Saved by the bell

As part of my work right now, I review plans for government agencies. Its a lot like grading papers, although the kids are supposed to be all grown up. They, of course, are not.

Continuing with the classroom analogy, I frequently review plans for the classic over achievers. Now they are called lawyers. These are actually some of the worst plans that I look at. Even though they may cover every single required point in their reams of used paper, no one will ever know, because it will be too large to be an effective plan.

For the most part, everything that we require and I review for could fit on 3-4 pages, and a decent job would be between 10 to 20. I have seen some plans that are well in excess of hundreds of pages. I have to sift through these loads of horse hockey and try to make heads or tails of them. However, this post was not originally going to be about them. No, this post is about a particular plan from Intentionally Unnamed Municipality(IUM). Its name has been changed to protect its identity.

IUM submitted a plan that was thin but well within the range of being a good plan. It however did miss on a couple of points. Many do on the first submission. What made this particular plan interesting was the way they added a few key features. There were some maps that wanted to use (not required but often included). Most agencies had created their own maps from satellite photos or some other slick and entirely unnecessary way. IUM had located their sites on one of the common map sites (mapquest, google, etc.) and transferred it to their report.

I am guessing that someone told them they could cut and paste the map on there, because that is exactly what they did. The line between generations was drawn and IUM tripped over it. They printed the map out, cut out the portion they needed and pasted it into their plan. To make things better, they then used colored pencil to indicate the location.

In the end, it was fine and actually kind of cute (in a "awwwww, how quaint" sorta way). The plan went back to them, and I am waiting to see if they re-submit with the needed changes. At least their plan was more functional than the ones filled with legalese.