SMARTreview Automated Plan Review

A Better Way to Design

SMARTreview is made up of architects, plans examiners, technical consultants, and university educators. We have united behind the goal of providing software and processes that eliminate bottlenecks within the design and permitting community. This segment of the industry has been too long dominated by manual processes that have systemic and costly flaws.

The SMARTreview Automated Plan Review (APR) is provided to architects and designers to assist them in bringing their projects into compliance with the International Building Code (IBC).

Cost of Review

Current practice is high cost and time-consuming

Paying for engineering consultants to review plans can be quite costly. Reviewing concept models, preliminary designs, and final designs can add tens of thousands of dollars to a project's cost. Final review costs are typically based on Building Valuation that factor in highly skilled and specialized labor rates.

As an example, the International Code Council has three products available for plan review:

  • Technical Consultants - billed at a minimum of $150/hour, a consultant can provide analysis during the conceptual stage of a project.

  • Preliminary Design Review - review of a project during preliminary design adds a basic analysis of project conecepts

  • Final Design Review - review of the project with a report of the analysis and checklist of items to correct. Typically takes between 15 and 20 days.
SMARTreview APR is less expensive and lightning fast

By contrast, our SMARTreview APR software is lightning quick and can be run on demand, by the architect, from within Autodesk Revit. With a minimum amount of information in the BIM, SMARTreview APR can give answers back that show the designer whether the project is compliant with the International Building Code. It describes any non-compliant elements and highlights them in the Revit model.

There is no need to wait for a detailed analysis that may take weeks to receive, nor pay the high cost for an engineering firm to review a project. Simply run the analysis, get the results, make corrections, repeat. In fact, we encourage this highly iterative design practice. Design a little, test against the IBC, design a little more, etc.

Why Use SMARTreview APR

Beyond the Review Cost

Eliminating prohibitive and excessive review costs are not the only advantage to using SMARTreview APR. We want your plans to be error free. Municipalities are overwhelmed with plans that are riddled with errors, causing costly delay and rework. By developing easy to use and very comprehensive plan review software, we are able to eliminate errors early in the design process which improves the overall quality of the plans that are submitted for permitting.

"An estimated 70% of building plans are not building code compliant when submitted to the City of Southlake for the initial plan review"

Paul Ward Chief Building Official, City of Southlake, Texas

By using SMARTreview APR, plans submitted for permitting will have a significantly lower rejection rate. In the pilot program with the City of Southlake, we were able to achieve successful permitting on the initial plan submission within 3 hours.

"The plan review timeline is reduced from days to hours when code compliant construction documents are provided at first submittal."

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