Case study

1. Background

A building permit is required for building construction, alteration, demolition, or change in use. A permit is granted by a local, regional, or national authority, if the building project complies with the planning and building regulation law as well as with all other applicable laws (e.g., environmental laws). This constitutes the building control process. Building and planning regulations will become more important in years to come, as both new and existing building stock must adjust to new policies and regulations, e.g., decarbonisation of building fabric and operations and user-centric and health-conscious space design.

2. Challenge

The building control process is a global real estate supply chain bottleneck because

1) building design compliance checking is still performed manually and labour-intensive.

2) It is an error-strewn process with high levels of unqualified and incomplete building permit applications (≈ 90%).

3) The process takes too long and cause delays, i.e., between 4-50 weeks to complete review and approval (dependent on location and regulatory domain).

4) Authorities struggle to attract and retain the required talent.

5) Regulations are becoming more dynamic (e.g. ESG, User-centricity) and adding even more complexity.

3. Consequences

1) Unqualified and incomplete submissions often result in claims, costly and time-consuming verification loops ….. that adds more time.

2) Backlogs and impediments to cash flow throughout the real estate supply chain.

3) Slow housing delivery and subsequent shortfall.

4. Scope

As a category winner of the CityTech Ruhr Smart City Challenge (Germany), Kyanite360 was required to complete a proof-of-concept to develop and validate a solution to automate building regulations compliance checking.

5. Solution

The solution developed was a digital platform where both applicants and authorities could interact, transact and communicate. At its core it is a highly flexible AI-platform that automates the review of 3D building design models for compliance to local building regulations. Once the compliance self-checker is complete, it generates a text and visual report, that helps designers to correct errors and collaborate with compliant designs. The platform solution uses the output from the Building Information Model (BIM) process and directly address complexity and delays characteristic of the building permit application and review process.

6. Benefits

The solution operates like a spellchecker for building design. It adds process visibility, speed, and automation and is currently being enriched with a range of additional value-added features to further improve the user experience. Direct benefits

1) Applicants such as Architects and Real estate developers can confirm building design compliance, before permit application and engage other disciplines and authorities early. For applicants in Germany, this could reduce the design phase of projects, prior to construction by as much as 70%.

2) The platform provides authorities with an automatic control system to receive only qualified submissions. In Germany this could reduce the time allocated to building permit review by as much as 75% and result in costs savings upward of 10x.

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