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Zero red lines, never our own stamp

I set the quality bar for our virtual architecture bench by the stamping engineers' red pen, and kept a licensed human on every seal.

For the virtual architecture bench we were building, I set a specific quality bar. The bench covers structural, mechanical, civil, plumbing, HVAC, fire, landscape and jurisdictional review, all feeding the plans our system produced. The bar was not our own satisfaction. It was that the third-party stamping engineers who review our plan sets should come back with zero red lines.

I also chose not to let the system stamp anything itself. A licensed human stays as the seal on every set, however good the tools become. My thinking: we were building a capability to run projects for the long term, not to win one job faster.

I measure quality by the reviewer's red pen, never by how sure my own team feels going into the review. Teams that grade their own work will always feel better about it than the results justify. Nothing is more immune to mood than the stamping engineer's red line count, the one scoreboard that cannot be talked into feeling better.

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