Recently we heard of a pilot project that the City of Vancouver has started that in part will speed up the time it takes to get building grade applications approved. The basic idea is that instead of the City doing the survey and plan preparation they will pass that onto a Land Surveyor.
At first the survey requirements and plan preparation seemed a little overwhelming, but thankfully a former colleague of mine is heading up the project at the City and he has really helped getting us out of the starting gate. Our first building grade application survey was not really all that complicated, but it was an add-on to an existing topographic survey. Dove-tailing the two surveys together was a little time consuming especially when we had to collect the relevant information for the building grade plan.
Preparation of the plan was fairly straight forward, but preparing the building grade plan in the exact format required by the City took a little longer than usual for similar plans, but that's expected for a first try!
So that's the first one under the belt. It has been submitted to the City with the rest of the application package, so we'll find out how we did soon enough. Thankfully the City is going to implement this new policy over the next year, so by January 1, 2014 we'll have to be able to do these surveys as if the City was still doing them in-house.
This new policy was a little unexpected, but I think its a great idea. It speeds up the amount of time to have a permit and building grade plan issued (by up to half of the current time) and that is good news for everyone. For me it's something new we can offer our clients. Anytime I have the opportunity to try something new and offer that to our current range of professional services it's exciting.
So that's the latest! Have a great day everyone!
MD
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