What a project report must contain under Spain’s building code, and how to review it before submission

The short version

This guide follows the order of the code itself: what the report is, what each stage requires, each section with what it must say and the mistakes that keep coming back, how to justify each basic document, the annexes and regulations that go with it, how it changes with the type of work and, at the end, a five-pass review method with its checklist. It is written for work in Spain, so the rules are Spanish; every one links to its official text.

Which works this guide applies to, and which it does not

The Annex I report belongs to a building project. The building code applies to public and private buildings whose projects need a permit (Part I, article 2.1), and the Building Act treats a building’s fixed installations and its own equipment as part of it (article 2.3). Outside building work, this guide helps only in part or not at all:

Type of work	Does this guide apply?	What governs instead or as well
New building of any use: housing, offices, hotel, public facility, industrial shed	In full	The plan in force, for the planning table.
New development on a plot that is already serviced	In full: it is the standard case	As above.
Refurbishment, alteration or extension that changes the building’s configuration	In full, with the criteria for existing buildings	Code article 2.3: effective compliance and no worsening.
Change of main use	In full	First, whether the plan permits the use.
Work on a listed building	In full	The heritage list and, where involved, the heritage authority’s report.
Alteration that does not change the configuration (minor works)	In part: the code applies to the work, but a full project is not required	Whatever the bylaw asks for: a technical report, a responsible declaration or prior notice.
Minor construction: neither residential nor public, single storey	No, not as a project	The municipal bylaw.
Urban development from scratch: local plan, detailed study, land readjustment	No	Each region’s planning law and regulations set the content of each instrument.
Urbanisation project: streets, networks, open space	Not Annex I, but yes to the waste and health and safety studies, which govern any construction work	Planning law, bylaws and public-space accessibility (Order TMA/851/2021).
Civil works that are not buildings: roads, networks, treatment plants	Not Annex I; waste and health and safety, yes	The sector rules for each kind of infrastructure.
Business or opening licence with no works	No	The activity report required by regional rules and the bylaw.
Installation with its own project: heating and cooling, telecoms, low voltage	Not the general report	Its regulation sets the content; it is coordinated with the building project.

A development from scratch happens in two stages. First the planning and the urbanisation works, to which this guide does not apply: planning law sets their content, and what gets reviewed are parameters such as floor area, land transfers or the affordable housing reserve. Then each building raised on the resulting plots, which does have its own project and building code report. What works in every case is the method at the end: review against the list of what is required, cross-check every figure between documents and cite the source.

What the report is and why it is scrutinised

Spain’s Building Act (Ley 38/1999 de Ordenación de la Edificación, LOE) defines the project as the set of documents that define and determine the technical requirements of the works, and adds an obligation that is often read too quickly: the project must technically justify the proposed solutions according to the applicable technical rules (article 4.1). The drawings say what is built; the report says why it complies. That is why it is the most read document and the one that triggers most requests for information.

Not every job needs a project. The same Act (article 2.2) requires one for new construction, except works of minor scale and technical simplicity that are neither residential nor public and have a single storey; for interventions on existing buildings that alter their architectural configuration, which include full interventions and partial ones that substantially change the exterior composition, the volume or the structural system, or change the building’s main use; and for full interventions on listed or protected buildings, or partial ones affecting their protected elements. The construction project for those works is also among the documents that must be certified by the professional body (visado), under Royal Decree 1000/2010, article 2(a).

And it is not read by one person. Each reader looks for something different, and it pays to write with all of them in mind:

Who reads it	What they look for
Planning officer	That the project complies with the local plan and bylaws, and that each requirement is justified so it can be checked without calling you.
Professional body	That the document is complete, signed by the right person and carries the mandatory annexes.
Contractor	Which systems and finishes are described, because that drives the price and the arguments on site.
Technical control and insurer	Calculation assumptions, foundations and envelope: whatever can cause damage.
Site management	What was committed: performance, limits of use and the quality control plan.
Client and users	Which building they get and how it can be used.

The building code (CTE) completes the framework in article 6 of its Part I: the project must describe the building in enough detail to be valued and interpreted unambiguously, the basic project defines the general features of the works, and the construction project develops the basic one without changing the uses or the permit conditions and without lowering the performance declared in the basic project. That last idea is the one most often forgotten when the design changes between stages.

