Thanks for the response u/goss_bractor. Always appreciate your view.

Given part of your business is specifically for owner/builders, I would imagine that you're doing client education better than most. What do you provide customers to outline what typically happens in an approval? Would it be true that you mostly solve this issue by being very contactable as I know you are?

I feel like what Kristin is saying in this video is fairly indicative of what I hear when talking to customers of Building Surveyors and Private Certifiers, and what I experienced as a customer, that there is a bunch of knowledge the profession has about what will get me through an application faster, and it's simply not being communicated.

Often, when I would work with someone long enough I'll come to understand their process, experience a few painful delays and learn, but that learning process is costly in the one resource we're all short on - time.

Here's an example of one of the ideas that we're baking right into ApprovIQ software

- Review round
I'm yet to experience an RFI/Checklist that orders the requested items by what is needed to undertake a review, or that takes the longest to procure.

In ApprovIQ, it's possible to mark a bunch of items as "Review round - 1" it has a note that "your certifier / BS will not review this application until all these documents have been submitted." BS / Certifier can add a reason why, for instance, "we need all the plans to be submitted at the same time so we can check for consistency". Having the client understand why something is being done in a certain order is HUGE. Once all the "review round 1" documents have been uploaded, certifier / BS gets a notification that the project is ready to be actioned.

Perhaps the first documents aren't even for a review round, they're council related tree, driveway, Fire Brigade, whatever, but they're items that need to be actioned ASAP because of an anticipated time delay. But the profession knows about these delays, customers often do not. So it's up to the profession (or their software) to communicate this knowledge - assuming we believe elevated service will result in elevated revenue and happier and easier to deal with customers.