What 650 Multifamily Plan Reviews Revealed About Where Projects Actually Go Wrong

We've reviewed over $25 billion in construction value. Here's where coordination breaks down - and what it's costing.

We've been running preconstruction plan reviews for multifamily developers for over five years. 650+ projects. Wrap, podium, mid-rise, high-rise, mixed-use. $25 billion+ in construction value.

Along the way, we've logged over 130,000 coordination issues. Not code violations - coordination problems. The stuff that turns into RFIs, field conflicts, and change orders.

After seeing that many projects, patterns emerge. Here's what the data shows.

Most issues live between disciplines, not within them

The structural engineer coordinates their sheets. The MEP engineers coordinate theirs. But the problems we find most often? They're in the gaps.

Mechanical duct routes that don't clear structural beams. Utility points of connection where civil and plumbing drawings don't agree. Foundation coordination issues like slopes and drains. Electrical panels where casework is supposed to go.

Each consultant coordinates their own scope. The space between scopes is where things break.

The cost of finding issues late is brutal

We recently analyzed 14 projects for a repeat client - about 2,000 issues across those jobs. The estimated savings from catching those issues in design instead of the field? Between $6 million and $40 million, depending on how you calculate rework, delays, and administrative overhead.

That's not hypothetical. That's based on real issues: a missing primary electrical feed that would have left an entire project without power. A parking garage with no floor drainage. A fitness center where the plumbing plans were literally mirrored - every pipe in the wrong location.

Each of those issues, caught after concrete is poured, costs six figures minimum. Caught in design review? It's a markup on a PDF

Earlier reviews find more - and cheaper - problems

We track when projects come to us relative to their design phase. The difference is stark.

Reviews at 90% CD consistently surface 30-40% more actionable issues than reviews after permit. Not because the drawings got worse - because there's still time to fix them without a change order.

By the time a set is permitted, the design team has mentally moved on. Fixes become negotiations. At 90% CD, a markup is just a markup.

Version confusion is more common than anyone admits

On a surprising number of projects, the drawing set one party is working from doesn't match what another party has. The architect issued an update. The structural engineer revised their calcs. Someone uploaded new sheets to the FTP and forgot to send an email.

We've seen projects where the GC's pricing set was three revisions behind. Where the permit set had changes nobody documented. Where two consultants were designing against different architectural backgrounds.

When we overlay "current" sets from different sources, undocumented deltas show up constantly. Some are minor. Some are significant.

Version control sounds boring until you realize nobody's actually doing it.

Certain disciplines clash more than others

After 130,000+ logged issues, we can rank which discipline pairs generate the most conflicts.

The top offenders: Mechanical vs. Structural. Plumbing vs. Architectural. Fire Protection vs. Ceiling/Lighting layouts.

The pattern makes sense - these are the disciplines fighting for the same vertical and horizontal space. Plenum zones, chases, and risers are battlegrounds.

If you're doing targeted reviews, those intersections are where the ROI is highest.

Completeness issues hide bigger problems

When we start a review, we run a completeness check against the drawing index. Missing sheets, mismatched revision numbers, sheets that don't match the index at all.

Projects with significant completeness issues almost always have coordination problems too. It's a signal. If the document control is sloppy, the coordination usually is too.

A clean index doesn't guarantee clean coordination. But a messy index is a red flag.

The bottom line

None of this is about blame. Architects are under fee pressure. Engineers are stretched thin. GCs are reviewing for constructability, not design coordination. Everyone's doing their job.

But the job of cross-discipline coordination - overlaying every sheet, tracking every version, catching every conflict before it hits the field - often doesn't have a clear owner.

That's the gap we fill. And after 650 projects and $25 billion in construction value, we have a pretty good map of where the problems hide.