Basic and construction project: what each stage requires

The content of a project is set in Annex I of Part I of the building code. It is a list of minimums that applies «without prejudice to what the competent authorities establish»: if your council has documentation guidance for permits, or your region requires its own forms, those come on top. In the annex, the sections marked with an asterisk are those the basic project must already contain. And Annex III clarifies what each stage is for: the basic project is enough to apply for the permit, but not to start building.

Document and section	Basic project	Construction project
Descriptive report: agents, preliminary information, project description, performance	Yes	Yes, updated
Construction report: building support (ground)	Yes (soil characteristics)	Yes, with the geotechnical study
Construction report: structure, envelope, partitions, finishes, services, equipment	Not as a minimum	Yes
Code compliance: fire safety	Yes	Yes
Code compliance: structure, safety in use and accessibility, health, noise, energy	Not as a minimum (the council may ask for it)	Yes
Compliance with other regulations	Whatever the permit requires	Yes
Annexes to the report	Whatever the permit requires	Yes
Drawings	Location, site, external works, floor plans, roofs, elevations and sections	Plus: structure, services, construction details and graphic reports
Specifications	No	Yes
Bill of quantities	No	Yes
Estimate	Approximate, by chapter	Detailed, with price list and summary

In practice, many councils already ask for the accessibility justification and their own planning or habitability forms at basic stage. Before writing a word, have your council’s list of permit documents to hand: it is the one that rules over the minimum.

When the project is completed by partial projects (structure, services, telecoms), the Act requires coordination between them «without duplicating documentation» (article 4.2 of the LOE). In plain terms: the report refers to the partial project and summarises its assumptions, but does not copy its calculations. Copying is the fastest way for two documents to end up saying different things.

The descriptive report, section by section

1.1 Agents

Client, designer and other professionals: authors of partial projects, consultants and, once appointed, the site architect and the construction manager. It looks trivial and causes returns: the client in the report differs from the one on the application, a professional from another project appears, or the author of the health and safety study is missing. Check that the agents are the same in the report, the permit application, the appointment and the signatures on the annexes.

1.2 Preliminary information

The annex asks for background and starting conditions, site data, physical surroundings, planning rules, other rules where relevant and, for refurbishment, alteration or extension, data on the existing building and any reports already made. It is the section that orients the planning officer: when it is done well, the rest is read with confidence.

Background: the commission, prior consultations with the council, reports already issued, previous permits on the property.
Site: address, cadastral reference, plot area and where it comes from (cadastre, land registry or survey). If they disagree, say so and state which one you use.
Physical surroundings: topography, orientation, neighbouring buildings, easements, trees, existing utility connections.
Planning rules: the local plan in force, the land classification and zoning, the zone bylaw and, where it exists, heritage protection or listing.
Other rules: sector constraints (roads, water, coast, aviation easements, heritage) where they apply.
Existing building, if any: year, structural system, condition, past interventions and inspection reports.

The clearest way to present the planning rules is a table that compares, parameter by parameter, what the plan allows with what the project proposes, citing the article. It is the first thing the permit reviewer will look for:

Parameter	Plan (article)	Project	Complies?
Classification and zoning	As per the plan in force	—	—
Use	Use permitted by the zone bylaw	Proposed use	Yes / No
Minimum plot	Minimum area and frontage	Plot data	Yes / No
Site coverage	Maximum percentage	Project coverage	Yes / No
Floor area ratio	m² of floor per m² of land	Countable floor area	Yes / No
Height	Storeys and metres	Storeys and metres	Yes / No
Setbacks and building lines	From boundaries, from the street, buildable depth	Dimensions on drawing	Yes / No
Parking	Spaces per dwelling or per area	Spaces provided	Yes / No

1.3 Project description

It is the heart of the descriptive report. The annex asks for the general description of the building, the brief, the main use and any other uses, the relation to the surroundings, compliance with the code and other rules, the geometry, volume, net and gross areas, access and evacuation, and the parameters that drive the technical provisions for each system: structure, partitions, envelope, finishes, environmental services and utilities.

Main use. Write it in the code’s words, not the client’s: it drives design occupancy, escape routes, accessibility requirements and the permit procedure. If there are secondary uses (a shop on the ground floor, a car park), name them and say how they are separated.
Area schedule. Net area by room, gross area by floor and in total, and the area that counts towards the floor area ratio under the bylaw’s criteria. They are not the same and must not add up the same. State the criteria you apply to terraces, projections, basements and attic space, because every plan has its own.
Access and evacuation. Describe them so they match the occupancy calculation and the escape routes in the fire section. It is the same figure in two places.
System parameters. At basic stage the provisions are enough (imposed loads, climate zone, required level of water-tightness, type of services). They are the assumptions the construction project will not be able to contradict.

