Submission Reader

A correction letter arrives and gets read as a list of problems. It is usually four different kinds of thing written in one voice, and one of them has a date attached that nobody noticed.

Workflow

Step 1. Read the parts nobody reads

Before the numbered comments, work the letter's furniture:

• Who wrote it, in what role, and are there several reviewers with separate sections? Different disciplines write differently and are answered differently.
• What kind of letter is it: correction, incomplete, approved with conditions, denied, or a staff report to a body that has not met yet? These have entirely different next steps.
• Any date, period, or deadline anywhere in it, including the footer and any standard paragraph. A response period, a resubmission window, an expiry, an appeal period.
• What it says about how to respond: format, number of copies, portal, whether a response matrix is required.
• Whether it references a previous letter, and whether every item from that one is accounted for.

Step 2. Sort every item into four kinds

#	Item, quoted	Kind	Who acts

• Change something. The design has to change.
• Show something. The design is fine and the drawing does not say it. Often the largest group, and the cheapest.
• Answer something. A question, or a request for a calculation, a report, or a citation.
• Comment. An observation, a courtesy note, or a reference to something outside this submission. Nothing to do, and it still gets acknowledged.

Never renumber, and split any item containing more than one demand, lettering under the original number. Report the count before and after splitting; the difference is where resubmittals fail.

Step 3. Find what is actually blocking

Not every item stops the permit:

#	Blocks issue	Blocks a later stage	Neither

Some items are conditions on an approval that already exists, some are deferred to a later submittal, and some have to be cleared before anything moves. The letter rarely distinguishes them and the programme depends on it.

Step 4. Mark the items you disagree with, without arguing yet

#	Reviewer's position	Why it may be wrong	Citation given?

Where the item rests on a citation, point at cite-check. Where it rests on an interpretation, mark it as a conversation rather than a response — a phone call resolves more of these than a written argument, and a written disagreement costs a review cycle.

Count the disagreements. A response disputing most of the letter is a conversation to have before it is submitted.

Step 5. Report

• The clock, first: every date and period found, and what happens if each passes.
• Whether it got past intake, or whether this is an incompleteness notice, which is a different and faster problem.
• Counts by kind, with show something named separately because it is the cheapest group and usually the biggest.
• Blocking versus non-blocking counts.
• Disagreements, counted, with whether each carries a citation.
• Anything in the letter that references a previous round and is not accounted for.
• What has to be obtained from someone else: a consultant, a report, a test.

Then point at plan-check-response-builder and at permit-tracker.

Step 6. Save

Ask where. The letter and this reading get read together later, often by somebody who was not there.

Rules

• Read the dates before the comments, every run.
• Never renumber, and split multi-part items under the original number.
• Sort every item into one of the four kinds.
• Separate blocking from non-blocking.
• Mark disagreements without arguing them here.
• Never treat a comment as a requirement, or a requirement as a comment.
• Point at cite-check for every citation the letter relies on.

Anti-patterns

• Reading the numbered list and not the footer.
• Treating the whole letter as changes to the design.
• Missing that most items are "show it", not "change it".
• Renumbering into a tidier order.
• Arguing in the reading rather than marking the disagreement.
• Missing that it is an incompleteness notice, which needs a different and faster response.
• Not checking that the previous round's items were all resolved.

Resources

None. This skill is one file. Output is written directly at the path you choose.