Do not ever use Universal Engineering Science they are the worst

[Steve Mandelbaum]

I hired Universal Engineering Sciences to help assist me in getting my new construction permit approved by the city of Jacksonville and to run the inspections. The goal was to simplify and streamline the process. We are a small organization and wanted to outsource the process and It has proven to be a huge mistake to use Universal Engineering Sciences. I feel I have wasted money and more importantly, time. I was assigned to a Project Coordinator who has continually dropped the ball and wasted time. She had no idea what she was doing. There was a mix-up in the addressing system with the city and the permit could not be submitted. She called the city and could not figure out what the problem was. She asked me to call the city. I was able to resolve the problem in one call and they asked me if she worked with me and that she confused them as to what the problem was. On 12/16 the plans were submitted to the city. By the afternoon it was returned. I do not monitor the approval site in the city, and I am not on the alert list. Five days later, I was checking on another project and looked up this one and discovered we had been returned for correction. As best I can tell there was an error in the site survey. I sent an updated survey immediately. This should have been caught in the review, that is what I hired Universal Engineering Science for. My experience is that Universal Engineering Sciences reviews documents one at a time. In other words, they stop working on the file until the first error is corrected but fail to mention they stopped working. As opposed to sending me a comprehensive list of corrections as the city does. I have emailed and called her to ask if she submitted the correction. She has not returned my email or phone call and my time is being wasted. The holidays are already a slow time with the city, and they have made it worse. I reached out to their executives via LinkedIn since I could not get anyone to return my call to help me or answer my questions. After doing so, I received a callback.

I thought after my reaching out for help, my situation would improve with Universal Engineering Sciences. It has not the incompetence and poor service have continued. I have to check the city site daily to know what is happening with my permit. In spite of the city sending Universal alerts, I have not been notified by universal of a single change in status or problem. To top it off, today I received a call from Ricky Agee, Universal Engineering Sciences, Florida Director of Code Compliance. He insulted me and called me a p#$%^ and told me the issues with my permit were not his problem. I asked him what am I paying universal for? I explained to Ricky, I signed up for your service, because I was told that Universal gets permits through. Further, Universal claimed to know what the city wants and makes sure the permit is correct the first time. Rick then told me he does 1k permits a year with Lennar. I asked him if he did not want to do business with smaller builders, why did he take my business. He said he did not and proceeded to fire me as a customer. I have 25 builds in the pipeline for 2022 and 2x that for 2023. I will never be Lennar. Anyone in this business knows that there is a time coming when reputation will come to matter again, and Universal Engineering Sciences does not care. They are woefully short in that area. If you are not going to build 1k houses and year and do their job for them don’t bother using Universal Engineering Sciences.

Has anyone had a similar experience with them?