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Permit pre screen for Ontario

Find out your drawings fail before the city does.

PermitX reads your drawing set against the Ontario Building Code and the local zoning bylaw, then hands you a ranked list of everything a reviewer would send back. Cited to the clause, pinned to the sheet.

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  • All 444 Ontario municipalities
  • Ontario Building Code and zoning
  • Clause level citations

The cost of finding out late

A resubmission is not a delay. It is a second project.

The drawings were finished weeks ago. The trades are booked. Then the comment letter arrives and every one of those things has to move. The expensive part was never the fix, it was the queue you have to rejoin to deliver it.

The same project, two calendars Day 0 of 33
Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5

18 days you never spent waiting

  • Filed with the city
  • Waiting for the city
  • Comments came back
  • Redrawing
  • Checked by PermitX first
  • Permit issued

  1. Filed, then corrected

    • Day 0 Set filed
    • Day 14 Comment letter
    • Day 33 Permit issued

    Two trips through the queue33 days

  2. Pre screened, then filed

    • Day 1 Screened, fixed and filed
    • Day 15 Permit issued

    One trip through the queue15 days

Same project, same drawings, same fix: an afternoon’s work either way. The whole difference is whether anyone read the set before the city did.

Ontario gives a municipality ten business days to review a house permit application. Corrected drawings rejoin the queue rather than resume their place in it, so neither row above is a worst case.

Building Division

Plans Examination, Permits and Inspection

File
BP-24-013918
Received
Aug 26
Reviewed
Sep 09

Notice of deficiencies, first review

The application noted above has been examined and cannot be approved as submitted. The following items must be addressed. A revised submission will be placed in the queue in the order received.

  1. 01 ZONING Side yard setback scales at 1.10 m. Minimum required is 1.20 m. Revise or apply for minor variance. By-law, s. 10.20.40
  2. 02 OBC 9.9 Basement bedroom window not dimensioned. Egress opening cannot be confirmed from the sheets provided. Div. B, 9.9.10.1
  3. 03 OBC 9.10 Fire separation between garage and dwelling unit not specified on plans or in the assembly schedule. Div. B, 9.10.9.16
  4. 04 ZONING Lot coverage not provided. Area summary gives gross floor area only. Provide coverage calculation. By-law, s. 10.10.40
  5. 05 STRUCT Beam sizes noted without material or species and grade. Specify, or provide engineered design. Div. B, 9.23.4
Plans Examiner Days since application: 0
A composite plan review notice. The wording is standard municipal examination language and the file number is invented, but all five deficiencies are categories that come back, and every one of them is readable off the drawings before filing.

If your permits move slower than your site Wi Fi, it is time for PermitX. Say goodbye to the delays, the red tape and the guesswork.

One real review

Six things a reviewer would have sent back.

A two storey house in St. Catharines. The set was finished and ready to file. None of these six are design problems, and every one of them is a comment letter.

A stack of plotted architectural floor plan sheets laid over one another on a table, the top sheet open and dimensioned.
Ready to file A finished set, plotted and ready for the counter. The six findings beside it came off a real review
Detected issues

Two storey house · St. Catharines, Ontario

6
  1. 1 Missing window sizes on basement bedroom plans, so egress compliance cannot be confirmed. Egress
  2. 2 No fire separation detail between the attached garage and the main living space. Fire separation
  3. 3 Beam sizes are shown, but with no material spec such as species and grade or steel type. Structure
  4. 4 Foundation wall detail lacks reinforcement, with no rebar size or spacing given. Foundation
  5. 5 Roof plan is missing slope notation, which is required for drainage and compliance. Roof
  6. 6 Site plan is missing lot coverage and gross floor area calculations, so zoning compliance is unclear. Zoning
Sheet Proposed south elevation, three eighths of an inch to the foot, drawn by an Ontario design studio

How it works

Four steps, and none of them are redrawing.

Intelligently engineered, effortlessly precise. Upload the set you were already going to file, and the work you do next is applying fixes rather than preparing an input.

  1. 01

    Upload the set

    Drop in the drawing set, plus the write-ups, reports and application forms the permit asks for, and tell PermitX the municipality and the scope of work. No model, no export step, no redrawing.

  2. 02

    It reads the drawings

    PermitX pulls dimensions, setbacks, exits, occupancy and clearances off the sheets, then tests them against the Ontario Building Code and that municipality’s zoning bylaw.

