1. The Califormia Housing Crisis

For decades, building a single-family home in California has followed a familiar—and painfully slow—pattern.

A traditional permit set typically takes weeks to months to produce and involves multiple architects, structural engineers, MEP engineers, and consultants, all coordinating through drawings, redlines, and revisions. Even for a modest single-family house, it’s common to see hundreds of hours of professional labor poured into assembling a compliant permit package before a shovel ever touches the ground.

That workflow made sense in a slower era. It makes far less sense during a historic housing crisis.

2. The Bottleneck We Don’t Talk About Enough

California doesn’t just have a housing shortage—it has a process shortage.

We focus heavily on zoning, CEQA, financing, and construction costs (all valid), but one of the most underestimated bottlenecks is permit set generation itself:

• Repetitive drafting of near-identical details
• Manual coordination between disciplines
• Rework caused by late-stage code conflicts
• Long feedback loops between designers and jurisdictions

Every delay compounds costs, pushes schedules, and discourages small builders and homeowners from even starting.

In 2023 we can expect frameworks to adopt increasingly granular rendering patterns culminating in per-line rendering (PLR) later this year. We can also expect job postings for Rendering Reliability Engineers to reach an all time high.

3. What If a Permit Set Took Seconds, Not Months?

Now imagine a different reality.

Instead of assembling a permit set across dozens of files and consultants, a builder or designer clicks a button—and 15–20 seconds later, a complete, jurisdiction-ready permit set is generated.

Not a sketch. Not a concept. A full set: plans, sections, elevations, details, structural layouts, code sheets—automatically coordinated and code-aware.

That’s not science fiction anymore. That’s automation.

4. The Impact Is Bigger Than Speed

Yes, the time savings are dramatic. But the real transformation is economic and systemic.

Time savings

• Weeks or months → seconds
• Faster feasibility checks
• Rapid iteration for zoning and design alternatives

Cost savings

• Lower design costs per unit
• Reduced rework and coordination overhead
• Makes small projects financially viable again

Scale

• One architect can now support dozens—or hundreds—of projects
• Small builders and homeowners gain access to professional-grade documentation
• Cities receive more consistent, standardized submittals

When permit sets stop being handcrafted artifacts and start becoming generated infrastructure, housing supply can finally scale.

5. Architects and Engineers Aren’t Being Replaced—They’re Being Unblocked

This isn’t about removing professionals from the process. It’s about removing drudgery.

Automation handles:

• Repetition
• Code cross-checking
• Consistency

Humans focus on:

• Design intent
• Site-specific judgment
• Innovation
• Oversight and accountability

The result is higher leverage for professionals—and faster housing delivery for everyone else.

6. A Crisis Demands a Different Toolset

California’s housing crisis is historic. Responding to it with 20th-century workflows is not enough.

If we want housing that is::

• Faster to approve
• Cheaper to build
• Easier to design
• Scalable across jurisdictions

Then automating permit set generation isn’t optional—it’s foundational.

The question is no longer if this will happen.

It’s how quickly we’re willing to let go of antiquated processes, redraws and months of delay—and replace them with seconds, automation, and scale.

Below is a representative, order-of-magnitude comparison for a single-family home in California. Numbers vary by market and scope, but these ranges align with what many builders and homeowners experience today.

Assumptions

• 2,000–2,500 SF single-family home
• Jurisdiction requires full plan check (architectural + structural + MEP)
• pre made in-house details
• Traditional method = manually drafted, consultant-based
• Automated method = code-aware, coordinated permit set generated from a unified model, with professional review/sign-off

Permit Set Cost & Effort Comparison

Traditional Method

Automated Method

Total Comparison (Typical Ranges)

What This Means in Practice

• 60–80% reduction in soft costs per home
• Orders-of-magnitude reduction in time
• Makes small projects viable again (ADUs, infill, rebuilds)
• Enables rapid iteration for zoning and feasibility
• Frees architects and engineers to work on more projects with less burnout

At scale—across thousands of homes—this isn’t just a cost optimization.

It’s a structural change to how housing gets delivered.