommend is how do we structure our file management, our scope management, I've got an estimate, that's got things organized by room or by scope item. Let's organize our drawings.

That same way, the way we're going to release it. However, you're going to set up your work orders or your batches or your releases, whatever you call them. Let's draw it that way and it'll make it easier later for your project manager for your production, everybody. And right now, what it solves is I can put 10 people on this job and I can say this draft is going to draw all the break rooms. This drafter is going to draw all the light items, basically.

Okay. I can put my most skilled people, custom people on the reception desk. It's going to be more time intensive and I can get other people in the caseworker or whatever it is. I can logically break up the scope. And you can then track it. So we have a system where we create. we take the estimated scope and we create a progress tracker to where we can track. Every single room, every single drawing page through the process of initial draft. To review to QC, to completion to client. Approval.

and you should be able to do that internally as well. you can say, okay, this, instead of this whole job is 2,500 hours. This room. It's five hours. Okay. Now I can plan that, okay, he should be able to do this in one day and then I needed an hour for review or whatever that might

be. So the next obstacle you're going to encounter is managing your client. a lot of times you might have a GC, that's just Hey, I just need the whole job submitted. There are a lot of times that project engineer is just trying to check something off their checklist. Hey, I know I need Millworks and middles division six. Done. and what you can do is help them from the start as a project manager. Okay. Or even from the sales side right up front.

Hey, I know you guys need this done, but what's really important. Let me look at your schedule. Do you need wet areas? Do you need the fourth floor? are you just really trying to get from our submittals? Blocking coordination because a lot of times, if you can break down, what do you really need instead of the whole job blocking coordination? Great. I'll get you a blocking plan. That's the first thing. I'll get my drafting team on. So that we're not holding up the whole job.

For this one little thing that we could actually get done in a few days. And so the more you can break it down with them and say, okay, Let's phase the submittals with the phasing of the job. Because what often happens is they'll insist on the whole job. And then that submittal is just going to sit in Pro-core somewhere. Architect's not going to review the whole thing, or if they do, they're not going to do it well.

if you can help manage the GC, manage the client and communicate to them, Hey, help me help you. What is it that you really need? You don't need the whole thing checked off today. Let me get the most important things to you quickly. I can help you faster. And we can start getting things into production and start like the end goal is that product onsite install.

let me explain to you how we can get there faster, more efficiently, and that's also going to help your internal team break the job down. Into manageable chunks. So that's where I would usually start. And you can upfront, if you're a project manager, jobs been handed off from sales, I would first start with that. Let me email the GC and say, Hey, I see you're requesting this. How can I help you better get the things you need faster.

And. We're going to be limited if you want the whole thing and you're not going to want to review the whole thing. So let me help you and let me break it down. Into the most important things. Blocking wet areas. Top level down, whatever their schedule is. and then communicate that with your team and put that in a plan. And if you're working with an external partner like us, the duct works. That's how we're going to ask you upfront.

What order do you need things in and we'll deliver them and work in that order. and it's much easier to check things off as you go. And also as you're completing things, you start getting feedback and you say, Oh, they actually want to change this detail and that detail is going to occur in later phases. Now I can correct it once before I draw the later phases. So.

Outside of that, it's how do you manage this? How do you now you've established. Okay. We can take on this job. We're going to take our first $5 million job. First $12 million job. Bray and we're going to work and manage internally, adjust our processes. We're going to bring on an external partner. That's going to help us, so one of the first things we're going to do that you should request any external partners is going to help you give you a cost up front.

We'll give you a fixed quote and fixed schedule. And we're going to also disclose. the hours, the actual we take. So if you want to be able to itemize costs by work order by. phase, however it is. we're able to support that. we use a clock time clock system. We itemize upfront our estimated hours. So one for your budgeting, you're going to have a fixed cost.

It's a cost that, if you need, even you can bill upfront that a lot of times billing and cashflow is something new when you're scaling to large jobs like this. And if you're used to having small one month to month burn projects, you're probably not billing up front for submittals. Or you might not be used to developing an SOV, a schedule of values that set detailed. So, having a partner like us, helping you with your submittals, that allows you to be able to pass on a bill and justify to the GC.

Hey. We're going to progress bill upfront. One of our SOV line items is going to be submittals. hopefully that allows you to get some draws and, cashflow going earlier in the project than you might be used to requesting. And if nothing else you can at least have better job costing across the job of, I know now what our costs breakdown was. By work order for drafting specifically. Separately from engineering separately from, all of our other project admin. costs. you're also gonna need, good.

software tools, communication. ways to manage this middle process. we leverage obviously, we transfer, we make available to be able to transfer large files. You're going to need to be able to send the full architectural, which has big files, cloud. Plowed a storage and SharePoint. We set up, specific, Folders that are secure, shared with their clients. And then we use Bluebeam studio.

