ideas

AI is going to push the cost of architectural drawings and engineering plans close to zero. Soon anyone will be able to draw up a house, an addition, or a commercial building in an afternoon. The slow part of building will still be permission. Getting a city to review a set of plans takes months of sitting in a queue, and once construction starts, crews lose days waiting on an inspector before they can pour concrete or close up a wall.

There is a big company to be built making building approvals and inspections instant. You should be able to upload a set of plans, see right away whether they meet local code, and get a real permit back in minutes instead of months. On the jobsite, inspections could run on autonomous drones or quick camera uploads from the construction team instead of scheduling someone weeks out. If we can take months of dead time out of every project, a lot more homes, storefronts, and infrastructure get built.

Cool companies in this space:

• Brain Co. (AI permitting pilots with cities and builders)
• TurboPermit (faster residential permit intake and pre-checks)
• UpCodes (searchable building codes and compliance tools)
• OpenGov (permitting and operations software for local government)
• Dusty Robotics (field layout robots on construction sites)