Every general contractor in Los Angeles will tell you they know how to pull permits. Most of them are telling you about their expediters.

There is a difference — a significant one — between a firm that navigates the permit process and a firm that understands it from the inside. That difference determines whether your project moves in nine months or fourteen. It determines whether your plan check corrections number six or forty. It determines whether your LADBS inspector signs off on the first visit or sends you back twice.

SKS Construction was founded in 1987 by Sol Shaolian — a structural engineer who, before he ever broke ground on a single project, sat on the other side of the counter at the City of Los Angeles as a plan checker.

That is not a marketing detail. It is a structural advantage that no competitor in this market can replicate.

What a Plan Checker Actually Does — and Why It Matters That Our Founder Was One

A plan checker at LADBS is the engineer who reviews your submitted construction documents and determines whether they comply with the California Building Code, the Los Angeles Municipal Code, local amendments, and department-specific requirements. They issue correction letters. They approve plans. They are the gate between a permit application and a building permit.

Most contractors' experience plan checkers from the outside as a source of delay, correction letters, and frustration. They learn through trial and error what submittals pass and which ones come back marked up. The learning curve is long and expensive, and it is paid for by clients in the form of extended timelines and resubmittal fees.

Sol Shaolian learned it from the inside. He sat where the plan check engineers sit. He reviewed the submittals. He wrote the correction letters. He understands not just what the code requires — but how plan check engineers think, what they prioritize, what incomplete submittals look like from their side of the desk, and what a clean, approvable package looks like before it's ever submitted.

That institutional knowledge doesn't expire. The code evolves, but the logic of plan check — what constitutes a complete submittal, how correction cycles compound, where coordination failures create review problems — is structural. Sol built SKS's internal permit process around it. Shahab and Sam, who now run operations, were raised in it. It is embedded in how we prepare every set of documents that goes to LADBS.

The Permit Problem Most Owners Never See Coming

Here's what a delayed permit actually costs a property owner — in concrete terms.

A plan check correction cycle at LADBS typically takes two to four weeks per round. A first submittal with 35 correction items, followed by a response that introduces secondary issues, followed by a second correction letter with 12 items, followed by a final approval — that sequence alone can consume three to four months. On an ADU project. On a straightforward one.

During those months, the project is not under construction. It is in a queue. Financing is carrying costs. Tenants are waiting. Contractors are maintaining pricing holds that eventually expire. The opportunity cost of a slow permit is not abstract — it is measurable in dollars per month, for every month the project sits idle waiting on a correction response.

The firms that generate 35-item correction letters are the firms that submit discoordinated documents — where the architectural sheets, the structural calculations, the Title 24 energy compliance, and the site plan don't agree with each other. LADBS plan checkers don't resolve those conflicts. They flag every one of them, in writing, and send the package back.

The firms that submit coordinated, complete packages — where the engineer and architect are working from the same model, where the energy compliance is integrated before submission, where the structural calculations match the plan dimensions exactly — generate short correction letters. Sometimes, none at all on secondary submittals.

That is not luck. It is a process. And the process was built by someone who wrote correction letters for a living.

What 39 Years in LA Construction Actually Teaches You

The permit process is the most visible place where Sol's background shows up — but it's not the only one. Thirty-nine years of continuous design-build construction in Los Angeles accumulate a specific kind of institutional knowledge that cannot be taught in a classroom or replicated by a new firm, regardless of their talent.

It teaches you which LADBS district offices have particular review preferences and how to address them preemptively. It teaches you how LADWP's service engineering queue behaves differently at different times of year, and how to sequence utility applications to minimize dead time. It teaches you how the Bureau of Engineering's sewer review interacts with LADBS plan check, and how to run them in parallel rather than letting one block the other.

It teaches you that the inspector who fails a rough framing inspection on a technicality is usually responding to something in the submittal package that wasn't clearly detailed — and that the correction is a documentation problem, not a construction problem, and how to prevent it.

