- ICC Innovation’s modular ecosystem supports municipalities with permitting transparency, workflow efficiency, and data security.
- Archistar AI PreCheck ensures code compliance and accelerates application submission before plans reach final human review.
- Trusted, up-to-date digital code content reduces misinformation risk and helps teams make faster decisions.
In the era when people can track the status of a $10 Amazon package delivery or watch their Lyft driver approach from a map on their phone, it feels out of step with the times that the same transparency doesn’t often apply to the status of building permit applications, reviews, and approvals.
“What’s more important, how many minutes away is my pizza, or what’s the status of my multimillion-dollar development?” asks Wayne Childs, Director, Strategic Enterprise of the International Code Council (ICC). Childs has served for 13 years with ICC and its subsidiary General Code, which focuses on digital solutions for the local ordinance, municipal code, zoning code, and building code content that ICC manages. He also serves on his small town and village joint planning board, where code information is not digitized, answers are hard to find, and misinformation spreads around message boards and social media.
Childs describes a far too prevalent situation, where people seeking building permit answers have to talk to a code enforcement officer. “In our town, you have to go get paper applications from the CEO, who also serves as the building inspector,” he says. “You have to hope he’s in his office and not out somewhere doing an inspection, because he has the code book in the back of his truck. Nobody else can answer your questions. There are far too many dollars on the line to leave this up to an archaic reliance on analog paper and a single human.”
Similar problems still apply even to medium-to-large jurisdictions of 100K+ populations, where outdated methods and inaccessible local ordinances and codes make the building permitting process a frustrating, slow, and often expensive experience of waiting and wondering what you can do.
That’s why ICC Innovation has launched its technological ecosystem for the digital transformation of community development, where customers get the right digital tools, training, and expert support for their large, mid-sized, or small municipality’s needs. This system recognizes the challenges facing cities to increase efficiency and operational performance. It adopts new technologies as they evolve, aiming to offer smarter planning, faster permitting, and easier compliance.
The Town of Prosper, Texas uses eCode360 and MapLink from the ICC as part of its building code digital transformation journey.
ICC Claims the “Community Development” Domain
What the organization calls the ICC Innovation Ecosystem for Community Development comprises end-to-end digital tools for five phases of the planning and permitting process:
- Pre-application research: ICC Digital Codes Premium, MapLink, ICC AI Navigator, eCode 360
- Application submission and review: Archistar AI PreCheck
- Final plan approval/permitting/inspector certificate: Municity, DigEplan
- Public records access: Municity, Laserfiche
- Code enforcement and property maintenance: Municity, Laserfiche
The ICC emphasizes a modular approach to building code digital transformation, wherein one department can target one or more areas for solving problems without needing widespread consensus across all departments.
“Those five phases are fluid,” Childs says. “You can employ any of our performance accelerating solutions at any point. We’re claiming a domain, which we call community development. For any solution inside these bounds, we’re the experts because of our underlying municipal codes, building and life safety codes, and zoning and land-use codes that serve as the foundation of trust and accuracy.”
Childs affirms that theirs is the world’s largest and most comprehensive repository of building, life safety, and municipal codes. It’s the foundation, but just the beginning of what it offers to governmental customers. “We’re helping them with their operations,” he says, “making all that information that’s relevant to their everyday work more available, easier to access, and more translatable to what they’re doing on the ground.”
ICC Innovation’s operational support includes configuration, deployment, training, change management, and post-installation support. Each piece of the package contributes to the overall mission: increased safety and efficiency when developing communities’ built environment.
Seguin, Texas, in Guadalupe County, an ICC customer.
The ICC Innovation Ecosystem Makes Data Both Accessible and Secure
While Mike Rizzo, Director of Business Solutions for ICC Community Development acknowledges that there are still many building inspectors and officials who use paper code books, digital subscriptions allow for much easier code lookups. They are faster, accessible from any device, and integrated directly into inspection and permitting applications.
“If I’m out inspecting a building site and have a question,” Rizzo says, “rather than going to the code book in a separate platform, I can look it up right within my inspection application, clarify it, make notes about it, and deal with it on the spot.”
The ecosystem also provides online portal access for constituents to submit applications and track permits online. There’s instant transparency both for government and citizen users.
Laserfiche, for example, is a robust document management software for scanning and storing historical records, like building departments’ large stores of maps and parcel records. Laserfiche makes “unstructured data” more structured and accessible. Rizzo notes that the program is certified by the Department of Defense for records management and security. That security in all of ICC’s digital solutions matters when trying to build more cohesion between municipal departments.
“A lot of times mistrust has to do with data security,” Rizzo says. “The building department doesn’t want anybody in the planning department going in and changing anything. So there have to be restrictions on who can do what within the system. They’re all information managers who have to be involved at the same time. So the security is built-in to protect the data.”
“There is a lot of demand for that technology,
but Archistar is much further along than the others.”
– Wayne Childs, Director, Strategic Enterprise of the ICC
Archistar and ICC Combine Trustworthy Code Content with Strong AI
Data accessibility streamlines the community development workflow after permit approval. But the latest addition to the ICC Innovation Ecosystem, Archistar AI PreCheck, offers time-savings and cost-cutting at the crucial application submission and review stage. Inserting AI PreCheck into the process simplifies electronic applications, cuts research time, and reduces processing delays by instantly flagging any application deficiencies before submission.
