The Navy SEALs have a saying…. Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast. This phrase sounds paradoxical because it suggests that slower, more deliberate actions lead to quicker, more accurate designs. It teaches the importance of precision and control, particularly in high pressure or high stress situations… like being a civil engineer in Chester County and navigating an ever-changing approval process.

Fighter pilots use this same philosophy, as do race car drivers. I’m a huge Formula 1 fan and can say, if you watch your favorite driver and he’s jerking that steering wheel around, over correcting exiting turns, you can be guaranteed he will be slow on his lap times. Not being smooth is slow!

Now I’m not saying we engineers are as cool as SEALs and Formula 1 drivers, I am saying we are WAY cooler…obviously! In our business, slow is absolutely fast, and yet, there’s constant pressure to do things more swiftly. Why? you may ask. Ha! Because no one these days wants to do anything slow and very few can see the value in doing things the right way.

“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Slow is fast means taking the time to work carefully and accurately, rather than rushing. An intentional pace actually leads to fast and very often more efficient designs. This expression highlights the value of patience and carefulness in design. We are continually pressured to “resubmit by the next meeting” or “make sure we make the next meeting.”

Time and again, a design gets rushed (NOT by us of course!!) and mistakes get made. Large review letters are generated and then the engineer ends up trying to explain this in front of a Township Planning Commission or Board of Supervisors. Often an ask for approval is denied because there are too many outstanding comments. This foolish and flawed thinking needs to be resisted!

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." –  Leonardo da Vinci

Rushing wastes time, plain and simple. By taking the proper time to think through a sound design we reduce the likelihood of making mistakes, but more importantly, we have the time to come up with efficiencies.

I often laugh when I see clients “bidding” out the engineering as if they’re getting prices for new tires for their car. What they should REALLY consider is, how fast can the engineer get the approvals? (time is money) and NOT how fast can they get the plans submitted?

Additionally, and this goes hand in hand with a sound and efficient design, the client should be asking themselves, “How MUCH will it cost me to CONSTRUCT these plans?” By way of example, if one engineer’s proposal is $100,000 and their design costs $5 million to build and another engineers proposal is $150,000 and their design costs $4 million to build, you didn’t save $50,000, you wasted $950,000!

I’m certainly not suggesting that one shouldn’t obtain proposals for engineering design. But you would be making a huge mistake by not looking at the big picture, by not moving slow and making a good decision.

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso

And finally, to defend my car obsession, not only is the cheapest and fastest not the best. It is almost guaranteed to be the worst. Ask yourself, if you needed life-saving surgery, would you “bid out” the procedure to find the best doctor? Or would you go with the doctor with the nicest car in the parking lot and assume that one is the best. That’s a loaded question. Clearly, you should hire the one with the coolest boat!!