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Back-office structure for consultants and small project teams

Support for Teams

Back-office structure for consultants and small project teams, set up without hiring anyone.

Tell us about your practice

We reply within one business day, sooner if you’ve been refused.

Project reviews and layout drawings are compiled using the best physical evidence available on-site and from official registry baselines. Formal legal boundary staking remains subject to a certified Real Property Report (RPR) executed by a licensed Saskatchewan Land Surveyor.

  • Licensed Professional Engineer (P.Eng.)
  • Years of Development Appeals Board experience
  • Based in Saskatoon, serving Saskatchewan and Alberta
  • Fixed scope, no retainer

Sound familiar?

  • Running a one-person engineering or planning practice.

    Project manager, administrator, writer and technical expert in the same afternoon. Structure is the first thing that gets dropped. We set it up once.

  • Someone submitted a superseded drawing.

    Version control that makes the current sheet obvious to everyone touching the file, without a system you’d have to learn.

  • A client asked why you decided something two years ago.

    Archives grouped by decision and approval rather than by date, so the answer is findable in minutes instead of a day.

Every hat, all at once

Solo and small-firm work means being the project manager, the administrator, the writer and the technical expert in the same afternoon. Structure is the first thing that gets dropped, because it’s the only part with no deadline attached to it.

That holds until it doesn’t. Someone submits a superseded drawing. A permit condition gets missed because it lived in one email. A client asks for the reasoning behind a decision from two years ago and reconstructing it takes a day you don’t have. The fix isn’t a bigger system. Most of what gets sold to small firms is built for organizations ten times the size, and gets abandoned inside a month.

What works is a small amount of structure that matches how you already operate, set up once and then left alone.

Running on memory and email?

There’s a lighter way to do this.

Talk to RDC

How we can help

If you’re a consultant or a small technical firm, the work is rarely the problem. The problem is everything around it. Which drawing is current. Where the permit condition was recorded. What you told the client three weeks ago. Whether the file would survive an audit.

RDC sets that layer up for you, once, and then leaves you to run it. Filing structures and naming rules that match how you actually work. Version control so nobody submits a superseded drawing. Templates and checklists for the things you do on every project, so you stop rebuilding them from scratch each time.

We also build archives that stay useful. Grouped by decision, approval and stakeholder rather than by date, because that’s how people look for things later. When a regulator asks, or when someone new picks up the file, the answer is findable.

You can also bring us in behind the scenes on a project, handling the permitting and documentation under your name while you stay on the technical side.

What we set up

Three things worth fixing

Most of the friction in a small practice comes down to files, versions and repeated work. We handle all three.

  • Find it the first time

    File structure

    Folder structures, naming rules and templates that match how your projects actually run, so the system survives a busy month.

  • Never submit the wrong drawing

    Version control

    Drawings, permits and key documents tracked through the project, so the current version is obvious to everyone touching the file.

  • Organized by decision, not by date

    Usable archives

    Records grouped by approval, decision and stakeholder, which is how people search when a question comes up years later.

The process

How it goes, step by step

Five steps, in the order they happen. It ends with a system you run, not one you rent.

  1. How you work now

    Review

    A look at how your filing, handoffs and client communication work today. No recommendation to replace everything.

  2. Structure that fits

    Design

    Folder structures, naming rules and version control built around the project types you actually run, not a generic template.

  3. Stop rebuilding

    Templates

    Checklists, proposal structures and reporting formats for the work you repeat on every job, written once and reused.

  4. Findable later

    Archive setup

    Historic and current project records organized by decision and approval, so an audit or a handover is straightforward.

  5. Yours to run

    Handover

    Documented, simple enough to maintain, and set up so a new person can pick it up without a training session.

What to send us

  • A sentence or two on the kinds of projects you run and how many at once
  • One project folder, as it is today, warts and all
  • The templates and checklists you already use, if any
  • Where the last handover or audit hurt

We work with whatever you already use. There’s no software to buy.

Talk to RDC

We reply within one business day, sooner if you’ve been refused.

What comes back

A structure you can run, documented so it survives you.

  • Filing structure and naming rules: built around your project types, with version control that makes the current sheet obvious

  • Templates and checklists: for the work you repeat on every job, including permit conditions and handover

  • An organized archive: current and historic records grouped by decision and approval, ready for an audit or a warranty question

Behind-the-scenes permitting and documentation under your name is available as a separate engagement.

Sample layout

Fixed scope, no retainer

Set up once. Then it’s yours.

The scope is set before we start and the engagement ends at handover, with the system documented well enough that a new hire can pick it up without a training session. There’s no retainer, no monthly billing and no subscription to manage.

FAQ

Questions we get about this

evan.reekie@rdc.bdes.io

No. We work with whatever you already use. The value is in the structure, the naming and the habits, not in another subscription to manage.

Usually the opposite. A solo practice has the least slack, so a missed condition or a superseded drawing costs proportionally more. What we’d set up for one person is small.

Yes. We handle permitting, documentation and municipal coordination behind the scenes while you stay on the technical work and keep the client relationship.

We can organize historic records the same way, grouped by decision and approval rather than by date. That’s usually what makes the difference when an audit or a warranty question turns up.

Next step

Without hiring anyone

Tighten the back office

Tell us where your practice loses the most time and we’ll suggest the smallest change that fixes it.

Talk to RDC

We reply within one business day, sooner if you’ve been refused.

Set up once. No software to buy.

Talk to RDC