The Building Permit Process in BC | Questions & Answers

Bob Deeks: Hi, this is Bob Deeks. I am the president and founder of RDC Fine Homes. We are a builder and renovator located on the south coast of British Columbia. Today we have projects from as far as Lytton, British Columbia all the way down into West Vancouver. We got our start in the early nineties really as a consequence of the recession and me just really not being able to find any work with anybody else. And so I stuck out a shingle and grabbed a couple friends and we started doing renovation works. We quickly got into new construction and today we have a couple of locations staff that varies between sort of 30 and 45 and are very excited to still be doing high performance, new homes, renovations. We’re got a group that’s doing some commercial work as well.

RDC got its start in the industry really specializing on sustainable energy efficient construction. Of course, if you know the construction industry in British Columbia today, you know that the permit and building code process has now really stepped up and is requiring that high performance standard for new homes. We still feel that we are a leader in this space for energy efficiency and sustainable housing, particularly focusing on indoor air quality and effective use of technology to deliver a cost effective solution. We also really put an enormous amount of influence on customer service and working with our clients from the very earliest stages of their design all the way through permitting to construction as well as after sales service.

When we consider building permits in the south of British Columbia, particularly say Pemberton, Whistler, Squamish, west Vancouver and North Vancouver, the process for applying for a permit is generally the same in each location. Of course, every project may have some unique requirements for permitting. The wait times in each municipality will vary and those permit wait times vary from year to year or month to month. And so there’s really no way to predict how long a permit might take in each individual municipality. But each municipality does have an online portal where you can go in and get a glimpse to see, you know, what month are they currently reviewing previous permit submissions from.

When you’re considering applying for permit in a specific municipality, it’s really important to understand the bylaws under which those municipalities are governed because those bylaws will have an impact on how you make that permit application. The requirements differ slightly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Of course, we are moving towards a digital, a provincial digital permit application process, which will help streamline, streamline that to some degree. But every permit application process in each individual municipality is, is going to be slightly different. And as a homeowner it’s really important that you align yourself with somebody who is local, both possibly from a design side as well as a construction side to make sure that that permit application process is complete and that helps minimize any delays.

So when looking to do a project, whether it’s new construction or renovation, it certainly is very important to understand, you know, what are your requirements and what are the timelines. Each individual municipality, as I noted a little bit earlier, will have some different requirements. For example, in Whistler there are specific areas that require development permits and that can be for something as simple as a reroof application. And so if you’re in a region that requires a development permit, that potentially has a longer wait time than the building permit itself. And so it would be very important to understand that and and get that basic permit application in in advance of when you’re gonna sub submit for your building permit.

There will be specific considerations given the nature of the site that you’re looking to do work on. For example, again, whether you are in Pemberton, Squamish, Whistler or the North Shore riparian regulations may come into effect. And this is simply if there is a watercourse within any near proximity to where your house is, you may need to get an environmental engineer in to do an initial assessment and you would need that for the building permit application. And sometimes that simple assessment in of itself can take a month or two to put together. So really important to understand what are the requirements with regard to where I’m building and specific to the piece of property that I’m looking to build on Right now.

I’ll use Whistler as an example. Should you have an older home that you maybe just recently purchased and you’re looking to do some improvements on that home, whether it is doing an addition or a kitchen renovation, bathroom renovation or a full upgrade of the entire house, one of the things that is gonna be very important to understand is, is the house reflective of the permit drawings that the ROW has on file. And so one of the first things that we recommend that people do is they make a document retrieval request with the building department to get a copy of all the drawings that the building department currently has on file and see if the drawings that the building department have match the condition that the house presents. Because if somebody has done unpermitted work on that house passed the last permit application, and it’ll be very important to note that and make sure that those changes that were done without a permit are now clearly shown on your permit application drawings.

The risk is is that if you go to apply for a building permit for new work and the municipality then discovers that there was work previously done without a permit, that can create delays for re permitting and potentially could delay your project by many, many months. So that would be one of the most important things to do in new in in renovation construction is understand if what you currently are living in is an exact match to what the municipality has on file. One of the most important considerations that I would suggest when considering building in any location is working with people who have experience in that specific location. And that would be specific to the architect. If engineering is required, then the structural engineer, your environmental consultant absolutely as well as the builder in partnering with people who have experience in the region in which you’re considering doing the work, this will have an enormous consequence on streamlining that permanent application process. It’ll make sure that the design professionals and the builder partner are designing the house in accordance to the bylaws and any specific building codes to the region in which you’re building.

