Build a week-by-week picture of the runway ahead: site measure-up, drafting, plan check, corrections and permit issuance. Everything here is the paperwork stretch, ending the day the permit is in hand. Construction sits outside it.
Nothing here is a quote, a bid, an engineering determination or a boundary determination. We are a drafting and design firm: we coordinate with a licensed structural engineer and a Licensed Land Surveyor when your project needs one, rather than performing or stamping that work ourselves.
Homeowners tend to assume the city is the bottleneck. Frequently it is not. The stretch ahead of plan check, measure-up through schematic design, owner review and then the full construction set, usually eats somewhere between a third and half of the calendar before a permit issues. It is also the part you have direct influence over.
Decision speed on your side moves the number more than anything else. Leave a schematic round unanswered for three weeks and permit issuance lands three weeks later, and no amount of drafting effort claws that back. Completeness is next. A permit set that shows up with a dimensioned site plan, energy documents that agree with the drawings and a coordinated structural package tends to return a short correction list. One assembled piecemeal returns a long one, and every correction cycle costs weeks.
Structural engineering is a real sequence dependency, not paperwork. Once beams, shear walls or foundation changes are in play, the engineer needs a settled architectural layout before running calculations, and any later change to that layout sends the calculations back around. Freezing the plan early is the cheapest schedule insurance available. We prepare the drawings and coordinate the engineer; the engineering work and the stamp are theirs.
One set of drawings can move at wildly different speeds depending on which counter receives it. Campbell, Santa Clara, Milpitas and Newark tend to hand a first residential review back sooner. Palo Alto, Atherton, Woodside and Menlo Park sit at the far end of the spread, with Los Gatos, Los Altos and San Jose somewhere in between, and in those places a deep queue, a design review overlay or a referral out to the historic or arborist desk can add real length to the first pass. Some departments screen at intake and bounce an incomplete package before it ever joins the queue, which stings in the moment and usually saves time overall.
Several Bay Area cities run over-the-counter or express review for small, well-defined scopes, and those programs can compress a multi-week first review into one appointment. Eligibility is narrow and the rules get revised often, so ask the department directly rather than assuming your project qualifies.
Where unpermitted work already sits on the property, set aside weeks at the front for pulling records and measuring as-builts, because nothing else can start until that is done. Documenting what is standing is the foundation the entire submittal rests on — our code violation, red tag and restoration page follows that path through.
It does not. Every phase in the estimator stops at permit issuance. Construction scheduling, contractor availability and the inspections that happen during the build are a separate timeline and your contractor's to manage. Read this as the paperwork runway before any ground gets broken.
Nobody can guarantee that, us included. Review duration and the approval decision rest with the building department. These ranges reflect what is typical across the Bay Area and shift with submittal completeness, department staffing and current backlog. What we control is the quality and completeness of the drawings, which is the lever that most dependably shortens the calendar.
Pick The Bay Area, which applies a mid-range plan check window. The list covers the jurisdictions Sunny Drafting & Design works in most often, and neighboring cities generally fall inside the same spread. For an unusual jurisdiction, phone their permit counter and ask what first-review turnaround is running right now, since that number tracks staffing and backlog.
Usually barely at all. CF1R preparation normally runs alongside the construction drawings rather than waiting for them, so the calendar cost is often close to nothing. It only becomes a delay when it gets deferred to the end, or when the energy documents and the drawings contradict each other and both need reworking.
Turn schematic review around promptly, freeze the layout before structural calculations start, and submit something complete the first time. Corrections and resubmittal carries the widest range of any phase on the list, and how wide it runs is driven almost entirely by how complete the original submittal was.
Residential or commercial, drafting or Title 24 — send a few details and we'll follow up with next steps and a free quote.
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