There's a particular kind of frustration that manifests on a project that's delayed before it even gets underway. The land is bought, the design is done, the builder is ready to go and yet months pass whilst the project sits in a design approval queue for the home construction site which should have been approved a long time ago.
The people going through that frustration almost invariably say the same thing when you ask them what the problem was. They didn't understand what home construction site design approval actually required. They submitted something which they thought was complete. It came back with comments. They went back and made the changes. It came back again. By the time it finally cleared they'd lost a season, in some cases more than that and the project costs had gone up massively in a way that nobody had ever budgeted for.
None of it was inevitable. Most of it was down to not knowing what the hell we were in for.
What home construction site design approval is actually evaluating
When a local authority are looking at a home construction site design approval submission they're not assessing whether the house is a good looking house or whether the design is interesting. They're going through a checklist of requirements that the development has to meet before it can go ahead.
Does the building footprint comply with the setback requirements for that zone? Is the building height within the applicable limit? Is the site coverage % within the permitted amount? Has drainage been dealt with? Is vehicle access adequate? Are the utility connections shown? Have any protected trees or other environmental features on the site been properly taken into account?
Every item on that checklist is either addressed in the submission or it isn't. If it isn't then the submission comes back with a request for further information or revisions. That is the home construction site design approval comment cycle and that is where project timelines go to get blown out completely and unexpectedly.
The ones that get through the home construction site design approval process the quickest are the ones that have anticipated every item on that checklist and have addressed it clearly prior to submission. Not after the reviewer has asked. Prior to submission.
The zoning research that has to happen first
Before any design work can get underway in any meaningful sense the relevant zoning rules for that particular property have to be established and understood. That's all obvious really. It's something that gets overlooked or done very badly more often than it should.
Zoning rules form the basis of the site design approval process for home construction. They dictate what type of residential development is allowed. They specify the required setback from each boundary. They determine the maximum height. They set the maximum building coverage (i.e. the percentage of the site that can be built on and/or paved). They may have minimum lot size requirements, may limit the number of dwellings that can be on a lot and may have design requirements which will impact the appearance of the building.
Home construction site design approval plans which are designed without any real understanding of the applicable zoning rules are designed in a vacuum. They may or may not conform to what the rules actually require. If they don't conform then the design has to be changed and the work put into the non-conforming design is largely wasted.
To confirm the zoning for a particular property you simply have a chat with the local planning department or you can look at the planning scheme for the area. It's a lot quicker than redesigning a non-compliant scheme later on. Every home construction site design approval project should begin with this step before the architect produces anything beyond the very initial concept sketches.
Site conditions and why they shape the approval
Two properties in adjacent lots in the same zone with the same zoning rules can have very different home site design approval processes as the physical characteristics of the land are different.
A flat site with simple drainage and direct access to the existing utilities is a relatively straightforward site design for approval. A sloped site with complex natural drainage, existing trees which have protection requirements and limited utility infrastructure is a very different proposition and the process is considerably more involved. The same design intent will require a lot more engineering to satisfy the reviewer.
The physical conditions of the site must be understood prior to design work commencing as this will in turn dictate what the site design approval process will require. A site of significant slope will require grading plans that show the proposed grading of the site around the building and the drainage management across the developed site. A site with protected trees will require an arborist’s assessment which will show how the development has been designed to preserve the trees. A site with marginal soil conditions may require a geotechnical investigation to inform the foundation design.
None of those are things that get resolved as part of the home construction site design approval review. They are things that need to be sorted out prior to submission. A submission that doesn't have them will be returned asking for them. The project schedule will then be extended by however long it takes to generate the required information and resubmit.
The survey that makes everything else reliable
An accurate boundary survey is the bedrock of any home construction site design approval submission and it's the very document that most homeowners don't think about until someone actually tells them they need it.
The boundary survey tells you precisely where the property lines are. That is the information against which setback compliance is measured. Site design approval plans for home construction which show setback distances from assumed property lines are of no use. The assumed lines may be very close to the actual lines. They may not be. The difference is critical when a reviewer is checking that a building which appears to be set back 2.4m from a boundary is in fact set back 2.4m from the actual boundary rather than the assumed one.
Beyond just boundary positions a good survey will record existing ground levels over the site, the position of existing structures and features, the position of any known services and the position of any easements or encumbrances which will affect the way the site can be developed. All of that information is required in order to produce home construction site design approval plans which accurately reflect what is there and what is proposed.
Design work carried out without this survey information is design work that's going to end up being revised when the survey information does eventually come in and turns out to be different from what was assumed. Do the survey first. Design to the real conditions.
Drainage and why it always comes up
Drainage comes up in the site design approval comments more frequently than almost any other single issue. It's important to understand why this is so in order to be prepared.
Prior to development a site will have natural drainage patterns. Rain will infiltrate the ground, some will evaporate and the rest will flow slowly across the vegetated surfaces. Development changes all of that. The building footprint, driveway, patio and paths create impervious areas which will collect the rain and concentrate it rather than allowing it to spread out naturally.
Local authorities will require the home construction site design approval submission to show how the change in drainage behaviour is being managed. Where does the concentrated stormwater go? How does it get there? Does the system have the capacity to cope with design storm events? Does the development create any drainage problems for the adjacent properties or the road system?
A site design approval submission for a home which fails to properly answer these questions will be returned for further information. You need actual drainage design by someone who has an understanding of hydrology and civil engineering. An architect producing a home site design approval submission without any civil engineering input on the drainage is producing an incomplete submission for any site where the drainage is in any way anything other than straightforward.
Getting the submission right the first time
The aim in every home construction site design approval process is to get through the first review without coming back with any substantive comments. It's not that resubmissions are the end of the world, it's just that each one adds weeks to the project and those weeks have a real cost.
To get through the first review you need to produce a submission that ticks every box the reviewer will be looking at. You have to know what those boxes are before you submit. Most local planning departments will have a submission requirements checklist published. Going through that checklist carefully prior to submission is not a difficult thing to do, it's just a disciplined exercise and it's absolutely worth it in terms of the number of comment cycles you'll avoid.
It also means presenting the information clearly. A home construction site design approval reviewer going through a queue of submissions has a very limited amount of time on each one. Information that's difficult to find, poorly presented or ambiguous takes up more of that time and generates more questions. Information that is clearly presented, properly labelled and easily verifiable gets through the review process much more quickly.
The team working on the home construction site design approval submission is the ones who matter. The people who have submitted to that particular local authority on numerous occasions will know exactly what it wants to see and how it wants it presented. That local knowledge produces submissions that move
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