  3. 03

    You get a ranked list

    Every finding is pinned to the sheet it came from, ranked critical, major or minor, and cited to the clause. You can ask it follow up questions in place.

  4. 04

    Submit once

    Fix what is flagged, export the report as a PDF for your file, and submit a package that clears first pass instead of coming back with comments.

Scopes it handles

Interior alterationNew buildAddition or extensionDemolition

Ranked, not listed

A hundred notes is noise. Three ranked findings is a work list.

Every finding carries a severity, so you know what has to change before you file and what can wait for the next revision.

Critical

Will be refused or held at intake. Fix before you submit.

Major

Almost certainly comes back as a review comment.

Minor

Worth cleaning up. Cheap now, annoying later.

Who it is for

Everyone waiting on the same counter.

Permitting is not one job. The designer needs to know the set is clean, the arborist needs the protection zone to hold, and the city needs the file to be complete when it arrives.

One municipal intake window Now serving 01 11 ahead of your set
Intake Ten business days each
  1. 03 An interior alteration Interior designers
  2. 06 A tree protection plan Arborists
  3. 09 A house addition Builders and designers
  4. 12 Your set Whoever you are
Four jobs with nothing in common, one window, and the same ten business days each, which is the review period Ontario prescribes for a house. What PermitX changes is not the length of that line. It is whether you have to join it twice. Twelve deep is drawn to show one intake queue, not a measured depth.

Municipalities and building departments

Your reviewers should open a complete set, not a puzzle.

Most of what lands in a municipal intake queue fails on the same handful of items. PermitX catches those before the file reaches your staff.

Cities

Interior design and millwork studios

You design the space. The code should not be the part that stops you.

Interior alterations trip on egress, occupant load, barrier-free clearances and fixture counts. PermitX reads your set and names the clause.

Interior designers

Arborists and tree preservation consultants

Tree protection is a permit too, and it is the one nobody automated.

Protection zones, injury and removal applications, replanting ratios and ravine boundaries are bylaw work. PermitX reads them the same way it reads a zoning setback.

Arborists

Builders, design build firms and developers

Every resubmission is a month of carrying cost you already paid for.

Upload the set, get a severity ranked list of what will fail, fix it once, and submit a package that clears first pass.

Builders and designers

Coverage

All of Ontario. All 444 municipalities.

Wherever in the province you are filing, PermitX takes the set today and returns a full Ontario Building Code review. The code is provincial, so there is nowhere in Ontario it does not reach.

On top of that, municipal zoning is loaded bylaw by bylaw, so findings cite the local rule and not just the provincial one. Ask about yours and it goes on the list, and if you run the department that wrote it, you go to the front of that list.

The rest of Canada is next and the United States follows, each one read end to end the way this province was.

See what is covered

OttawaSudburyThunder BayKenoraWindsor
Ontario 444/444 All 444 municipalities accepted today, every one of them on the provincial code. Municipal zoning is loaded on top, and added on request.
  • Ontario Building Code Read in full on every set, in every municipality, because the code is provincial Province wide
  • Municipal zoning bylaw Loaded bylaw by bylaw and read alongside the code, in full rather than approximated By municipality
  • All 444 Ontario municipalities Accepted today, whichever one you are filing in Everywhere

Built with QUOTOGRAPH

PermitX is the compliance half of a bigger workflow.

Quotograph builds the platform that construction documents already move through. PermitX is the part of it that answers whether what you drew is allowed to be built. That is why it arrives inside Quoto Build rather than as one more login, and why the set you upload for a review is the same set the rest of your work is already sitting on.

Read about the partnership Open Quoto Build
New submission
01Province
Ontario
02Municipality
St. Catharines
03Project type
New build, detached
04Work category
Full permit set
05Location
St. Catharines, ON

Drop the whole submission

Drawings as DWG, PDF or DXF, plus the write-ups, reports and application forms that go with them. Whatever you were already going to file.

  • A01 Site plan and zoning summary Read
  • A03 Ground and second floor plans Read
  • A05 Proposed elevations Read
  • APP Permit application, signed Read
  • DOC Energy efficiency report Read
  • A07 Foundation and framing details Reading

Permit approvals. Simplified.

PermitX is delivered through Quoto Build. Open it, upload a set, and read the list a reviewer would have sent you.

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