What I want: To bring about the submission as quickly as possible with my desired result. How do you set deadlines when you are actually dependent or don’t want to start from scratch.
It’s like raising children: You can only threaten consequences or punishments if you are also willing to carry them out. For your architect, that of course means cutting them off if the deadline passes. Otherwise, you make a complete fool of yourself and in six more months nothing will have happened yet. But you will still get a full invoice because you can be taken advantage of (exaggeratedly speaking). How about: "Thank you for the draft so far, I have the following change requests, please incorporate them by October 10th so that the submission to the city can take place on ... . A further delay is unacceptable and will be understood as immediate termination of the contract by you as the contractor. In this case, we also reserve the right to claim damages due to non-fulfillment of the contract." Of course, formulated a bit more politely and extended to one A4 page. Since you definitely want to keep the architect, it doesn’t have to be legally watertight. Maybe threaten less as well. This is just what I wrote down quickly.
I still don’t quite understand. If you don’t approve a draft, nothing can be submitted. Why the delivered drafts don’t fit is usually hard to pin on one party.
That’s the crux. You have to write clearly and understandably what the architect is supposed to do now. I hope the draft is already so far that only minor changes have to be made and nothing fundamental anymore. So please don’t demand unrealistic nonsense like “I don’t like it, do it again but better.” What is still missing from the draft?