Design Manager — Canadian Property Developer, Remote

We are a property developer in Nova Scotia, Canada. We design, build small and midsize buildings like condo / apartments.

The problem, in plain terms. Our design process has no manager. Drawings go out without a revision mark, so a supplier prices the wrong set and a trade builds from the fourth version. Permit submissions come back with comments an internal check would have caught. Engineers, the municipality and suppliers find gaps in a package before we do. Changes get made on an old base. Decisions live only inside drawings, so six versions in, nobody can say why the building looks the way it does. Questions from our architects and our consultants sit unanswered because nobody owns the log. Our founder and chief of staff have carried this between them. It has cost us in rework, in permit time and in people. We are hiring the person who has run this properly before and will install it here.

WHAT YOU OWN

1. Drawing issue and revision control. A drawing register, revision marks and clouds, issue status, superseded-set control and a transmittal log, so at any moment we know which set is current and who holds it.

2. Stage gates with checklists. Concept approval, design development, permit submission, stamp readiness, issue for construction. Each has a checklist, a review and a sign-off, and nothing passes without them.

3. Design QA and coordination review. Completeness and clash checks across architectural, structural, civil, mechanical and electrical, schedules and shop drawings, before anything leaves us.

4. Consultant and engineering coordination. Scope and brief each engineer and consultant, hold an information-required schedule and an RFI log, run comment rounds, track stamps and sign-offs.

5. Authority approvals. Submission packages, a comment-response log, conditions tracking and resubmission control, across several municipalities.

6. Design change control. Every change after issue, from the owner, from site or from an engineer, is logged, impact-assessed, approved and re-issued under revision. Including ours.

7. The design brief and the standards library. Unit and room templates, site constraints and the cost target, confirmed complete before drawing starts, with our planning and pre-construction leads.

8. Design programme and resource planning. Deliverables per project against permit and construction dates, ETAs, weekly allocation and check windows for the design team.

9. Cost and buildability at every gate. Pre-construction and construction in the room when a concept is approved, so cost is a design input, not a discovery.

10. Construction-phase design support. A site query and RFI log, as-built deviations handled, red-marked sets and revised stamped plans issued under control, inside an agreed answer window.

11. The design team and its standards. Weekly allocation, reviews, feedback given privately, mentoring; title blocks, sheet numbering, naming, LOD definitions and model standards.

12. The project design record. Decision register, review minutes and actions, drawing register, RFI and approvals logs, in one place per project.

WHO YOU COORDINATE

In-house architects, and outside structural, civil, mechanical and electrical engineers, surveyors, geotechnical and architectural consultants. The mix changes per project. You run whichever mix a project has.

HOW HANDS-ON

This is a small team, so you produce some of it: concept sketches, redlines, templates and sheet setup, checking. What that cannot do is displace the management. When a production task and a coordination task collide in a week, coordination wins, and you plan the week so they rarely collide.

TECHNOLOGY

We run the company on software we write ourselves and we are adding AI throughout how we design, coordinate and record. You do not need to be a programmer. You do need to be the person who picks up a new tool in a week, is already using AI in design or coordination work, and can say what it changed and where it was wrong. Someone who waits to be trained will not keep up here, and we say that plainly because it matters more than most items on this page.

WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE AFTER TWELVE MONTHS

• Every set that leaves us carries a revision, and every recipient is in the transmittal log.
• Every project passes each gate with a checklist signed before the next stage starts.
• No completeness gap is found first by an engineer, a supplier or a municipality.
• Every change after issue is in the change log with its impact before it is drawn.
• Every project has a decision register that explains the building.
• Permit and handover dates are met.
• Questions from the design team and consultants are answered within one business day, or logged as an assumption they can proceed on.

WHAT WE NEED YOU TO HAVE DONE

• At least five years in design management, design coordination, or document and BIM coordination at a developer, general contractor, design-build firm or multi-disciplinary consultancy, on residential or similar buildings.
• You have personally kept a drawing register and a transmittal log, run gate checklists, run consultant comment rounds to stamp, and run municipal comment rounds to approval. You can describe each in your own words in an interview.
• You have run change control with impact assessment on live projects.
• You have held a line with people who did not report to you, sending work back and holding dates, and given hard feedback privately to people who did.
• An architecture, architectural technology or engineering background. Revit literacy: you read and check models and set up sheet and model standards.
• Already using AI tools in your work, and fast at adopting new ones.
• Remote-experienced, with a working overlap into the Atlantic Canada business day.

Useful, not required: Canadian codes (NBC Part 9) or municipal processes; having sat on the developer side of a brief; multi-unit wood-frame.

NOT A FIT

Revisions kept in the file name. "The engineer handles that." A permit comment log you cannot describe. Management described as assigning tasks and chasing status. A studio background with no consultants or authorities in it. Waiting to be trained on tools. If you build parametric tools rather than run design processes, see our Computational Designer posting.

HOW TO APPLY

Start your reply with the word DATUM. Applications without it are not read.

Answer these four. Short is fine. Specific is essential.

1. Your drawing control system on your last project: how sets were numbered and issued, how a revision was marked, how you knew who held which set, and what the log looked like.

2. A submission that came back with municipal comments, or a stamp that was withheld. How you ran it to approval: who did what, how you tracked it, and what you changed so it did not recur.

3. A change that arrived after issue, from the owner, from site or from an engineer. Where it was logged, who assessed the impact, who approved it, how it was re-issued.

4. One thing you changed in how you work in the last year because of a new tool, AI or otherwise. What it replaced, and one thing it got wrong.

OUR PROCESS, AND HOW FAST

We read replies the same day. Shortlisted candidates get a paid work sample on a real project of ours, about half a day, paid whether or not we proceed. Then one call with our founder. Then an offer. We aim to make an offer within a week of your application.