So for example, in British Columbia we have an energy code that requires levels of energy efficiency depending on where you live, each individual municipality may have chosen a slightly different step in the BC energy step code. And then depending on the climate zone in where in which your house is located, the energy provisions could be slightly higher or slightly lower. And so in hiring a team that is intimately connected to the region in which you’re building, they will know immediately what level of energy efficiency is required for that permit application. And of course in designing the building, you have to intimately understand what that energy efficiency level is because it is integral to the whole design of the project.

When you might be considering, say, buying a new property in an area that you may not be all that familiar with. Some things to really consider would be the riparian considerations that I mentioned earlier. If there is a stream anywhere in close proximity to the existing house that may create issues, if you wanted to say expand the footprint of the house because there will be limits in how close you could build to that stream. So regardless of how big your lot is, if there is a stream that bisects the lot, that could actually limit the size of the footprint of the house itself. And one thing to really understand is that a waterway can be a stream trickling through your backyard. It could be a drainage ditch or a a diking ditch that has been put there as a manmade tool for flooding and it can also be the ditch in front of your house. And so those are important things to clearly understand. And then when you’re looking particularly for exterior finishes, also understanding what the fire smart regulations might be in the municipality that you’re building in because that can impact the level of finish that you might be anticipating. For things like siding, roofing decks, so forth, When looking at your property or potentially a property that you’re considering purchasing is very important to understand what the zoning is for that specific piece of land because not every parcel of land is zoned consistently with the one next door. So some parcels may allow a single family house, some may allow some form of multifamily house like a duplex or a triplex, and others may allow a mix of commercial as well as residential. 

When considering you know, work to your house, it’s really important to understand what those zoning requirements are because they will also dictate how tall the house can be, how close it can be to your neighbors, and how much living area that you can include within that. You know, the four walls in the roof, of course this, if you’re familiar with British Columbia, is changing as the province has now directed each of the municipalities to amend zoning regulations to remove single family zoning and allow multi-family, small multi-family development on every single family lot. But this is not gonna be a one size fits all. Some municipalities will adopt the guidelines that have been directed by the province and other municipalities such as Whistler are going to try and customize the guidelines that the province has provided, respecting the intent of changing a single family lot to a multifamily lot. But you may not be able to get the same livable area or the same number of units within that, within that parcel size.

So again, coming back to really important to understand where you wanna build or where you wanna renovate, what are the specific zoning requirements as well as building code requirements, particularly in the case of the energy step code and just reinforcing how important it is to work with team members who are familiar with the area in which you want to do work. One of the, I think most important aspects of building strong relationships within the building and planning departments is understanding what their permit and development permit requirements are and making sure that when you make those initial applications, you’re providing all the information that has been requested. I think one of the things that creates the most frustration for building departments, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s in British Columbia or Alberta or Timbuktu, is permit applications that are not complete and working with a design professional, whether they’re an architectural technologist, a designer or an architect is working with somebody who has experience in the area in which you hope to build because they will have a much better understanding of what the building and planning departments are looking for in terms of the information on the drawings, how they want that information displayed to ensure that when that permit application goes in it is, is as complete as it can be. Sometimes the process can be frustrating, it it, it can be complicated at times and even an experienced designer can sometimes get tripped up.

And then of course, as we noted bylaws around single family zoning are changing and so that will take some time for people to get up to speed on. And so even hiring somebody who should be intimately knowledgeable about where they’re working does not mean that there may not be a comp, there may be something missing. And so patience is absolutely a virtue here. It can be very frustrating when you are hoping to get a permit in four months and it seems to be taking eight to 10 months. But be aware that the staff within the building and planning departments truly are doing the best job they can. There is no favoritism here and you in the end, my best advice is work with your builder and your design team. They will keep you up to date on where your application is in the process. If they have relationships within the, with the, within the building and planning department, they’ll be able to get updates in terms of where that application might be. And you have to rely on their expertise, be patient, it will eventually move its way through. And again, if you’ve worked with the right people then you know eventually you will see that building permit. But be aware that there is no exact formula in terms of how long this might take. And just because people were handing out permits last year in two months does not mean that your permit is gonna be delivered in two months this year.

