Client approvals are often the longest item on the project schedule: longer than any design phase, longer than permit review, sometimes longer than the construction itself if you're unlucky.
And the frustrating part is that they don't have to be. Slow approvals are almost never because clients are bad at making decisions. They're slow because the approval process is poorly structured, and the client doesn't have what they need to say yes quickly.
What changes this:
The Actual Reason Approvals Take So Long
Before fixing the process, it helps to understand what's actually causing the delay.
Unclear what's being decided. "Review the DD set and let us know your thoughts" is not an approval request. It's an invitation for a conversation. Clients who receive a 200-sheet drawing set without a specific list of decisions to make will either ignore it, ask for a meeting to discuss everything, or respond with a wide-ranging set of comments that reopens settled questions.
Too much information, not enough clarity. Design teams often send clients everything — full drawing sets, complete specifications, consultant drawings, code analysis. The client needs to find, within all of that, the specific things they're supposed to approve. Most won't.
No deadline. "Let us know when you've had a chance to review" gets deprioritized indefinitely. The client has their own deadlines. If there's no explicit deadline for the approval, and the consequence of missing it isn't clear, it waits.
Multiple approvers without a single point of contact. On projects with institutional clients, developers, corporate clients, government entities. The "client" is actually a group of stakeholders with different roles and different authorities. If the approval process requires consensus from people who don't have a shared decision-making protocol, it will take a long time.
The Approval Package
The single highest-leverage change most firms can make is how they frame approval requests.
Instead of sending the full deliverable and asking for approval, send an approval package. A curated document that contains:
- A summary of what's being approved (two to three sentences)
- The specific decisions the client needs to make
- The key drawings or images relevant to those decisions (not the full set)
- The deadline for approval and what happens if it's missed
- Where to send questions or comments
This package is not a replacement for the full deliverable, the full set is available separately, for those who want to review it in detail. The package is an executive summary designed to enable a decision.
For a principal or developer who's managing five active projects, a two-page approval package that tells them exactly what they're deciding is far more likely to get a timely response than a 200-sheet set with no cover note.
Make the Decision Clear and Binary
Every approval request should come with a clear, specific question. Not "let us know your thoughts": a specific thing the client is being asked to confirm.
Examples:
- "We're requesting approval of the SD exterior massing option shown on sheets A-100 through A-103. Please confirm by [date] so we can proceed to DD."
- "The decision required here is the exterior cladding material: fiber cement panel (Option A) or metal panel (Option B). Please confirm your selection by [date]."
Binary choices are faster than open-ended reviews. When you present two options with a clear recommendation, the client's cognitive load is: do I agree with the recommendation or not? That's a much simpler decision than: what do I think about all of this?
Set and Communicate the Schedule Dependency
Clients who don't understand that their approval is on the critical path will not prioritize it the way the schedule requires.
Every approval request should include a clear statement of the schedule dependency: "We need your approval by [date] in order to begin DD on [date] and maintain our target construction start of [date]. A one-week delay in approval will shift the construction start by one week."
This isn't pressure — it's information. Clients who understand the stakes are more likely to make the approval a priority.
Establish a Single Client Point of Contact
For clients with multiple stakeholders, one of the most valuable things you can do at project kickoff is establish who has final approval authority and who the design team communicates with.
This doesn't mean excluding other stakeholders from the process. It means having a clear protocol: the design team communicates with the primary contact, who is responsible for gathering internal input and delivering a consolidated response.
Without this, approval requests generate an internal discussion within the client's organization that you have no visibility into and no ability to accelerate. With it, you have a single relationship to manage and a single person accountable for the response.
Follow Up Once, Then Escalate
The standard follow-up sequence for an overdue approval:
- Send the approval request with a clear deadline
- If not received by the deadline, send one follow-up acknowledging that the deadline passed and asking for a revised timeline
- If still no response, escalate, either to a principal on your side reaching out to a principal on the client's side, or to a formal schedule impact notice if the delay is material
One follow-up is professional. Repeated chasing is a sign that the approval process isn't working and needs a different intervention, not more emails.
