In 2023, the state of California passed a mandatory time frame of 15 days to determine if an application is complete and 30-60 days to approve the application or request specific revisions.
This was a harbinger of what was to come rather than a one-off.
Over the past decade, states have tightened permitting deadlines. Meeting them wouldn’t be a problem if the tools most government agencies used didn’t hold them back. There’s only so much you can do when you need code compliance, fire, electrical, and plumbing reviews in sequence on the same plan set.
There are plenty of plan review platforms that exist, but not all of them facilitate collaborative review. We’ll help you navigate the market and find the best platform for your government below.
Things were fine for decades with pen and paper, then PDFs or markup tools like Bluebeam; why is this such a problem now?
In the days of pen and paper, delays may have been part of doing business with local governments to see projects to completion. Nowadays, 24 states have new permit deadlines in effect (and the number is growing).
For example, San Francisco instituted a 21-day timeline in 2025, and San Diego built a live dashboard to show how long permits are taking to spur on development. The nation is in a housing crisis, and every state is working to shorten lead times as a forcing function for development.
If you find you are coming dangerously close to missing deadlines, too much is slipping through the cracks, or you spend far too many hours chasing down documents in an email chain, you know the pain of manual review. Check out the other signs that it’s time to ditch paper and PDFs for electronic plan review software.
Does your jurisdiction have a permit approval deadline?
Curious what permit SLAs look like around the country? Our interactive map shows every state and city with a permit approval SLA, what the guidelines look like, and if there are penalties involved.
Will you go for one of the many AI-powered upstarts entering the market, or bundled plan review and permitting systems? If you value modern, collaborative review, then we recommend looking for software with the following traits:
Plan review is a collaborative process, but most tooling treats it like anything but.
Many platforms offer markup tools, but markup alone doesn't solve the time-crunch problem. Between chasing down documents, reconciling multiple versions of the same plans, and 30+ long email threads, there are many places where something important can slip through the cracks.
Electronic plan review software gives you a shared review environment where multiple disciplines can review the same plan set with comments, markups, and version history in one place.
For example, with e-PlanSoft, every discipline reviews the same exact document in real time – not multiple versions that need to be reconciled later. That means a lot less time passing files around and checking whether everyone has the latest version, and more time completing reviews.
When everything is manual, you have to reconcile plan sets and consolidate feedback into a single source to send to an applicant.
Modern digital plan review software fixes this in a few key ways:
For one, plan review software like e-PlanSoft lets you reconcile all your comments into a single document to share with an applicant. No more cross-referencing and typing into a 30-page Word document. e-PlanSoft can save you even more time thanks to built-in support for a comment library, allowing you to save and reuse common comments.
Modern plan review software also lets you compare previous versions to spot changes made in revisions when someone resubmits. With earlier comments still available for reference, that means you can check whether issues were addressed and focus on what needs another look.
Many cities recognize the burden that shortened deadlines place on reviewers, which is why local governments are increasingly adopting AI technology to streamline or even automate the review process.
Can plan review be automated? We don’t think so.
To be clear, AI has a place in plan review, but we’re far more interested in the ways that AI can remove the busywork from the plan review process to speed you up. AI can’t replace human expertise and judgment, but it can take work off your plate so you can focus on the decisions that matter.
For example, at e-PlanSoft, we’ve built AI features that support plan reviewers in the following core areas:
AI done wrong just creates more work as you backtrack to fix mistakes, but AI done right can shave costly hours from your workflow.
There isn’t a “one winner” here; the right tool depends on how many disciplines are in your review process and whether you need an enterprise solution.
The two most popular platforms for collaborative review are e-PlanSoft and Avolve.
Avolve has historically been an enterprise-only option for plan review thanks to its core product, ProjectDox, before acquiring DigEplan to serve the mid-market. Both products exist concurrently today, with ProjectDox sold to larger governments that need enterprise software while DigEplan serves smaller cities and governments.
If you want a broad platform with Esri GIS layers inside the review screen, heavily customized enterprise workflows, and built-in performance dashboards, Avolve is a great option for you.
But if you want simultaneous multi-discipline markup, a world-class markup tool, and a system of record for plan review, all in an intuitive platform your reviewers can learn quickly, e-PlanSoft may be a better fit.
For smaller governments weighing e-PlanSoft and DigEplan, the key differences are ease of use and independence. e-PlanSoft was built solely for collaborative review, with markup tools and features designed to streamline the review and feedback process. As a standalone plan review platform, e-PlanSoft plugs into whatever permitting system you already run, with seven native integrations, including Accela, Clariti, and BS&A, and a REST API for custom needs.
To help you compare your options, we created a tool that will allow you to see how different plan review solutions – ranging from manual PDF management to enterprise software – stack up against each other.
Click the button below to see which platform is right for you, and take a step towards bringing your plan review process into the 21st century.