The Project Design Process

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For many of our clients, this may their first time hiring and engineer or their first time working with Jupiter Civil.  We strive to make the process as seamless and transparent as possible.  Engineering projects are complex with many "moving parts" and there are many rules and requirements governing the industry.  While every single project is different and has different contractual requirements, the following is provided to inform you on the general process.  We hope you find it useful and reassuring.

At the very beginning of a project we will reach out to you and provide a list of documents that are required for us to start design on your project (we also include these requirements in our proposal).  Work cannot begin until we have the requested documents and these documents are typically prepared by other professionals that you may have already hired before we get involved.  Feel free to have your professional or (other entity) reach out to us if there are any questions on the specific requirements.  This is especially true with survey needs.  To assist with survey scope, we can issue a summary email to the surveyor (at your request).  We also provide a discussion on the general requirements for survey here.

This next phase involves an internal process where the Engineer of Record and the design team get together to discuss the overall project requirements.  On many projects, there may be a kickoff meeting scheduled with the client and/or other agencies.  Many times, the initial discussion with the client has already happened during the proposal preparation period.

During this phase you may or may not receive communications from us.  Rest assured though that your project is moving forward in the most expeditious manner as we are pulling the pieces together from many directions and sources (which are in addition to the sources of information you provide us).

You may receive further communication or requests from us for additional information or clarification from your design professionals.  These details are important to work out, but they usually cannot be known at the very beginning of a project, and they usually come up after a significant amount of time has been put into the project.

Communication of details is sometimes a back and forth process that takes some time and should be expected.  Again, no two projects are alike, but we believe have come up with a process that helps minimize the time step between communication and we really hope that helps our clients.

During this phase, our designers/engineers are making final design decisions.

Once design decisions are made, it becomes more an more of an effort to revise them.  As we have to rely on information provide by other professionals to do our work, we ask that if you are providing us with "tentative" or other data subject to revision, you notify us as such.  In these cases, we will discuss with you the benefits and costs of moving forward with data that is likely to change.  We rely on information provided by other professionals that you may bring to the table, and for all intents and purposes assume those data to be final and not subject to any material changes.

Again, there may be some benefit to moving forward with tentative data, we just request that you advise us of such.  For example, if you know the footprint of your structure is changing, please notify us if you provide us with an older version of the footprint.  This applies to all phases of design.  We can then have a discussion on whether it is wise to produce a "draft" work product for discussion, or wait until the footprint is final.  Otherwise we assume that when we receive the requested document from you, it is final.

There is a period of time, after the design is complete, where a project is checked and reviewed by the design professionals, Engineer of Record and/or other staff.  This step does take time, even for the smallest of projects.  We believe we have come up with an internal process that can minimize the time it takes for this step.

We appreciate the fact that you understand that a quality product and quality review benefits everybody involved in the project. 

This step begins when we first submit the project documents (drawings, specifications, reports, etc.) to you.  Please look over the documents as to the nature of the work and overall design intent and also coordinate with your other design consultants as may be required.  For example, you may be sending our plans to your architect and asking them to review them and provide final comment.

We may simultaneously submit the project documents to a permitting agency on your behalf (depending on our arrangement for permit phase services).

We ask that you provide any comments back from your professionals as soon as possible and we use the timeframe of the permitting agencies as our guide as to when to close out anticipating comments.

This phase is focused on responding to client or permit agency comments and requests.  Sometimes further discussions are required with the agencies.  We strive to make contact and have those discussions in an expeditious manner.  Other times the reviewers may request items that are outside of the scope of our services and were not anticipated by any party.  If this is the case, we will discuss this further with you.  Many times we can address these unknowns without additional fees but we do ask that all parties recognize that additional time may be required.

We include normal and customary response efforts to the permit review comments in our contracts.

This step may include delivery of final permitted plans or plans that address all of the client's comments that they will permit themselves or a mix of both depending on our agreement on permit phase services.