1.4 Building performance

Performance is expressed by basic requirement and in relation to the code’s requirements. The annex also asks for two things that are rarely written well: any performance agreed with the client above the code thresholds (if the client wants more sound insulation than required, this is where it is recorded) and the limits of use of the building as a whole and of each space and installation.

Limits of use are not a formality. A residential imposed load on a slab later rules out an archive on it; occupancy calculated for one use rules out another. Writing it down protects the user, who knows what they can do with the building, and the architect, who records what it was designed for.

The construction report

This is what turns the basic project into one that can be built. The annex orders it by system and, for each one, asks you to define the solution and justify how it performs against the requirements that affect it.

2.1 Building support

Soil characteristics and the parameters used to design the foundations. Already at basic stage: even without the geotechnical study, state which data you are working with and where they come from. At construction stage, foundations are designed with the study’s data, which is attached as an annex. The typical mistake is foundations designed on an assumed bearing pressure that nobody updated when the study arrived.

2.2 Structural system

Foundations, load-bearing structure and floors, with the starting data and assumptions, the brief, the design basis, the methods used and the material properties. The reference rules are the Structural Safety basic document and its documents on actions, foundations, steel, masonry and timber, the Structural Code for concrete and steel and, where applicable, the seismic standard. Calculations go in an annex; the report summarises assumptions and results.

For existing buildings there is a sentence the code requires and many reports leave out: the designer must state whether or not the intervention includes work on the existing structure (Part I, article 2.4). If it does not, the works are understood not to compromise the building’s stability. One line, and it avoids a request for information.

2.3 Envelope

Façades, roofs, ground-bearing floors, party walls and openings, defined constructionally and with their behaviour against: self-weight, wind and earthquake; fire (external spread); safety in use; water drainage and moisture; sound insulation; thermal insulation and energy demand; and, in general, their design basis.

The practical advice: give each envelope type a name (F1, F2, R1…) and use it identically in the report, the detail drawings, the quantities and the energy justification. When a façade goes by three different names, nobody can check that the U-value in the report is the one in the construction detail.

2.4 Partitions

Internal partitions with their fire behaviour and sound insulation. Two basic documents meet here: fire compartmentation and noise protection between units. A partition between two flats is not the same as one between two bedrooms.

2.5 Finishes

Linings and finishes with the requirements that affect them: slip resistance of floors by use and location, reaction to fire of linings, durability. They are often described by their look and the required class is forgotten, which is what the contractor has to buy.

2.6 Building services

The annex lists: fire protection, intruder protection, lightning protection, electricity, lighting, lifts, transport, water supply, liquid and solid waste disposal, ventilation, telecoms, heating and cooling, fuel supply, energy saving and the use of solar thermal or photovoltaic and other renewable energy. For each: starting data, objectives, performance and design basis.

Several of these services have their own regulations and, above a certain size, their own project. Two examples with their official threshold: the Thermal Installations Regulation (RITE) requires a project when the rated heating or cooling output exceeds 70 kW, and accepts a technical report between 5 and 70 kW (article 15). And Royal Decree-law 1/1998 prevents authorising the construction or full refurbishment of the buildings it covers — including those held under horizontal property — unless the architectural project is accompanied by the shared telecoms infrastructure project (article 3.1). Where there is a specific project, the report cites it, summarises what it imposes on the building (plant rooms, risers, roofs) and does not repeat it.

2.7 Equipment

Definition of bathrooms, kitchens and laundries, and of industrial equipment where present. Short, but consistent with the furniture plans and the services that feed it.

How to justify each basic document

The third block of the report is compliance with the building code, basic document by basic document. The annex also asks you to justify any performance above the required levels. This is the structure of each one under Part I of the code; the full documents are on the official CTE website.

