A major concern in various construction sectors is that government regulations are negatively impacting strategically planned smart development. The regulations are driving up the costs of building residential, commercial and industrial projects and causing some worthwhile and needed smart positive economic development to be canceled or paused. This could result in developers investing in projects in another state that is more friendly to smart development.

Here are five of the major reasons why government regulations prolong the land development process.

Complex Permitting Requirements

The intricate permitting requirements imposed by various government agencies are one of the primary reasons for the lengthy land development process. Numerous permits must be obtained from different regulatory bodies, including environmental agencies, health departments, and building departments. Each permit application requires extensive documentation and may take weeks or even months to be processed. And with some permit processes, it may take multiple years to secure a permit.

Lengthy Review Processes

The permit review processes also extend the land development timeline. Government agencies often have multiple layers of review within their organizations or even between different agencies. For example, a large-scale commercial project may require approval from multiple municipal planning commissions, boards of supervisors and commissioners, state transportation and environmental agencies, and federal regulatory bodies like the Army Corps of Engineers.

Compliance with Environmental Regulations

Compliance with environmental regulations is essential for any land development project, but can add considerable time to the process. Developers must adhere to federal and state environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. This may involve conducting extensive surveys for endangered species or implementing measures to mitigate potential impacts on wetlands or water quality begin.

Public Participation

Public involvement is essential for transparency and community engagement. Public participation in the land development process is another factor contributing to increasing the timeline. Many governments require developers to hold public hearings or provide opportunities for public comment during various stages of a project. This activity can add significant time to the approval process as developers must address resident and interest group concerns.

Financial Constraints

Financial constraints at various levels of government can lead to delays in processing applications and issuing permits for land development projects. Reduced budgets for regulatory agencies mean fewer staff members available to review applications efficiently or longer wait times for necessary approvals due to backlogs in processing applications ultimately prolonging the overall land development timeline

Closing Thought

The goal of proposed land development regulations is to encourage efficient land use, flexibility, and a reduction of potential negative impacts. It is also important to recognize and understand the impacts of the regulations that significantly contribute to extending the duration of land development projects.

Glenn Ebersole is a registered professional engineer and Business Development Manager at PM Design Group, a nationally licensed A&E firm in West Chester, with 14 offices across the U.S. He can be contacted at gebersole@pmdginc.com or 717-575-8572.

Designers are often underutilized and assigned mundane, trivial and minor problem-solving tasks. This approach wastes valuable talent and potential positive impacts on and with the final project. The professional training and expertise of most designers allow for a wider set of fundamental problem-solving skills that can have significant positive impacts on business outcomes.

What differentiates strategic thinking design and traditional design?

Traditional designers are often trained to use tools and techniques oriented toward solving a broadly defined problem like repairing the façade, rather than looking at the situation holistically to understand and question the fundamental issue. Designers often do not have an opportunity to question a design brief, which prevents a strategic framing of the problem at the beginning of a project that could be critical to the outcome.

Strategic thinking designers apply the principles of traditional design to big picture systemic challenges such as healthcare, education, and the environment. For example: An architect, hired to redesign an overcrowded school, reordered the bell schedule and staggered the dismissal of classes rather than proposing a new building. He saved the school millions of dollars by looking at the problem differently.

The architect in the case above lost the opportunity to charge for a lucrative contract by looking more deeply, asking smart questions, and coming up with a clever solution. This is a classic example that illustrates that it is the duty of the designer to offer a truly honest solution, especially if it means avoiding the significant cost of an entirely new building.

Strategic thinking designers need to see the difference between the design of the project and its delivery to users in the real-world and recognize that this is an opportunity to extend their value.

The strategic thinking designer acts as a steward that accepts the reality and its associated conditions and leads clients with a sure hand throughout the project. The traditional designer when isolated from the real-world users may expect their project to perform exceptionally well, but ultimately, they can find themselves unprepared for unexpected obstacles, or new constraints encountered on the path to project delivery.

The strategic designer needs to possess the ability to confidently pivot in times of flux or uncertainty to help avoid the potential collapse of a project and also open new design opportunities for innovative problem-solving.

Strategic thinking design must start at the initiation of a project when key decisions are made to facilitate wider and more comprehensive inputs to help frame the problem accurately. The strategic thinking design provides a more valuable asset to any project with a more substantial impact on all-inclusive systemic challenges.

Closing Thought

“Design thinking is the search for a magical balance between business and art, structure and chaos, intuition and logic, concept and execution, playfulness and formality, and control and empowerment.”— Idris Mootee, co-founder & CEO, Urbancoollab

Glenn Ebersole is a registered professional engineer and is the Director of Business Development at JL Architects, a West Chester-based architectural firm serving clients locally, regionally and nationally. He can be reached at gebersole@jlarchs.com or 717-575-8572.

The boom in demand has overwhelmed the supply chain since the pandemic, began in 2020. Transportation has struggled to keep up as rising demand collided with COVID-19 shutdowns, labor shortages and historic weather occurrences, causing a lack of shipping containers and supplies, alongside major price hikes. Scott Price, President of UPS, recently said, “The logistics industry does not see 2022 as having any less disruption in supply chains than in 2021.”

Price also commented that low vaccination rates in key developing countries will likely lead to additional shortages of raw materials and components similar to those that continue to impact automakers, apparel manufacturers and homebuilders.

Transportation cost and material cost increases will be passed on to the consumer.

Some examples include:

• Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain plans to hike prices because of inflation.

Food prices in the U.S. have been on the rise for six straight months. In June, U.S. consumer prices hit their largest annual increase since 2008. The oil and food category exhibited the largest price hikes.

• Toyota plans to further slash its output by over 400,000 units over the next two months because of the computer-chip shortage.
• Sherwin Williams, the large paint company, has been plagued by shortages since the Texas freeze, and the more recent effects of Hurricane Ida on petrochemical production.
• Lululemon, the large athletic apparel company struggles with shortages and higher transportation costs because much of its supplies (like many U.S. companies) are made in countries such as Vietnam that have suffered from COVID-19 shutdowns. The company has seen a surge in sales during the pandemic, as working from home pushed a boom in athleisure wear.
• Homebuilder PulteGroup has suffered shortages of lumber and glass and has warned of slower home completions, saying “the supply chain issues that have plagued the industry throughout the pandemic have increased during the second half of the year.”
• In 2021, UPS hiked its prices by 4% to 5.5%, but anticipates prices to increase by a lower average of 2.8% in 2022. UPS has spent more for disinfectant, installing plastic dividers in work sites and covering hotel costs for employees in markets where workers were unable to commute to their homes due to strict governmentmandates.

One of the biggest disruptors during the pandemic has been and continues to be the loss of shipping capacity on commercial jets, which typically deliver some cargo on international flights. There has been a large number of aircraft sitting on the ground in deserts and that has pushed more goods to ports or to thealternate air services.

“Vaccine inequity” has been a major contributor to the economic fallout between developed and developing countries. This becomes apparent when one looks at where raw materials originate and realize that they come from locations that do not have the vaccine.

There is some hope that a softening of price increases and more aspects of the supply chain will normalize in 2022, as long as the COVID-19 situation does not dramatically worsen.

Paul Polman, Dutch businessman, former CFO and VP for the Americas, Unilever and author has some great advice on how to proceed in 2022 and beyond:

“Looking at the world through a sustainability lens not only helps us ‘future proof’ our supply chain, it also fuels innovation and drives brand growth.”

Columnist Glenn Ebersole is a registered professional engineer and a Strategic Business Development/Marketing Executive and Leader in the AEC industry and related fields.  He can be reached at jgepsu21@gmail.com or 717-575-8572.