Childs says ICC encountered other AI building permit assessment options before partnering with Archistar. “There is a lot of demand for that technology,” Childs says, “but Archistar is much further along than the others.”
The seeds of the partnership were planted when Archistar incorporated ICC codes for the City and County of LA to support wildfire and recovery efforts in 2025. Childs stresses that combining the robust AI PreCheck tool with ICC’s dynamically updated code content ensures compliance and the most reliable, accurate, and fastest results.
“If we host a code on our platforms, it is guaranteed to be up to date,” Childs says. “If a code changes, which they commonly do, they must be accurately referenced and cited by Archistar AI PreCheck.”
Digital tools based on codes scraped from a website rather than from ICC can cause major delays from inaccuracies, but Childs warns the consequences could be even worse. “I know for a fact, sometimes new local laws are passed and posted as a PDF, but they’re not incorporated into the code for 8 to 12 weeks,” he says. “If you’re not dealing with fresh code content, you risk disseminating incorrect information. It’s actually worse than doing nothing because you are providing bad information to users. You are likely increasing your risk for lawsuits and constituent dissatisfaction.”
With AI PreCheck and ICC’s always-current code content, Childs says they’re on the way to automating much of permit application compliance checking. AI PreCheck examines CAD, BIM, and PDF design files against ICC’s up-to-date codes and finds any issues for the applicant to fix. “It does 90% of the work in the back-and-forth,” Childs says. “Then once it’s green lit, it goes into a digital plan review system, where humans do the final plan review. It’s signed off and moves to the next stage.”
Courtesy of International Code Council.
The Digital Transformation Comes with Training and Support
Transitioning to modern digital tools for building codes and community development offers massive potential for tangible improvements to efficiency, transparency, accuracy, communication, and resources savings. However, it can raise challenges related to team buy-in and change management.
People hear about automation in planning and permitting and are split between excitement for the benefits and concern for potential job losses, Childs says. He emphasizes that the ICC Innovation Ecosystem is neither a panacea for full process automation nor a workforce reduction initiative. Human oversight remains critical, withc improvements incremental over about 6 to 12 months needed for staff training and ramping up the new workflows.
He says ICC’s ongoing training and support help enable long-term success. “We’re not just selling you a piece of software and disappearing onto the next client,” Childs says. “We target very specific areas where you have bottlenecks and inefficiencies. We address the problems, smooth the speed bumps, and support your employees long-term.”
Among those resources are self-paced online training, tech support, onlinw professional credentialing, and other consulting. Rizzo points out that the ICC’s thorough implementation process and its full help desk support are staffed with trained professionals. But he recognizes that sometimes customers need true emergency assistance.
“We’re dealing with mission-critical stuff here for building department operations,” Rizzo says. “If the software is not working or you’re having a real emergency, you want to be able to call and talk to somebody. We have a live voice that answers the phone.”
The Village of Westfield, New York, where Code Enforcement Officer Daniel J. Hogg uses ICC tools for the digital transformation of building codes.
The Village of Westfield Puts the ICC Innovation Ecosystem to the Test
ICC customer Daniel J. Hogg serves as the Code Enforcement Officer for the Village of Westfield in New York, the head of a department of one. While it’s a small municipality, he’s responsible for permitting all building projects, fire and property maintenance inspections, and overseeing building safety, all under the time constraints of a part-time position.
Hogg wanted to switch from the legacy system that required him to be at a desk to a cloud-based software he could access easily while in the field. “I have lots of jobs,” he says. “So for me, it’s all about access.”
After evaluating multiple options, he accepted a grant for an ICC package including Municity and Laserfiche for e-permitting and code content management, and the City Squared public portal.
After investing hundreds of hours in setting up back-end systems and customizing the workflow, Hogg says the system now saves him time by quickly tracking inspections, contractors, and records and generating reports. He can access everything on a smartphone, for example, performing fire safety inspections in the field, doesn’t need to file paper records.
The City Squared portal greatly improved people’s ability to deal with permitting information, applications, and status. “It’s super accessible,” he says. “If John Q. Public can’t get out of the house, but he needs work done, he’s able to apply for that permit right there from his house. I want him to be able to see if it was approved without having to call me. He can look at the status on his phone and ask questions back and forth.”
Hogg says the ICC has frequently fixed problems and answered questions over email, as meeting with him periodically online to review functionality and refine workflows. “They’ve been wonderful, absolutely amazing to work with,” Hogg says.
Customizing the Future with Modular Adoption
Whether they are mid-sized jurisdictions or large metropolitan areas, many municipalities feel the pressure both internally and externally from constituents to streamline their building permitting. However, the reality is that trying to force an enterprise-level, rip-and-replace change to the entire system all at once can be a disaster, especially if there is no consensus across departments on how to do it.
“One of the biggest challenges municipal governments have,” Childs says, “is behaving in siloed ways that damages their ability to have healthy, efficient workflows, or to make the best decisions about which solutions they buy.”
That’s why Childs believes the ICC Innovation Ecosystem’s approach to modular adoption of digital permitting and building code tools is the responsible alternative to enterprise-wide solutions. Implementing systems incrementally lets municipalities target the most pressing needs or the low-hanging fruit in manageable chunks. Then they can apply learnings from the first adoption to the next.
“We are not only able, but willing to come in 50 smaller pieces if needed,” Childs says. “Then over time, we’ll demonstrate our ability to help across the entire enterprise.”