Basic document	Requirements	What the justification must include
DB-SE Structural safety	SE 1 Strength and stability. SE 2 Serviceability.	Actions considered, combinations, materials, design method and serviceability checks. Reference to the calculation annex.
DB-SI Fire safety	SI 1 Internal spread. SI 2 External spread. SI 3 Evacuation. SI 4 Fire protection installations. SI 5 Fire brigade access. SI 6 Structural fire resistance.	Use, compartments and their area, occupancy by room, number of exits and route lengths measured on the drawings, widths, installations and structural resistance. Already at basic stage.
DB-SUA Safety in use and accessibility	SUA 1 Falls. SUA 2 Impact or entrapment. SUA 3 Being trapped. SUA 4 Poor lighting. SUA 5 High occupancy. SUA 6 Drowning. SUA 7 Moving vehicles. SUA 8 Lightning. SUA 9 Accessibility.	Level changes and barriers, stairs and ramps, floor slip class, lighting, accessible routes and accessible elements. Sections that do not apply, with the reason.
DB-HS Health	HS 1 Moisture. HS 2 Waste storage. HS 3 Indoor air quality. HS 4 Water supply. HS 5 Drainage. HS 6 Radon.	Required water-tightness and solutions per element, waste storage, ventilation rates, network sizing and, depending on the town, radon protection.
DB-HR Noise	One requirement: protection against noise.	Room types, separating solutions between units and with common or plant areas, and façades according to outdoor noise.
DB-HE Energy saving	HE 0 Energy use. HE 1 Demand control. HE 2 Thermal installations. HE 3 Lighting. HE 4 Renewables for hot water. HE 5 Renewable power generation. HE 6 EV charging.	Climate zone, envelope with its U-values, calculated consumption and demand, renewable contribution and charging provision where there is parking.

Three principles separate a solid justification from a box-ticking one:

Every figure with its origin. «Complies with DB-SI» justifies nothing. «Occupancy of 84 people per the table for this use, two exits, maximum route measured on drawing A-04» does. The reviewer must be able to reach the figure without asking you.
What does not apply is justified too. A section that does not apply is named with the reason: drowning in a building without pools or tanks, moving vehicles without a car park. Silence reads as an oversight.
Alternative solutions, with their reasoning. The code itself accepts solutions that depart from the basic documents if they are shown to reach the required performance. If you use one, the burden of proof sits in the report.

In existing buildings the code is more flexible, but it must be written down. If applying the code is not viable in planning, technical or economic terms, or is incompatible with the nature of the work or the building’s protection, the designer may adopt, on their own judgement and responsibility, the solutions that allow «the greatest possible degree of effective compliance». The limitations are justified in the project, the level of performance reached and any conditions of use and maintenance must be recorded and, above all, pre-existing conditions that are already below the code cannot be made worse (Part I, article 2.3).

Compliance with other regulations

The building code is not the only set of rules the report must justify. The most common, depending on the project:

Regional accessibility. On top of DB-SUA, each region has its own rules and often its own forms. In Andalusia, Decree 293/2009 and its justification forms and tables, approved by Order of 9 January 2012. The forms do not replace the drawings: what they declare must be measurable on them.
Telecoms: the shared infrastructure, with its own technical project when the building falls under Royal Decree-law 1/1998.
Heating and cooling (RITE), low voltage (the Low Voltage Electrical Regulation) and fire protection (its installations regulation, on top of DB-SI).
Municipal bylaws: building, heritage protection, dropped kerbs, waste or noise. They change most from one town to another and are the most often forgotten.
Sector rules for the use: tourism, healthcare, education, entertainment or business activities, and the environmental procedure your region applies.
Housing habitability or design standards, where the region or town regulates them.

A warning about versions: always cite the version in force. Still citing repealed rules — the old 2013 energy certification procedure, for instance, replaced by the 2021 one — is one of the clearest signs of inherited text.

The annexes that go with the report

The code’s annex lists those attached to the report: geotechnical information, structural calculations, fire protection, building services, energy efficiency, environmental impact study where required, quality control plan and the health and safety study or basic study. Others are required by other rules. The three most requested and most argued over:

Construction waste management study

Required by Royal Decree 105/2008 in the construction project, with a minimum content set in its article 4.1.a:

An estimate of the quantity of waste, in tonnes and cubic metres, coded according to the European waste list.
Waste prevention measures on site.
The reuse, recovery or disposal operations it will go to.
Separation measures on site.
Drawings of the facilities for storage, handling and separation.
The specification clauses for those operations.
The cost of waste management, which forms part of the estimate as a separate chapter.

For demolition, refurbishment, repair or alteration it adds an inventory of hazardous waste and its selective removal (article 4.1.b). If the report says there is hazardous waste and the estimate has no item for removing it, the reviewer will notice.

