Understanding processes on digital building permits – a case study in South Tyrol

Abstract

Building permitting plays a significant role in life cycles of buildings because without a building permit a legal construction fails. However, digitalization in building permit, authorities is rare in a global context and issuing a building permit is primarily a manual and time-consuming process. In current research approaches on digital building permits, the focus lays on the digitalization of building-related regulation checks. Even if the approaches cover an important step in the building permit process, other significant steps such as administrative processes are neglected. In preliminary research, a building permit process model for structuring action-oriented elements was developed and transferred and applied to a Building Information Modelling (BIM)-oriented and process-based web application prototype, which serves as a basis. An empirical study–using qualitative expert interviews in a building permit authority in South Tyrol (Italy)–was conducted to simulate a BIM-oriented building permit review as well as to investigate the building permit processes thoroughly. The results show a classification of the information needed for digital tools supporting the building permit process, building permit processes of the case study authority, and the digital tools used. In the discussion, knowledge gained from a comparison between other building permit processes is presented alongside considerations for follow-up research.