It teaches you which soil conditions in which LA neighborhoods reliably require special geotechnical review, so you scope it into the project budget at kickoff rather than discovering it at plan check. It teaches you how the City's plan checks automated routing system works, and which project types of benefit from over-the-counter review versus the standard queue.

None of this is in the California Building Code. None of it is in any permit manual. It is earned through repetition, through correction, and through 39 years of closing projects in one of the most complex permitting jurisdictions in the country.

It lives in our process, our people, and the institutional memory Sol built into SKS from the day he founded it.

Why "In-House Engineering" Means Something Different at SKS

Every design-build firm in Los Angeles will tell you they have engineering capability. What they usually mean is that they have a relationship with an engineering firm they subcontract to, or that a PE stamps their structural packages before submission.

At SKS, in-house engineering means our licensed structural engineer is on staff — not on retainer, not on call. They are part of our internal project team from the initial site assessment through construction observation, through final city sign-off. They don't receive a completed set of architectural drawings and stamp a structural package. They co-develop the project from the beginning, identifying structural conditions, coordinating with the architectural design, and producing a submittal package that reflects integrated design — not assembled documents.

This matters at plan check because LADBS plan checkers can identify disorganized submittals immediately. When the structural engineer's beam schedule references a dimension that doesn't match the architectural floor plan, that is a correction item. When the hold-down schedule references a foundation detail that isn't shown on the civil sheet, that is a correction item. Every one of those items is a round-trip — two to four weeks of delay per item that compounds across the correction cycle.

Sol's background as a plan checker means our internal QC process is essentially a pre-submittal plan check. We review our own packages the way LADBS will review them — looking for exactly the coordination failures that generate correction letters — before they ever leave our office.

It is the closest thing to a structural advantage in the permitting process that exists in this market.

The 80% Repeat Client Number — and What It Actually Represents

SKS Construction's client base is 80% repeat business. In an industry where the average client-contractor relationship is transactional and project-specific, that number reflects something deeper than competitive pricing.

It reflects what happens when a client hires a firm, watches the permit process move efficiently, sees the project come in on the fixed-price bid without change order surprises, has direct access to the owners throughout construction, and gets a city sign-off without a reinspection failure.

That experience — particularly the permit experience — is what drives people back. Property managers who have lived through a 14-month ADU project with another firm, then watched SKS close the same scope in nine months, don't go back to the 14-month firm. Real estate investors who have received a 40-item correction letter from LADBS, then worked with SKS and received a 6-item letter on a more complex project, understand that the difference is process — not luck.

The 80% repeat client number is the market's verdict on 39 years of permit process that works.

What This Means for Your Project

If you are planning any construction project in Los Angeles — a soft-story retrofit, an ADU, a structural retrofit, a balcony repair, a panel upgrade, a custom home — the permit process is not a formality you get through after the real work is done. It is where projects are won or lost on time, and where budget certainty is established or destroyed.

Working with a firm whose founder was a City of LA plan checker, whose in-house engineer co-develops every submittal package, and whose 39-year institutional memory is embedded in the process — that is not a minor distinction. It is the difference between a project that moves and a project that waits.

Shahab and Sam Shaolian run operations at SKS today. Every client gets direct owner access — not an account manager, not a project coordinator. The people accountable for your project are the people whose names are on the company. That is how Sol built it in 1987. That is how it runs today.

Get a FREE Project Consultation — and Find Out What a Clean Permit Process Looks Like

SKS Construction offers FREE consultations for property owners and developers across Los Angeles County — covering soft-story retrofits, ADUs and additions, structural retrofits, balcony repairs, custom homes, and electrical panel upgrades.

Our team will assess your project scope, identify any permitting flags specific to your property or jurisdiction, and provide a fixed-price design-build proposal that accounts for the full permit process — not just the construction.

Call (818) 855-1181 or email info@sksconstruction.com to schedule your FREE consultation today.

Thirty-nine years. One name. A founder who used to write the correction letters — and built a firm specifically so his clients would never receive them.