Three Ways To Speed Up Plan Set Turnaround Times

Takeaway: If you’re willing to be involved and communicate with your third-party, outsourced teams, you can rapidly accelerate design turnaround times by providing the right information upfront, centralizing and contextualizing all information, and iterating together.

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Leveraging third-party designers is becoming a popular way for Solar Contractors to scale their capacity up or down without significant overhead costs. In 2023, for example, over two-thirds (67.1%) of Designers report outsourcing at least ten percent of project volume, and 13.4% report they always outsource something. 

A common misconception about third-party outsourcing is that in-house teams can’t impact delivery times. The theory goes that you are completely removed from the process and the Design consultants you hired to do everything. In reality, though, you have much more control over delivery times. If you choose to set and forget, perhaps not. But if you’re willing to be involved, you can speed things up considerably. 

Here are three ways to speed up the process while ensuring quality.

1. Submit the Right Documentation

Working with a Design partner is deliverable-based—you order something, you pay, and you receive the final product. However, complex deliverables like solar plan sets require your input as the buyer. 

If you want to speed up the design process, the first thing you can do is submit comprehensive documentation upfront. Otherwise, the team will either have to figure things out on their own (such as researching AHJ specifications) or go back to you asking for more information. 

Scanifly Plan Set Order Form

Here’s what you should submit: 

• Proposal layout

• Module detail

• Inverter detail

• Rail and attachment detail

• Interconnection 

• Main breaker and MSP rating

• Equipment location picture

• Rafter/truss size and space

The necessity of this data underscores
the importance of onsite surveys since
many of these details will either not be visible from grainy satellite imagery or require an internal survey. 

2. Centralize and Contextualize Your Data

One of the easiest ways to add time to any design, outsourced or not, is dumping a million files into someone’s email and asking them to figure it out. 

When a Designer looks at your files, they are seeing information for the first time. They don’t have the same frame of reference a Surveyor might. For instance, they have no idea that a picture is of the back of the house because you saw the driveway to the right, rather than the left.  If you don’t contextualize your data, Designers will need to spend a lot of time figuring things out and likely checking back with you to confirm. 

If you’re using Scanifly and drones, that context will automatically be added via the drone-based 3D model and centralized using Scanifly Mobile. If you’re using a different system, you can label things with stickers or comments on each image, letting the Designer know basic context like location, what they are looking at, and any concerns the Surveyor had (e.g. noticing a weak point in a truss).  

3. Iterate Together

Beyond the obvious deliverable of a wireframe or plan set, you need an idea of what you want when you submit files. For example, it’s useful to communicate if you have specific AHJ requirements or a visual style you’re hoping for. 

These holistic desires, often driven by legal compliance or your unique approach, become the basis of a working template you can save with your external design partner. As you do more work together, you’ll iterate on that template and use it for future projects. 

Not only does this collaborative approach help you get work done quickly, but it also makes changes smoother. Rather than start from a generic place each time, you can adjust based on your organization’s goals, meaning changes are quicker and more intuitive for your (and your customers’) needs. 

Create an Extension of Your Team

You can engage with third-party designers as much–or as little–as you’d like. But if you want to speed up delivery times, frequent communication is a critical part of the working relationship. Otherwise, things will simply go as planned (or possibly a little more slowly than planned, if issues occur). 

Outsourced designers need to know as much information as possible, with adequate context, so they can develop high-quality plan sets that Installers can act on. To get that, they need communication from a Contractor who knows their own end goals and what resources they can access in order to finalize a design. With this permutation, the dynamic between your team and your design partner will be quality and fast.