A truss package does not become urgent when it reaches the engineer of record. It became urgent weeks earlier, when incomplete inputs, unclear loading assumptions, and unresolved framing conditions were allowed to reach design. At All Points, we predesign truss projects to speed up your EOR submittals by moving those decisions forward – before they become expensive revisions, production interruptions, or a missed delivery date.
For truss plants, component manufacturers, and lumber dealers, EOR turnaround is not simply an engineering issue. It affects production sequencing, material releases, builder confidence, and the number of jobs your team can responsibly take on. The plants that win more work are not waiting for submittal problems to reveal themselves. They are building a predesign process that makes the engineering review cleaner from the start.
Why EOR Submittals Slow Down
An EOR submittal can stall for reasons that have little to do with the final truss configuration. Missing bearing information, vague roof geometry, incomplete uplift requirements, unconfirmed girder reactions, and conflicting architectural sheets all create questions that must be answered before approval can move forward.
Those questions often arrive late because the design team is already under pressure to produce. A designer may be working from an incomplete plan set while sales is pushing to protect the quote and operations is trying to hold a production slot. The result is predictable: the job gets designed once for pricing, partially redesigned for coordination, and then redesigned again after engineering comments arrive.
That cycle burns design hours without increasing output. Worse, it makes capacity planning nearly impossible. A backlog may look manageable on paper, but a small group of projects with unresolved engineering items can consume a disproportionate share of the team’s week.
Predesign Truss Projects Before the Submittal Clock Starts
Predesign is the disciplined work of identifying structural and constructability issues before a truss package enters the EOR review cycle. It is not a substitute for engineering, and it should never be presented as one. It is the preparation that allows the engineer to review a more complete, coordinated, and defensible package.
A capable predesign team reviews the plan set with the same practical lens used by experienced truss designers and production leaders. They look for roof transitions, concentrated loads, long spans, framing offsets, dropped ceilings, attic conditions, valley sets, girder locations, bearing conflicts, and connections that may require special attention. They also flag the information that is missing rather than quietly making assumptions that will later create liability or rework.
The goal is not to solve every issue before the EOR sees the package. Some answers must come from the engineer, architect, builder, or framing contractor. The goal is to ask the right questions early, organize the relevant information, and eliminate avoidable ambiguity.
When this work is completed before full design release, the EOR receives a package that is easier to review. The design team receives fewer broad, disruptive corrections. Your operations team has a clearer view of what can move into production and what still needs a decision.
What a Strong Predesign Review Should Cover
The scope should match the project type, customer expectations, and your internal workflow. A straightforward residential roof may need a focused coordination review. A multi-family, commercial, or highly customized project needs a deeper pass because the cost of a missed detail is higher.
At minimum, predesign should establish the structural facts that drive the truss solution. That includes verifying plan versions, roof slopes, overhangs, bearing lines, loading criteria, wind exposure information when available, and the relationship between architectural, structural, and framing documents.
It should also identify conditions that routinely trigger EOR comments. Common examples include point loads that do not land on a clear load path, girders with uncertain support conditions, large mechanical openings, inconsistent elevations, cantilevers, scissor trusses, parapet transitions, and framing plans that do not match roof plans. These are not minor drafting details. They directly affect engineering review time and job risk.
A clear issue log is often more valuable than a stack of marked-up drawings. It gives your customer, sales team, designer, and project manager a single record of open questions, proposed clarifications, and decisions received. That prevents the same issue from being rediscovered by multiple people across multiple shifts.
Faster Turnaround Requires a Production Workflow
Predesign creates value only when it is connected to the way work actually moves through your business. If the review happens after the designer has completed the package, it becomes another layer of delay. If it happens too early without usable project information, it becomes speculation.
The best time is usually after the initial plans and project requirements are assembled but before the final truss layout and engineering package are pushed forward. That gives the team enough information to identify risk while preserving enough time to correct the course efficiently.
A practical workflow assigns ownership at each stage. Sales or estimating confirms what was sold and gathers source documents. Predesign reviews the plans, identifies missing information, and escalates material issues. The truss designer uses confirmed inputs to create the package. A quality review checks that the design reflects the resolved conditions. Then the EOR submittal goes out with fewer avoidable unknowns.
This structure matters because EOR comments are not always bad. A comment that identifies a true structural concern is part of the process and must be handled with care. The performance problem is repeated commentary on information your team could have found, coordinated, or clearly documented before submittal.
Use Global Capacity Without Creating More Handoffs
Many plants know they need more design capacity but hesitate to add another team because they fear quality loss or communication gaps. That concern is valid. Offshore or distributed production only helps when the team understands truss workflows, communicates clearly, and operates inside a defined quality process.
The right technical staffing model gives you trained people who can support predesign, truss design, estimating, CAD production, and documentation without forcing your internal leaders to become full-time recruiters and trainers. With teams working across time zones, a project can be reviewed, marked up, and prepared for the next production step while your local team is offline.
That does not mean every project should be handed off without oversight. Complex jobs, unusual jurisdictions, and customers with nonstandard requirements may need closer review by your senior designers or project managers. But a dedicated support team can take recurring coordination work off their desks, allowing experienced domestic talent to focus on the decisions that require their judgment.
All Points Technical has built specialized technical teams around that operating model. The point is not labor arbitrage alone. The point is adding disciplined production capacity that helps you bid more work, protect margin, and keep engineering submittals from becoming a bottleneck.
Measure the Bottleneck, Not Just the Turnaround Time
If you want predesign to improve EOR velocity, measure what is actually causing delay. Total turnaround time is useful, but it can hide the source of the problem. Track the number of clarification requests per project, engineering resubmittals, revisions after release, design hours per job, and days lost waiting for customer answers.
Those metrics reveal whether your issue is incomplete inputs, poor plan coordination, overloaded designers, inconsistent QA, or a customer process that needs firmer requirements. They also show where predesign is paying off. A project that takes the same number of calendar days but requires fewer redesign hours is still improving your capacity and margin.
The strongest teams use this information to refine their intake standards. If a certain class of job repeatedly arrives without bearing details or loading data, make those items part of the required package before the project enters design. If one customer frequently sends conflicting revisions, establish a formal plan-version control process. Speed comes from eliminating preventable uncertainty, not asking people to work harder inside a broken workflow.
Make Approval Easier to Earn
Your EOR should not be forced to sort through unclear documents, reverse-engineer design intent, or repeatedly request basic coordination information. Give them a package that shows your team has done the work to understand the project, identify the risks, and document the decisions.
That standard changes how your operation performs. Designers spend less time chasing answers. Engineering reviews become more focused. Production has fewer surprises. And your business can commit to more work with greater confidence.
The next job in your queue may not need more urgency. It may need a better start. Predesign it with discipline, put the right technical capacity behind it, and give the EOR a reason to approve faster. Check with All Points Technical to learn more about how we can Predesign your project in any of the available truss design software’s
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