Health and safety study, or basic study

Royal Decree 1627/1997 requires the client to have a full health and safety study drawn up at design stage when any of these conditions applies (article 4.1), and a basic study for all other works (article 4.2):

A contract price of 75 million pesetas (450,759.08 euros) or more.
An estimated duration of more than 30 working days with more than 20 workers on site at the same time at some point.
An estimated labour volume — the sum of all workers’ working days — above 500.
Tunnels, galleries, underground conduits and dams.

The full study has its own report, specification, drawings, quantities and estimate (article 5.2); the basic study identifies the risks that can be avoided and those that cannot, with their preventive measures (article 6.2). Check that the option chosen is consistent with the budget and programme stated in the report.

Energy performance certificate of the project

Royal Decree 390/2021 states that the project certificate is obtained from the characteristics specified in the construction project and is incorporated into it; it is signed by a qualified professional, and at completion the as-built certificate is issued from the building’s actual characteristics, so the two can be compared (article 9). It is also mandatory for some refurbishments and extensions, including work on more than 25% of the thermal envelope or renewing heating and cooling installations that need a project under RITE.

Drawings, specification, quantities and estimate: what must match the report

The report does not live alone. The same annex governs the rest of the project, and almost every return comes from a figure that says one thing in the report and another elsewhere.

Basic drawings: location referred to the plan in force, with geographic north; site plan with the planning justification, building lines and setbacks; external works with roads and utility connections; dimensioned floor plans with uses and furniture; roofs with falls and rainwater collection; dimensioned elevations and sections with heights and thicknesses. For refurbishment, the existing state too.
Construction drawings: structure, services, construction details and graphic reports.
Specification: administrative clauses and technical requirements for materials, execution of work items and checks on the finished building.
Bill of quantities: items grouped in chapters, with the technical descriptions needed to price them.
Estimate: approximate by chapter at basic stage; detailed at construction stage, with price list, chapter summary, construction and contract value, and the quality control and health and safety budgets.

This is the table worth running through before submitting. Each row is a figure that appears in several documents and must be identical in all of them:

Figure	Where it appears	What to check
Gross floor area	Report schedule, drawings, planning form, energy certificate, statistics and fees	Same total and same measuring criteria everywhere.
Countable floor area	Planning table, floor plans	That the bylaw’s criteria are applied and the allowance is not exceeded.
Use and number of units	Descriptive report, drawings, accessibility forms, telecoms, fire	Same number of flats, shops and bedrooms.
Occupancy	Fire justification, evacuation drawings	That routes and widths on the drawing match that occupancy.
Envelope build-up	Construction report, energy justification, details, quantities, certificate	Same layers, thicknesses and U-values.
Thermal output	Services report, RITE documents	That the document provided (project or technical report) is the one that output requires.
Waste	Management study, drawings, specification, estimate	That the cost sits in a separate chapter and matches.
Construction budget	Report summary, estimate, health and safety study	Same amount, and that it supports the type of study chosen.

How it changes with the type of work

The annex’s contents are the same for every project, but the weight of each section changes a lot. What matters most in each case:

New multi-unit housing

The whole annex applies at full length. What gets reviewed most: the planning table, evacuation and compartmentation (including the separation of the car park), accessibility of common areas and reserved flats, noise protection between flats, the full energy justification with charging provision where there is parking, and the telecoms project.

Single-family house

It always needs a project: the Act’s minor-works exception does not cover residential buildings. Fire and accessibility requirements are lighter, but they do not disappear: they are justified within their scope. Foundations (a geotechnical study where the plot has no data), envelope and energy, external works and connections carry the most weight. A detached house not held under horizontal property nor let for more than a year falls outside the shared telecoms infrastructure obligation.

Refurbishment and alteration

Here the report changes nature: what exists must be described before what is done. Information on the existing building and previous reports, drawings of the current state, the sentence on whether the structure is touched, the justification of each requirement under the effective-compliance and no-worsening criteria of article 2.3, the hazardous waste inventory and, where triggered, the energy certificate. The most expensive mistake is justifying as new build what cannot be met, or staying silent about what is not met.

Change of use

Any change of the main use of an existing building must meet the code’s basic requirements; if it affects only part of it, on the terms the basic documents set (Part I, article 2.6). Before the code comes the plan: the new use must be permitted. Then come the housing or business conditions, accessibility, energy for the new use and, for a shop becoming a home, noise from neighbouring premises and the ground floor. We cover it in detail in retail to residential change of use.

