How plan review and resubmittals work, wherever you submit

The screen before the review

The first thing a submittal meets is not an engineer's judgement. It is a check that the package is complete enough to review at all, and it has a different name in every place that publishes one.

• Austin runs a Completeness Check as a separate application that ends in a Certification Letter.
• Portland draws a 14 day completeness check on its own timeline.
• Fairfax County counts a first submission as submitted only once a minimum submission review has been accepted.
• Clark County reviews the documents at an appointment and issues an Authorization to Submit when they are complete.
• Denver requires a mandatory Concept Plan before a site development plan is filed at all.

“When the application materials are deemed complete, the planner will provide Authorization to Submit (ATS) form.”

Raleigh publishes turnaround times without naming a completeness step, which is worth knowing too: the absence of a published gate is not the absence of a gate.

How long a first review takes, where it is published

Published windows are goals rather than guarantees, and they are counted in different units from different starting events. Read the clock, not only the number.

“Benchmarks represent goals, not guaranteed turnaround times, and are intended to provide general guidance.”

The clock also starts at a different event in each place. Clark County counts an application as officially submitted after fees are paid; Austin starts formal review one business day after the invoice clears; Portland works from a complete application as Oregon law defines it.

What an incomplete package costs

Each of these jurisdictions publishes a consequence, and none of them is a slower review. The package stops.

“Applicant has up to 180 days to provide needed information or application will be voided and no fees returned.”

“Incomplete resubmittals that do not address all comments will be turned away until they are ready for submission.”

Fairfax County adds the expensive version of the same rule: a resubmission whose scope or design has changed substantially is handled as a first submission, which restarts the cycle it was trying to finish.

Every cycle after the first answers the last one in writing

Review is published as a repeating loop, and the return leg is a document, not just a new set of drawings.

“Most SDP applications require at least 4 rounds of evaluation before all reviewers are satisfied.”

What the written response has to carry

• Denver asks for responses that identify which comments or redlines were rejected, with a narrative saying why.
• Clark County expects a correction response letter alongside the corrected plans.
• Raleigh asks for one complete permit set plus a separate response to the comments sheet.

Cycles are counted, published and budgeted for. Fairfax County prints its schedule out to the third resubmission and beyond, which tells you what the process expects to happen more than once.

What this means before you upload

The screen at the front and the written response at the back are both easier when the set agrees with itself. Sheets that are numbered once, an index that matches what is bound in, scales that say what they are, and totals that add up are the items a reviewer writes down first and the ones you can settle without redoing any design.

Set-Check reads a whole plan set before it is submitted, with AI in every run, and points each item it finds at the page it came from, for you to review. It does not predict any decision a jurisdiction will make. Open the sample report.