When projects are in the permitting process, often times a board or commission will invoke the peer review process. What exactly is this though and what does it mean for the project?

Peer review is when another consultant or consulting firm is hired to take an independent examination of the plans, application or plan segment. For example, a plan that has a detailed stormwater system adjacent to a river might be peer reviewed by one firm for the stormwater design and another firm for environmental design.

One of the point of contention is that the applicant hires/pay for the firm that does the peer reviewing. On the surface this, once one gets past the  not insignificant detail of paying for two firms to agree on one project design and that the second firm works for the municipality (not the applicant), is not such a negative thing. Two sets of eyes make for a better project design and faster permit approval, yes?

Unfortunately, the answer increasingly, no.

Peer review, while honorably intended to identify errors and provide expertise for a board that may not have that experience behind the table, has increasingly been adapted to a strategy for breaking projects (or clients) that are politically unpopular. This is known as the “bleed ‘em dry” strategy. These projects can be identified pretty quickly:

• An applicant has irritated someone in the town prior to project proposal. Municipalities and agencies have long memories.
• The project is unpopular or a property is popular. A memory comes to mind during the research phase where an agent pulled out a newspaper article and informed that a project was successfully blocked 10 years ago and they would do it again. Bear in mind this was the research phase. No design or application submitted.
• The peer review doesn’t become a review, but a checklist/request list of impossible and inappropriate demands that have no base in regulation.
• There are few rebuttals of the proposed work, but a seemingly never-ending request for new information. More soil logs, more experts, more on-site meetings and reports. It can seem like professional wrestling, but with science and engineering.
• The area is affluent enough that litigation is legitimate passtime. These municipalities are used to receiving and used to avoiding lawsuits. Peer review is one way avoid this possibility.

Make no mistake, peer review has its place and when it is appropriately used, it is a wonderful tool. Large, complex, ambitious or designs with experimental elements are all appropriate uses of peer review and they make for better designs. When this occurs, the applicant will see the two consultants collaborating almost seamlessly and moving quickly in the same direction for a project approval.

If, however,  the permitting process begins to resemble championship wrestling (but with engineers), it may be time to take a moment and consider a strategy change.