Automated Building Plan Approval System Development

Project background

In the modern German construction industry, in all building 3D projects, IFC schema specifications must be validated for compliance with current building regulations. The existing manual workflow takes a huge amount of time without the possibility to scale and speed it up.  

The client needed a custom building plan approval system to automate the process of validation, improve its speed, and shift the scaling process from increasing the number of employees to changing the technical capacity. 

In order to make an online building plan approval system, we used Natural Language Processing (NLP). This technology makes it easy to extract rules from official documents and fill and upgrade the regulation bases. 

There are two roles in the building plan approval system, Client and Admin, having the following functions:  

Client (Construction company)  

– Request creation (create a new building in the automated building plan approval system (ABPAS); 

– Add IFC file (IFC file is a text version of a 3D model) containing information about the building, rooms, and objects;  

– Checking the building according to the specific rules. If the uploaded IFC files don’t match the rules, the app finds and highlights such files;  

– Report with a detailed list of all inconsistencies. 

Admin (Authorities)   

– Rules management (add/edit/delete). A new rule requires a reference to the document that will initiate this rule. It can be either building regulations or buying laws;  

– Authority check;  

– Report (list of inconsistencies);  

– Statistics of all requests.

Business needs

Our client needed a building plan approval system (ABPAS) development to automate the process of validation, improve its speed, and shift the scaling process from increasing the number of employees to changing the technical capacity.   

– Reducing the time needed for considering and decision making;  

– Speeding up the validation process;  

– Decreasing the number of inaccurate 3D models that do not meet building regulations;  

– MVP product development within 3 months.

Product features

1. 3D models processing. Fast uploading and accurate processing of 3D building models
2. Compliance check. There is an option to check the compliance on the authorities’ side
3. Verification. Verification against building laws and regulations
4. Feedback. Getting transparent feedback on the building model
5. Permit status check. There is an option to check the status of the building permit

Solution

CHI Software has won the tender announced by the authorities and created building plan approval software, which allows the uploading of 3D models of the building and automatically validates its compliance with local regulations.

The validating process narrows down to 4 steps:

– A construction company uploads an IFC file (3D model) — the model of a building.

– The building plan approval management system verifies the project against existing regulations (the building construction rules are set to the system by municipal officials).

– Officials study the 3D file on their side, check the compliance, ask clarifying questions using the provided survey form.

– The company gets transparent feedback to correct mistakes quickly.

Our technology stack

• .NET Azure Application Insights
• Xbim Toolkit
• Azure Cosmos DB
• Azure Application Insights, Storage
• Python
• Numpy
• Stanza
• Sklearn
• Pandas
• React
• Docker
• Azure DevOps

Key achievements delivered

1. We removed most of the manual steps needed for verification.
2. Significantly simplified the interaction between construction agencies and authorities.
3. Released a stable MVP version within the agreed time.