So we, internally we'll create studio sessions and I would recommend, for anybody in our industry, that's managing large jobs or any sizes. Bluebeam when you buy those licenses, you get access to studio. And with that, there's an amazing feature called studio sessions. where you can allow everybody in your team to mark up real time. So I know a lot of companies we work with still are used to. Saving the PDF set of shop drawings. One person opens.

It, puts their markups and saves it back to the server. Then the next person opens it, marks it up, saves it back to the server. Studio sessions allows everybody concurrently. To do this. I can real-time markup while I can see somebody else marking it. That's going to bring down your durations a lot. If multiple people. PM engineer. Drafting team production, maybe the field. You need multiple people to be able to review the drawings before they go to your client.

And if you're having to do that one at a time consecutively, that's gonna. Greatly add up and extend your duration to get shop drawings out. So definitely using some sort of. Concurrent review tool like Bluebeam studio. And, uh, Daily communication, For us, it's important that we're communicating daily with our partners on drafting progress. We're asking questions coming from Paris, having a kickoff meeting where we reviewed everything and we come prepared with questions like, Hey, I see.

They're calling for a laminate that's been discontinued. What are we going to do about that? I see they calling for something, a hardware with long lead times. You might want to get a takeoff for that. To order it. And get it in time. I see that they're calling for a material that only comes in eight foot lengths for countertops. We're going to have seems very often. lots of things like that. if we can. Isolate those and bring them to your attention early.

That's going to help the rest of the job goes smoothly. And then, feeding details daily. Don't wait till you have a whole phase done to review it. The same thing. It's going to add up your durations. You need to get used to. Progress sets. So something we do is we. share progress sets with our clients. And we do that internally. Hey, I've got a room done. I know there's going to be 20 of these. Like it. Let's review this before I do 20 the same way that are going to have details. We don't like.

Things we don't want to do. a lot of times our clients aren't used to that they're. busy, Hey, I just want to review at the end, but then you ended up waiting and it sits in your inbox until you have five hours to sit down and review and that delays the whole project. You can review a little bit at a time as it comes. one is going to reduce overall mistakes you have in the end are details that need to be changed.

And it's also, I can take 10, 20 minutes to review this instead of wait until I have a five-hour block to review. The whole project. So, if you are trying to scale your business, And you're trying to take on larger projects. You want to your shop, you feel as capacity. You need the work. or your client, you have a client that says, Hey, I'm I'm growing the GCs growing, and I want to work with you, but I need you to be able to take on this bigger project. And your bottleneck is drafting.

Your bottleneck is submittals. My team can't handle a project this big in this duration. I think it's important to have a partner. That can work in your processes and your systems for those use cases, those scenarios. because it's not realistic to onboard six drafters. Only for this project. And then off-board them like nobody. Can really do that, find them, onboard them, train them, and then tell them, Hey, I'm going to lay you off. Cause I don't have that. That need anymore.

That's just not realistic. And so it's also important that you communicate clearly to your internal team, why you're doing this. And it's not to take their jobs away here. It's not to make their jobs harder. It's we need your involvement. You need their involvement as an owner. Of your team. They need to be a part of this process and they need to be on board with it. and sometimes if you have people that are just, they just don't want to change, they're set in their ways.

You've got to make the hard decision of Hey, this is what we're doing as a company. And you as an engineer, if you're opposing, helping the business support, how do we accomplish this? They need to understand that they're opposing, that's going to Have trickle down effect of everybody else, okay, how are they going to feel when the shop has to go home? Because. They're waiting on work to get through engineering. And that's what production needs. So it is a whole team effort. It's not easy.

but the people who can figure this out. Are the people who are going to grow and be successful.

So if this is something you're struggling with, I'd love to talk to you. You love for you to reach out to us and see how we can help. reach out to some of the people that worked with us. This is what we do every day. And there's lots of other good partners out there that's helped solve this problem. I would highly recommend. Starting before you need it. Work with a partner that you can develop a long-term relationship so that when these big jobs come along, it's as smooth as possible.

And your team's used to working with external partner used to the dynamic of large job. organization file management, workflow communication, and then that large job is going to go that much smoother. I hope you enjoy these solo episodes. If you've got feedback or questions, we're on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tik TOK now, or our website, So leave a comment, leave a message. I would love, to get your feedback on what you'd love to see on this podcast. And we can add to future episodes.

Follow and like us so that you get notified when new episodes come out or new content. go check out our website. Also. I have some blog posts there. Go hit the blog button. And you'll see articles I've written about managing your engineering department, which is very much aimed at this. thanks for listening. If you've made it this far, I hope you tune in next week. for another great episode.