Submission is lodging the drawing set with the local authority’s building control section and taking it through the circulation that follows. The set is not read by one person. It goes to every department with an interest in it: land use, building control, fire, environmental health, water and sanitation, and it is approved only once each of them has signed off. The Act allows 30 days to decide where the building is under 500 square metres, and 60 days at or above it. That period runs from receipt of the application. An incomplete submission does not start it, and an unanswered query does not advance it.
Some instructions arrive with a complete set ready to go. Others arrive with a file that has stalled somewhere. In our experience, these are the four.
Keep the dated acknowledgement of lodgement, that is the date the period runs from, and ask which departments have signed off and which have not. A submission is not one queue but several, and knowing where a file is stuck tells you what has to be answered.
A submission is not one queue but several, running in parallel, and the set is approved only when the last of them has signed off. Which departments see it depends on what is being built.
Coverage, height, floor area, building lines and parking, checked against the scheme. In our experience the department that returns the most sets.
General compliance with the National Building Regulations and the structural arrangement. Where a rational design applies, an engineer’s certificate goes with it.
Escape routes and travel distances, separation between occupancies, and access for appliances. Heavier on commercial and institutional buildings than on a house.
Ablution provision, natural light and ventilation, and the further requirements that attach to food premises and places of instruction.
The drainage layout, the falls and the connection to the municipal sewer. Where the connection is not where the drawing assumes, the set comes back.
The drawings are the largest part of a submission but not the whole of it. What accompanies them determines whether the municipality treats the application as received at all.
Prepared and signed by a person registered with SACAP in a category that covers the scope of the work. Drawings signed outside that scope can be rejected.
Building particulars, area calculations and owner’s details, on the forms the local authority requires. Each municipality has its own.
A copy of the title deed or deed of transfer, and the approved Surveyor-General diagram establishing the erf’s boundaries and dimensions.
Where the applicant is not the registered owner — a tenant, a purchaser, or a professional acting on instruction — written authority goes in with the set.
Where a rational design is used in place of the deemed-to-satisfy rules, the certificate of the competent person responsible for it.
A consent use, a departure, a relaxation or an approved Site Development Plan. Where the drawings depend on one, building control will want to see it.
The statutory period runs from receipt of the application, and an application is not received until it is complete. A set lodged without the engineer’s certificate, or without the approval the drawings rely on, has not started the 30 days everyone is counting.
Five phases, and the one everyone watches is the third. Queries are where submissions lose time, and answering them quickly is most of what management means here.
The set, forms, consents and certificates go in together, the fee is paid, and a dated acknowledgement is obtained. That date is the one that matters.
The application is distributed to the departments with an interest in it, each working to its own criteria and its own queue.
Where a department returns the set, the query is answered on the drawings or in writing and the amended set goes back. This is where time is lost.
Plans are stamped and returned. Building work may lawfully begin only from this point — and the approval lapses if it does not.
Inspections are carried out at stages during construction, and an occupation certificate is issued before the building may lawfully be occupied.
These are the periods the Act prescribes, not the elapsed time from instruction — add compilation, the circulation, and however long queries take to answer. The twelve-month lapse is the one that catches people: an approval obtained early and built late has to be extended on written request before it runs, not after.
The professional fee is modest against the rest of a project. The municipal fee is separate, set by tariff, and payable whoever lodges the set. Four things move the figure.
Set by the local authority’s tariff and calculated on the area of the building, payable at lodgement. It is not a professional fee and it does not change with who submits.
The largest variable in our time. One query from one department is a short exercise; five from three, each needing a drawing amended, is not.
A residential addition passes fewer desks than a commercial fit-out or a place of instruction. More departments means more criteria and more chances to be returned.
Where we prepared it, the predictable queries have already been designed out. Where the set arrives drawn, we check it first and tell you what we expect to come back.
Set it against the cost of a submission nobody is following. A file that has sat unqueried for two months because no one asked where it was has cost more in holding, standby and interest than the fee to manage it. The cheapest submission is the one that goes in complete and comes out once.
Where a set comes back on the zoning check, the answer is a planning application rather than a redraw. These four are what most often runs with a submission.
What owners, developers and architects ask us about getting a set approved.
Send us the set, or the query letter if one has come back.
Send us the set, or the query letter if one has already come back. We will tell you whether the submission is complete, which departments are likely to query it, and what it will take to get the plans stamped. Initial consultations carry no obligation.
35 Fricker Road, Illovo, Sandton · Building plan approval across the Gauteng City-Region