As I previously touched on, there are two significant changes, potentially three changes coming forward in the province of British Columbia. The first is the requirement to change all single family zoning to multifamily zoning. We won’t really know the true consequences in every municipality for that until sometime later in 2024. Municipalities were required to submit their proposals to the province on June 20th, so a couple weeks ago, but it will take a while for all this stuff to get sorted through. The other big change that is coming is the province is working on template for digital permit applications and this would ensure that every municipality has exactly the same permit application process and it would be an online digital process. And so you would no longer have to take physical drawings into your local municipality, you can load them all through your computer into their portal. This is intended also to provide better real-time tracking on where your permit is in the queue. If you think about say UPS and when you ship a package by UPS, they will give you a code that will allow you to go online and typically you can see exactly where your package is, all the way through its journey from wherever it was fabricated to your front door. The goal is that you will also be able to use this type of a tool to see where your permit pro permit is in the process. I think more than anything else, this will alleviate people’s frustrations in terms of that waiting period between when you submit something and when you finally receive your permit.

The third thing here is the BC energy code and the zero carbon code. We touched earlier on the BC energy code. British Columbia is one of the first jurisdictions in North America that included energy efficiency within the building code. We have been using this as a tool for the building permit process in British Columbia since 2017 where it was a voluntary adoption by each individual municipality. In 2023, the province made the, the midpoint in the BC energy step code for houses, which was step three mandatory across all jurisdictions and also introduced a zero carbon code. And the zero carbon code is for carbon emissions. And when I speak about carbon emissions, that is the carbon emissions that are created in the operation of your house. So your heating system when it’s running, of course, if it’s a gas fired furnace, then as that gas burns it creates greenhouse gas emissions. If you have an electric furnace or you have an electric heat pump, then those carbon emissions are dramatically reduced in British Columbia because the vast majority of the energy that we use as electricity is generated through hydro. And so the zero carbon code has been introduced, it has four levels and it right now is up to individual municipalities as to which of the four levels they’re enforcing. But over time, the province’s goal is to move that from just a measure your carbon for your project to a zero carbon code, which would mean that you would not be able to have any type of fossil fuel as your primary heating source simply.

So when we, you know, look at different projects, some projects particularly new construction, if a design specifically meets the intent of the bylaws in the building code for a new home on a vacant lot, the permit process is super simple. And really a good designer who is meeting the intent of the BC energy step code and zero carbon code shouldn’t have any trouble in creating a compliant permit application. But if we look at existing homes, particularly existing homes that could be 20 or 30 years old, it doesn’t really matter which jurisdiction you might be looking at. But again, I’ll use Whistler as an example. There are lots of situations where there has been work done in the past that may or may not have been done with a permit. If the work was done without a permit, then it may not comply with current bylaws or current building code.

So that goes back to an earlier comment that I made where it’s really important as you start a project like this to make a request with the RMOW or your local building department to get a copy of all the plans that they have on file. And so in a situation where you discover that there was work done without a permit, there may be a requirement to go and ask for a variance on that bylaw rec, recognizing that you can get variances on bylaws, but you cannot get variances on building code. So if something has been built that does not comply with the building code, then you would have to get an engineer in and figure out how you could bring that structure into compliance. But you can get variances on construction that was done outside of the bylaws. So really understanding how you might apply for that variance.

There are different ways, I’m not gonna get into this today, but there are different ways to approach space that doesn’t conform. We’ve had a project that we are just almost finished on that we started in 2022. So we made the application for permit in 2022. We did not actually receive our building permit until December of 2023. It took over a year and a half. It was a very complicated piece where we were dealing with some very difficult riparian issues. The ditch in front of the house was deemed as part of that riparian area, which I noted on earlier. There was a creek in relatively close proximity across the street. We had tree preservation areas that were covenanted on, on title that we had to get changed. And then of course we had two pieces of work that homeowners had done previously that didn’t conform and we had to go through a a development variance process.

And so there were a lot of moving pieces that were all really interconnected. And so there was an enormous amount of coordination between us as the builder, the design professional who was putting the permit application process together and staff both in planning and the building department. It was incredibly complicated and hence it, it took over a year and a half and we’re actually still waiting for one piece to finish up a deck extension on the main house. But it is very indicative of how complicated this can get and how important it is that you work with a team that is intimately, intimately knowledgeable about how to work with the municipality because it is potentially a project that may not have been granted approval for all the works that the homeowner wanted to do. I’m very confident that, you know, we’ve made, we’ve, we’ve completed sort of 90% of the work that was intended. We have a small piece left to do. We’re actually waiting for the zoning change to go to multifamily in Whistler because that will simplify the this, this last little piece of that.

