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O P I N I O N
You get what you pay for!
The quality of your projects sets your firm apart from the competition, so urge your prospective clients to look beyond the costs.
A s a developer recently told me, “I like using your firm over others because I get what I pay for, as opposed to other firms where I get what I don’t pay for!” This may seem like an odd statement from a developer looking to keep costs down. However, quality and service turn into time and money. A lot of developers look at their consultants as a commodity, and if one is cheaper than the other, they think they are saving money. This is an uninformed way of looking at our profession. Sometimes going with the cheapest bid or with whoever is the quickest will actually cost more time and money in the long run.
Jim Toby
To be truly successful, the project will need a firm that will be a team player in the production of a quality plan and one that will be an advocate for the project, in addition to keeping costs and time in mind. By having the information done correctly and in sufficient detail the first time, a tremendous amount of time and money can be saved. An example is the base for any project: The topographic survey. As a civil engineer we use a topographic and boundary survey as the base for anything we design. If the survey is wrong, our
design is wrong. We prefer to use the surveys that our own staff produce, as we have trained them to get what is needed the first time. However, sometimes we are hired and inherit a topographic survey by others. The quality can vary dramatically and we will do a field check to be sure the topographic portions match the site conditions. It is not uncommon to have to ask the outside surveyor to go back to the field again to obtain all the required information necessary to do a quality plan. This could be a lack of detail, missing easements, utilities not shown, or a boundary that
See JIM TOBY, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER SEPTEMBER 20, 2021, ISSUE 1409
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