Design Review and Post-Permission Design Quality Tracker

- Design-review recommendations can become separated from later condition and discharge decisions. - Value-engineering changes can alter materials, landscape or public realm without a clear record of the design principle being traded away. - Officers may compare multiple drawing revisions manually to understand whether a change is material. - Long phased schemes lose institutional memory when officers, architects or developers change.

The best buyers are master developers, regeneration or development corporations and LPAs overseeing strategic or design-sensitive sites. Architects and design-review bodies can collaborate; smaller routine applications are unlikely to justify a dedicated system.

The product opportunity is strongest after the design has been agreed: preserving intent across revisions and approvals. It should not attempt to automate subjective design quality.

Choose one strategic site with multiple phases and reconstruct the approved design principles, key drawings and later changes. Ask design officers and the developer to use the tracker for one reserved-matters or change cycle and measure review time and disputes avoided.

A design-intent layer connecting each approved principle or review recommendation to drawings, conditions and later changes is the differentiator. Visual diffing plus a human 'material effect on design intent' decision log could create a reusable planning record.

Protect approved placemaking quality through delivery while reducing manual comparison and loss of decision history on long-lived sites.

Proxy based — medium confidence.

- Paid test offer: Paid authority or developer pilot: £10,000–£25,000 £5,000–£20,000/site/year; enterprise authority/developer portfolio £20,000–£60,000/year. £5,000-£15,000 per strategic site/year is plausible; larger developer or authority portfolios could support £20,000-£50,000 annual licences. Deep BIM integrations should be paid implementation.

Evidence basis: Agile AI Planning Validator (£15,000–£60,000 per licence) is the closest verified adjacent anchor used here. Its buyer, duration and scope are not assumed to be identical; implementation is separated where the opportunity requires integration, assurance or managed delivery.

Ask one planning authority, developer or planning consultancy with a live case pipeline to fund a paid test of Design Review and Post-Permission Design Quality Tracker lasting 8–12 weeks, using an opening price of £10,000–£25,000 and covering 20 live applications, sites, conditions or evidence packs from one planning workflow. Paid scope: A design-intent ledger linking approved principles, drawings, materials and review recommendations to subsequent revisions and discharge decisions. Charge by authority, professional team, development site or assessed case and compare the fee with planning-officer and consultant time, avoidable invalid submissions and repeated evidence assembly. Measure validation time, missing-document rate, rework, officer overrides, applicant resubmissions and decision lead time. Continue only if handling or rework falls by at least 25%, at least 90% of required evidence is correctly identified and no material planning issue is suppressed. Stop or reprice if experienced officers find material false assurance, the workflow does not beat current practice or the buyer will not renew.

Raise above 82 if a master developer standardises multiple phases on it. Reduce below 58 if a simple design-principles schedule inside the existing CDE solves the issue.