So again, you know, understanding that those zoning changes were coming also helped us make sure that we had an application that had a high probability of success. So as we previously touched on, there are those three changes that are in process BC energy step code and that step code for houses had five steps one to five in say Whistler. Right now we are at the third step with an expectation that the municipality will move to the fourth step in 2024. There are regions across the province that for some applications are currently requiring that fourth level. The fifth level is a goal that the province has to move every single municipality to in 2020 in, sorry, in 2032. And that fifth level is deemed as net zero or essentially the highest level of energy performance that is practical for a residential house. And so between 2024, which is where we are today, and seven years from now, you will see all the municipalities move from their current mandatory step three to step four in 2027. That’s the province’s goal for step four. And then five years later at the next BC building code change, it would move to step five, which is net zero. And in lockstep with that most likely will be the zero carbon code. And so by 2032 for carbon emissions, and remember we talked about carbon emissions as being those greenhouse gas emissions from the operation of your house in 2020, sorry, in 2032 we will be at a zero zero

carbon code, which means that your primary, and this is important, your primary heating source needs to be a a zero carbon source. And so today, really the only zero carbon source that is prevalent within the industry is electric. And and most likely that would be cold climate heat pumps recognizing that there is technology under development, hydrogen being one of them that potentially could be in place, but looking for that zero carbon code in 2032.

Of course what we also talked about were the zoning changes that the province has mandated on all the municipalities it’s referred to right now as bill 44 for single family lots and it is a densification strategy to help address housing affordability. And I would guess it’ll take another three to six months before we truly understand what the consequences are in every municipality across the province. But that is something to keep an eye on because that will have a significant change on what you can do on your single family lots and and may create, you know, some different opportunities for people who are looking to try and create a better measure of affordability as they either look to buy a new home. Understanding that what might be on a house right now is on a lot is a single family house in 12 to 18 months could potentially be a 15 to 1800 square foot apartment in a block of four, which while isn’t necessarily a single family house, gives you that single family experience in a single family lot and something that may be significantly more affordable. And of course if we take, you know, every single family lot and over time we turn them all into to a fourplex potentially has the opportunity to increase the amount of housing available to Canadians by 400%. Recognizing that not every single house will follow this process, but I think that that is one of the most important changes to keep an eye on in the next couple years in the province in British Columbia.

The best advice I can give to people who are considering either building a new home or renovating a home, whether that’s renovating an existing house that you have or you’re looking to buy a house and renovate is consider strongly consider using an integrated design process. And an integrated design process includes not only the architect but the builder and all the partners that the builder would bring through construction into that design strategy. And this is well before you ever make a permit application. The risk of designing in a bit of a vacuum is that you design a house that may not be optimized for a location in which you wanna build, whether that is reflective of energy, step code zero, carbon code bylaws, free preservation areas, riparian areas, topography orientation. A local builder will bring a lot of insight into how to optimize that piece of property. And even more importantly is how do you optimize the cost of building that house in that location to those specific requirements that we touched on through this discussion, the builder will also bring in his key partners. 

And so in British Columbia, of course with BC Energy step code, we actually have to use a software model to determine what the energy efficiency of that house might be. And you need a specific trained individual called an energy advisor to do that for you. That is a certified position that is recognized by the province and the federal government. You need that expert on your team to be able to provide that document that says your design complies. And it is very important that that strategy is woven into the earliest part of your design. And then a component part of that is how are you gonna heat and cool your house because that is one of the most important things when you move into that house. You want assurances that that house is gonna be evenly warm in winter, it’s gonna be comfortable in the summertime. 

Right now we’re in the early part of July in 2024 and the news on the radio this morning is we have portions of the province that are likely gonna go over 40 degrees over the weekend. And so you can imagine that those people living in those communities where they’re gonna see 40 degree temperatures are gonna be very concerned about how they keep their house cool. And in today’s world of electrification and using cold climate heat pumps, of course the advantage there is that they include air conditioning and you wanna make sure that that air conditioning system is sized properly, that every room in your house is evenly cool. And the best way to make sure that that heating and cooling system works effectively and is cost effective to install is including that mechanical designer through the earliest stages of your architectural design so that when you go to make that permit application, you know you have a compliant house that meets all your family’s needs, it’s, it’s gonna be comfortable, it’s gonna be affordable to operate and that the cost of construction is consistent with what your goals are. Because if you try to bring your construction team in after you’ve made that permit application, there is a strong likelihood is that the design that you fabricated with your architect and the structural engineer is unlikely to be a good match to what your original budget was. 

And so that can be a nasty surprise when you’ve got a building permit, but now you can’t afford a builder. So best advice is put your team together early, follow an integrated design process. We do have a great video on our channel that we’ll talk you through the advantages of that in a little bit more detail.