Pre-Submission Regulatory Disclaimer & Accuracy Charter
How Plan Comply assists architectural professionals in reviewing plans fast, identifying potential rejection triggers, and continuously collaborating with regulatory frameworks and practicing architects.
Review Fast, Catch Rejections
Pinpoints SANS 10400 discrepancies and bylaw conflicts in minutes, helping you fix what could get your plan declined before you lodge.
No Guaranteed Approval
We do not guarantee statutory council approval. Official building approval remains the sole legal authority of municipal Building Control Officers.
Continuous Collaboration
We continually work alongside government standards, municipal bylaws, and practicing architects to maximize audit accuracy and relevance.
What Plan Comply Does — And What It Does Not Do
Plan Comply is an independent pre-submission regulatory screening platform built specifically for South African draughtspersons, architectural technologists, professional architects, and property developers.
The purpose of our platform is to conduct an ultra-fast, systematic pre-audit of architectural drawing sets against the technical mandates of the National Building Regulations and Building Standards Act (Act 103 of 1977), the SANS 10400 Code of Practice (Parts A through XA), and local municipal bylaws.
Instead of submitting drawings blindly and waiting 30 to 60 days only to receive a municipal Section 7 refusal letter or an extensive list of examiner red-pen corrections, Plan Comply allows you to review drawings in under two minutes to highlight what municipal building examiners could decline.
No Guarantee of Council Approval
Plan Comply does not promise, warrant, or guarantee a first-time council approval, nor does it guarantee statutory plan acceptance by any municipal authority.
Under South African law (Act 103 of 1977), statutory power to approve, conditionally approve, or refuse building plans is vested exclusively in the local municipal authority, exercised through its appointed Building Control Officer (BCO) and statutory scrutiny departments (including Fire Safety, Town Planning/Zoning, Environmental Health, Water & Sanitation, Roads & Stormwater, and Heritage authorities).
Individual building control examiners may apply local council policies, site-specific zoning schemes, town-planning conditions, or discretionary interpretations that cannot be predicted by any automated pre-screening engine. Plan Comply serves as a diagnostic audit tool to catch regulatory oversights prior to submission, but is not a substitute for the statutory scrutiny process.
Collaboration with Government Frameworks & Practicing Architects
South African national building regulations and municipal submission procedures are continuously evolving. To ensure our pre-submission compliance checks remain as accurate, rigorous, and practically useful as possible, we maintain an active commitment to continuous collaboration:
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National Regulatory Alignment: Our audit engine rules are benchmarked against official SABS (South African Bureau of Standards) SANS 10400 publications, the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS), and the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC).
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Practicing Architect & Draughtsperson Advisory: We work in close dialogue with SACAP-registered architects, architectural technologists, and municipal submission runners who submit weekly in Johannesburg (COJ e-Services), Tshwane (e-Tshwane / Dolomite SANS 1936), Cape Town (DAMS / DMS), and eThekwini. Their frontline feedback directly informs our detection rules and rejection trigger matrices.
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Continuous Algorithmic Calibration: Every anonymized audit conducted allows our engineering team to calibrate detection thresholds, minimize false positives, and ensure subtle drawing nuances (such as cavity wall hatching, boundary setback lines, and fenestration ratios) are parsed with optimal fidelity.
Role of the Registered Architectural Professional
Plan Comply is an assistive software tool for qualified professionals. It is not an architect, engineer, or building control officer, and does not provide statutory professional indemnity (PI) coverage or professional architectural certification.
The appointment of competent persons, the signing of SACAP Form 1, Form 2, and Form 4 statutory declarations, site verification, boundary beacon confirmation, structural engineering appointments (SANS 10400-B), and compliance with the Architectural Profession Act (Act 44 of 2000) remain strictly under the professional purview of the registered architectural professional of record.
Confidentiality & Anti-Deal Guarantee
We know that architectural plans contain highly proprietary design ideas, developer business models, and sensitive client information.
All drawings uploaded to Plan Comply are used exclusively for automated compliance audit generation and internal algorithmic accuracy betterment. We strictly guarantee that your designs and project information are never used to solicit commercial deals, broker land, compete for construction work, or sell leads to third parties. For full details, please review our comprehensive Architectural Privacy & IP Non-Exploitation Charter.
Have regulatory questions or feedback?
Contact our regulatory advisory desk at [email protected]