Arborists and tree preservation consultants
Tree protection is a permit too, and it is the one nobody automated.
Every other consultant on the project has software that checks their work. The arborist has a bylaw, a measuring tape, and a municipality that will return the application if the protection zone is drawn a metre short. PermitX reads a tree plan the same way it reads a zoning setback.
The gap nobody filled
The rules are geometric, published, and still checked entirely by hand.
The point
A protection radius is arithmetic against a bylaw. It is the easiest thing on the set to check, and the only one nothing checks.
A tree protection plan is a compliance document. Diameter at breast height sets a protection radius. The radius sets a fence line. The fence line either clears the proposed excavation, the driveway and the servicing trench, or the application comes back.
None of that is subjective. It is arithmetic against a bylaw, laid over a site plan. And yet it is the one discipline on a permit set with no tool checking it, which is why so many arborist reports are returned for a protection zone that was drawn to the trunk instead of to the required radius, or for a removal that needed a permit nobody applied for.
It gets worse when the site touches a ravine or a natural feature boundary, because a second bylaw applies with its own thresholds, and the two are enforced by different parts of the same municipality.
PermitX treats the tree bylaw as what it is: a set of dimensional rules that can be measured off the drawings. It reads your plan, checks the zones and the thresholds, and tells you what a reviewer will flag while the plan is still a draft.
The check, drawn
The zone is arithmetic. The conflict is geometry.
Trunk diameter sets a radius, the radius sets a fence line, and the fence line either clears the proposed works or the application comes back. Drawn a metre short, it clears everything on paper and nothing on site.
- Drip line
- Hoarding
- Required zone
- Excavation
A worked example rather than a report, and drawn to its own scale, so the gap shown is the gap claimed. A real finding names the bylaw, the tree and the sheet it was read off.
The ground it happens on
A protection plan is a drawing about trees that are already there.
Mature canopy over a residential block is where most of this work happens. An infill, an addition, a garage, a servicing trench, with two or three protected trees on the property and one more overhanging the line from next door.
Every one of those trees has a diameter, a radius that follows from it, and an owner who may not be your client. City trees and private trees are governed separately, and a plan that treats them as one thing is a plan that comes back.
PermitX reads the inventory against the plan, checks each zone against the works as drawn, and flags the ones that touch while the site plan can still move.
What it checks on a tree plan
Zones, thresholds and the obligations that follow from them.
Coverage follows the municipality. Where a city's tree and ravine bylaws are fully loaded, the findings cite the chapter and provision directly. Everywhere else you get the provincial and site plan level review, and we add the local bylaw on request.
- Tree bylaw Protection zone radius derived from trunk diameter, checked against the fence line as drawn
- Tree bylaw Whether a proposed removal or injury crosses the diameter threshold that requires a permit
- Tree bylaw Replanting and replacement obligations triggered by the removals on the plan
- Tree bylaw Private and city owned tree provisions, applied separately where both appear on one site
- Ravine bylaw Ravine and natural feature protection boundaries and the works they restrict
- Site plan Conflicts between a protection zone and the proposed excavation, driveway, grading or servicing trench
- Drawing set Trees shown on the survey but absent from the inventory, and zones drawn without a stated radius
Every finding on a real report carries the same three things: the clause, the sheet it came from, and a severity. Nothing is a hunch.
What changes for the consultant
The report you sign is the report that clears.
Conflicts found on the plan
A protection zone that overlaps the proposed works is caught while the site plan can still move, not after the municipality points at it.
Thresholds checked, not remembered
Diameter thresholds, replacement ratios and which bylaw governs are read off the drawings against the bylaw text every time, on every tree.
One document, one submission
Your report goes in as part of a package that was screened as a whole, so the tree file is not the reason the rest of it waits.
Put a tree plan through it.
Upload the plan and the site drawings together in Quoto Build. If your municipality's tree or ravine bylaw is not loaded yet, tell us which one and it goes on the list.