Bring on digital, online building permits!

Have you looked at the file I posted yesterday?

Most striking features? Navigation? Intaractability? For me?

The ‘honesty’ of the information model. What you see is what you get.

I mentioned before design consultants regularly and intentionally showing incomplete drawings with a lot of padding (irrelevant information) to keep the mental image of the proposed building as vague as possible for as long as possible. Interpretation of building documents is often like a treasure hunt – where clues are intermingled with distractions to confuse.

Problem is, this strategy can backfire.

A consultant may produce hundreds of sheets of drawings to justify their fees and/or pad the set up to cover for lack of competency in drafting staff. However, once these drawings enter the project arena they tend to hang around for some time, often rebound and become a liability;

This ‘detective game’ is probably most obvious when it comes to gaining approval by territorial authorities. Notwithstanding of significant efforts by most municipalities to standardise their requirements and put in place ‘conveyor-belt’ assessment systems – this process often ends up as a manipulative exercise against those seeking a permit (time extensions) and/or an unhappy building owner spending unexpected fees on unexpected responses to queries.

Assessing documents for permits seems to be another status quo that cannot be improved.

I believe it can.

Bring on digital, online building permits.