The honest answer is that the drawing is rarely what takes the time. The review cycle is. And the length of that cycle depends less on your project than on which municipality you are in and how complete your application was on the day you filed it.
What the clock is actually measuring
A permit timeline has three parts, and only the first is under your control:
- Preparation. Measuring the space, the code analysis, the drawings, the consultant input. Typically a few weeks.
- First review. The city reads it and issues comments. This is the long one.
- Resubmission cycles. You answer, they re-read. Each round adds time, and how many rounds you get is largely a function of how good the first submission was.
Across the region
Broadly, and with the caveat that every municipality’s queue moves with its workload:
- Vancouver has the most structured process and the most documentation requirements. Straightforward fit-outs move reasonably; anything involving change of use or a Part 3 building takes longer.
- Burnaby is generally predictable, with clear expectations about what a complete application looks like.
- Surrey has been managing significant volume, and complete applications are rewarded noticeably.
- North Vancouver — both the City and the District — is a smaller queue but has its own particular requirements worth knowing in advance.
- Coquitlam tends to be workable, with the usual caveat about change of use.
Rather than quote week counts that go stale, we check the current queue with the municipality when we scope a project, because the honest number in March is not the honest number in September.
What actually causes delay
In our experience, almost all of it comes down to five things:
- An incomplete first submission — missing a consultant letter, or a code analysis that does not address the obvious question.
- A change of use nobody flagged at the start.
- Drawings that do not match what is physically in the unit.
- Slow responses to city comments. A week to answer becomes a week added.
- Scope changing mid-review, which restarts conversations.
How to protect your opening date
Work backwards from it. If you need to be trading by a certain month, count back through construction, inspections, the permit cycle, the drawing time and the lease negotiation. Most people discover they needed to start earlier than they did — which is useful to know while there is still time to act on it.
We apply as your authorized agent, so city comments come to us and get answered the same week rather than sitting in an inbox. That single change removes more calendar time than any other.