The service I've received from Green Sequoia has been shockingly awful. We hired them to draft plans for an addition back in April of 2018 with "substantial completion" by June of 2018. Green Sequoia gave us an engineer who also drafts plans. Throughout the process the drafter, Luis, delayed the process countless times by making careless errors and not meeting deadlines. In email exchanges, he would miss requested changes to plans, and other times he would make changes that I specifically said not to. For instance, I made it clear that we wanted to leave our oven where it was, but he moved it across the kitchen anyway. We told him we wanted our kitchen wall to remain separating the dining room, but he took it out anyway. We told him to rename a "closet" to be a "reading nook" (a city requirement), but instead entirely removed that space from the plans. His assertions that he would submit plans to the city by a certain date were very often not met, and when dropped off days later involved him rushing into the office at the last minute before the day's closing. One such instance indicative of exchanges with Luis, was an email exchange between the city planner and Luis that I was cc'd on: Luis told the city planner: "I sent you that info after we met yesterday." To which the city planner responded: "I still have not received." This happened on several occasions, when Luis claimed that he sent items that were not received. This is certainly not good for our relationship to the city for this project. We expressed formal complaints directly to the owner, Idan, and all involved as early as June, but nothing improved. When we finally got the design approved, it was after a very stressful seven months of dealing with Luis's mistakes, omissions, and delays.

Design Review is only the first step, however. Luis, being an engineer, was also in charge of part 2, the structural plans. Design Plans were approved 12/6/2018 and Luis submitted the structural plans 1/7/19. A month's time, not bad. But the city responded with 40 notes and Luis's response to those 40 notes (submitted 2/7/19) had many issues including the fact that he completely neglected to submit a form that was specified to submit. Also, multiple items were left "unresolved" because he did not respond to them adequately or at all. This is indicative of the work he's produced for us that has made this process drag on, and on. At first, Green Sequoia did not want to take responsibility for Luis's shortcomings, and chose to blame the city for the delays. Alameda is notoriously nit-picky, but they were not responsible for causing the plans to take seven months - that was overwhelming due to Luis's delays.

It's only that this process is approaching the symbolic 1-year mark without being completed that I think they are actually starting to take notice that something is wrong. Luis is not doing his job. That fact can't be ignored anymore. However, I asked the owner, Idan, if he had another in-house engineer that could finish out the structural plans for us, but he does not have another engineer available. So it seems we're stuck with Luis. It's been three months now that he's been working on the structural plans with no end in sight.

I will update this review if and when the plans get stamped by the city. Kirk, our project manager, has been professional throughout. Otherwise, it has been an absolute nightmare. I know this is a strong word, but the incompetence in the work, and lack of commitment to resolving our project has made for quite literally the most stressful, unprofessional experience I've had with any professional service provider, ever. And on a side note, I don't like to write bad reviews. On yelp, of my 25 reviews, 23 are 5-star reviews, but this has been so incomprehensibly awful, and something I feel people looking into this company should be aware of.