Listed or protected building

A full intervention on a listed building always requires a project. The report must identify the protection level and the protected elements per the heritage list, justify that the work respects them and, where the code cannot be met because of that protection, say so under the criteria of article 2.3. If another authority (heritage) is involved, its report is part of the application.

Non-residential uses and businesses

Retail, hospitality, offices, education, healthcare or public assembly: the use changes occupancy, evacuation, protection installations and required accessibility. A business or environmental procedure specific to each region usually comes on top, plus sector rules for the use. Confirm at the outset whether the council processes works and activity together or separately, because it changes what the report must contain.

Twelve mistakes that trigger requests for information

They are the ones that recur most often in applications, and almost all can be caught before submission:

Sections that only exist in the contents. The contents promise a section that is never developed, or is dealt with in one line. For the reviewer, it is as if it were not there.
Text inherited from another project. Paragraphs describing another building, another number of bedrooms or another town. The author misses them; the reviewer does not.
Schedules that do not match. The report’s area schedule and the drawings’ add up differently, or a room appears under another name.
Repealed rules or the wrong version. Citing a superseded rule, or a version of the basic document that does not match the application date.
Generic justification. «Complies» with no calculation, no figure and no reference to a drawing.
Inconsistent occupancy and evacuation. The report’s occupancy does not match the rooms on the drawing, or routes were measured on an earlier layout.
Forms that cannot be seen on the drawings. The accessibility form declares a turning space or a width the drawing does not dimension.
Undeclared measuring criteria. Countable area is calculated with criteria other than the bylaw’s, or none are stated.
Incomplete estimate. No separate waste chapter, no health and safety, or no quality control.
In refurbishments, silence about the structure. No statement on whether the work affects the existing structure.
Specific projects that never arrive. The report refers to a services or telecoms project that is not provided, or that says something else.
Location plan without the plan. No reference to the plan in force, or no north point.

How to review it before submission: five passes

Reading the report from start to finish does not find these mistakes: the text reads well even when it is wrong. It works better to review it several times, looking for one thing each time.

1. Scope. Type of work, use, stage and town. From that, the list of what must be submitted: the code’s annex, the council’s document list, the regional forms and the regulations that apply. It is the yardstick for everything else.
2. Structure. Contents against content. Every required section is developed or states expressly that it does not apply and why.
3. Figures. Run through the shared-figures table: areas, units, occupancy, envelope, outputs, waste, budget. Every figure identical in every document.
4. Regulations. Every rule cited is in force and in its right version. Every basic document justified with figures and references to drawings or annexes.
5. The reviewer’s read. Read it as the planning officer: can they check every statement without calling you? Signatures, dates, drawing numbers consistent with the contents and clear file names.

Checklist

Same agents in report, application and annexes.
Site with cadastral reference and the source of the plot area.
Planning table with the article for each parameter.
Main use in the code’s terms; secondary uses separated.
Net, gross and countable areas, with their criteria, matching the drawings.
Agreed performance and limits of use written down.
Ground data and their source; geotechnical study at construction stage.
In refurbishments: whether the structure is touched or not.
Envelope with unique names, identical in report, details, quantities and energy.
Every basic document justified with figures; sections that do not apply, with the reason.
In existing buildings: limitations justified and performance reached.
Regional accessibility forms that can be measured on the drawings.
Specific projects cited and provided (thermal, telecoms, electrical).
Complete waste study and its cost as a separate chapter.
Full or basic health and safety study per Royal Decree 1627/1997.
Project energy certificate attached, where required.
Rules cited in force, in the right version.
Complete basic drawings; location with plan and north.
Estimate with quality control and health and safety.
Not a single sentence from another project.

Which part of the review AI can do

Passes 2 and 3 are mechanical and long: checking that every required section is there, telling apart those that only appear in the contents, cross-checking areas against the drawings and finding the inherited paragraph. It is exactly the kind of work a tool that reads documents does in minutes and without tiring.

What it should not do is write the justification of a solution for you: that is design judgement and it is your signature. What helps is being told what is missing and where, with the correction proposed from the figure on the drawing and a source for every statement.

It is what Archelo does with every report you import. You can see how it works on AI for architects.

Official sources

This guide summarises rules in force at the date of publication and does not replace their official text or each council’s own requirements.

The Archelo team