• AI simplifies and accelerates permit approvals: AI permitting tools analyze zoning and building code data to catch compliance issues early, significantly reducing resubmissions, saving time, and improving submission quality.
• Efficiency empowers planners and applicants alike: By automating routine compliance checks, city staff can focus on complex decisions while applicants gain transparency and confidence in navigating regulations.
• AI drives scalable urban development: From rebuilding after disasters to adapting to zoning reforms, municipalities are leveraging AI to handle higher permit volumes, boost consistency, and inform better policymaking.

City planners and plan reviewers have the sometimes-unenviable job of ensuring safe and resilient development through enforcing what can be an entangled web of zoning laws, building codes, and interdepartmental approval. Good intentions for communities often result in a building permit submission process that becomes long, complicated, and expensive for both applicants and municipalities.

Fortunately, adopting AI-powered tools into municipality systems can act as a healing remedy. Digesting complicated building code and zoning data at a superhuman pace, AI technology catches potential permit violations upfront, avoiding resubmissions that cause unwanted delays and expenses.

This AI technology keeps city staff in control, while its efficiency leads to various downstream benefits. For the following reasons, city planners can count on AI-powered zoning and building code compliance checks to speed up project approvals.

Before a home designer submits a plan, AI-powered tools like Archistar eCheck can flag errors like incorrect setbacks, height violations, or disallowed units.

Jerome Thibaudeau is the Manager, Business Transformation, Planning and Development for the City of Surrey in British Columbia, Canada, where one problem with building permits is processing the sheer volume of applications in a timely manner.

“The biggest driver to achieving a rapid building permit application approval is the quality submission,” he says. “We found that roughly 80% of residential permit applications contained significant zoning deficiencies, requiring an average of 1.6 resubmissions and increasing approval times. In other words, both our staff and applicants had to handle every application about two and a half times.”

That’s because when architects are required to update drawings to make them more compliant, they often need to coordinate with engineers, contractors, and subcontractors before resubmitting.

Far from the misconception that some cities are sitting on permits and refusing to approve them, Thibaudeau says Surrey has a mandate to issue applications that are complete and accurate. “These aren’t just building applications; they’re people’s homes, their hopes and dreams,” he says. “Nothing makes us happier than being able to issue a permit and see construction begin.”

That’s why he’s excited that eCheck can catch violations in a pre-check, so their applications don’t have to be resubmitted. “It’s like ‘spell-check’ for zoning,” he says.

AI may not be able to eliminate resubmission of building permit applications entirely. However, even when resubmissions are necessary, producing quality submissions with the help of AI can significantly reduce the time re-reviews take.

AI tools can help designers get the building plans as close to perfect as possible the first time, and it can significantly reduce holding costs for homeowners and developers.

“It’s all about, ‘How long as an applicant do I have to wait until I hear back from the city?’ If you pre-review through to Archistar, the wait time is greatly reduced—you get a pre-approval report almost instantly,” Thibaudeau says. “And if there are deficiencies, applicants can address them right away. The quicker we deliver complete and accurate feedback to applicants, the better the overall experience. ”

In 2024, Surrey’s Canadian province of British Columbia passed a major zoning reform allowing single-family zones to have secondary units, like a coach house or a garden suite. The intention was to make development of small-scale, multi-unit housing easier and faster.

While the updated bylaw positively impacted growth for the city, submissions began to inundate the City. “The zoning reforms have led to a 65% jump in applications for certain building types,” Thibaudeau says, “which has greatly stretched our processing capacity. We’re responding by investing in automation, AI, and strengthening staffing readiness.”

That reform, he says, has also introduced homeowners, house designers, architects, and builders to a slew of new building types, all with additional technical requirements. AI tools are helping the City of Surrey answer the influx of questions related to these new building types, as well as to process the applications for those units faster.

“We’re working to improve the full client experience, from the initial inquiry all the way to occupancy,” Thibaudeau says. “With eCheck, house designers will be able to pre-vet their drawings leading towards a faster approval.”

Considering the housing supply crisis in Canada and around the world, city planning AI doesn’t mean replacing city planners and plan reviewers. It just helps them work smarter, not harder. “We’re using this technology to better equip the applicant and our staff team,” Thibaudeau says, “enabling faster and more effective permit approvals.”

When they take advantage of the time-saving advantages of zoning and building code compliance AI, city staff can prioritize what really matters for safety and community impact, rather than spending hours agonizing over clear-cut, objective compliance details.

Thibaudeau says that while AI tools helps improve efficiency, the final authority for permit approval remains with human reviewers. However, that AI-driven efficiency is helping shift the staff’s role from compliance auditor to facilitator of development.

It gives the applicants and plan reviewers more space and time to focus on subjective rules, navigate gray areas in regulations, and make better-informed decisions.

And over time, even some of those subjective areas may become clearer with help from AI. “We’re looking at our zoning rules that are more subjective and then seeking to bring them more in the objective realm,” he says.

Applicants often feel left in the dark, facing dense regulations written in thousands of pages of bylaws. AI makes those rules more accessible and actionable.

Thibaudeau notes that, while everything the City of Surrey requires is publicly available, such as the zoning bylaw or building code, those requirements can be intimidating to understand. That can lead people to think cities are overly bureaucratic and opaque.

Therefore, Thibaudeau wants to create transparency and increase trust between permit applicants and city staff. He thinks AI for building code and zoning compliance can foster that transparency by creating a more user-friendly format and a sense of control for the applicants.

“We want to put the applicant and their team more in the driver’s seat, yet still uphold a safe regulatory environment,” he says. “That’s a win-win scenario.”