A jurisdiction reviewer, an engineer, and a developer can each describe the same project as on schedule on the same day, and all three can be telling the truth. They're just each watching a different clock.
Three clocks, one project.
An engineer's clock is the current submittal moving through review at the expected pace. A jurisdiction's clock is its own queue being worked in the order its process calls for. A developer's clock is whether the overall entitlement timeline still supports the financing and construction schedule it was built around. Any one of these can run true or false completely independently of the other two, on the exact same project, at the exact same moment.
How a project slips without anyone lying.
A submittal can be perfectly on time for its review cycle while the overall project quietly falls behind, because that review cycle was never entered anywhere as a fixed block of time. Its length just borrows from a schedule nobody budgeted for it. Every individual clock can read fine and the project still slips, because none of the three was ever compared against the others.
So whose clock counts?
None of them, on their own. Getting everyone to agree on a single number isn't the fix, because each version is measuring something real and specific to that party's job. What actually closes the gap is making all three visible at the same time, so a submittal that's on pace and a project timeline under pressure show up in the same view instead of three separate ones.
One record, three clocks.
BaseLD tracks review-cycle timing, milestone targets, and overall project status as one connected record, not three disconnected calendars kept by three different people. A jurisdiction's review clock, an engineer's submittal status, and a developer's schedule impact all draw from the same project, so "on schedule" can mean something specific instead of three separate guesses.
Three honest answers can still add up to a project that's quietly behind. BaseLD keeps all three clocks in the same place, so the gap between them shows up before it costs real time.