This is now beginning to get frustrating.

How many more times am I going to have to explain that the drawings for planning are not enough to satisfy the Building Regulations.

I’ve written a stack of blog posts, produced fact sheets, explained face to face; yet still the message is not getting across.

The drawings for your Planning Permission are probably not enough to satisfy the Building Regulations requirements or enough to instruct your builder to construct from.

This is perfectly explained on the Mayo County Council Web site on Building Regulations/Commencement

“The drawings submitted for your planning permission are not for building control purposes and are not likely to be sufficient to demonstrate compliance with Building Regulations or to instruct a builder in the proper execution of the works.”

This misunderstanding has arisen because there is no check of Building Regulation drawings; the drawings are approved for planning and consumers (some) assume that these drawings are now approved also to build from. Clients don’t even realise that there are two separate departments in the Council; Planning & Building Control. Some clients don’t even know that Building Control even exists! The purpose of the new Building Regulations Amendments (S.I.No.9 of 2014) was to make this process better understood; the problem is that although the drawings are submitted, they are still not ‘checked and approved’. There’s still nothing to stop ‘Designers’ submitting sub-standard drawings that will still not comply with the Building Regulations.

Even if you think you’ve bought the construction drawings as part of your service, you probably haven’t. It’s highly likely that your drawings are crap, laughable and would be laughed at by a half-decent Building Control system… Drawings submitted for Planning Permission by ‘Draughtsmen’ etc… are generally too detailed for planning but lack sufficient detail for Building Control. The drawings are neither one thing nor another.

In the next few posts I’m going to explain how this arisen, how the Irish construction world should be and how Architects and Engineers can work together…