Plan Check / Plan Review

Plan check (also called plan review) is the stage in which a building department's plan examiners review submitted construction drawings and calculations for compliance with the building, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and energy codes before issuing a permit. It sits between the application being filed and the permit being issued.

Plan check is why there is a gap — sometimes days, sometimes months — between a permit's date_filed and its date_issued. For larger projects, plan check can involve several review cycles and corrections. In permit data, a record stuck at a filed or in_progress status with no issue date often means it is still in plan review or was never approved. PermitStack normalizes both dates where the source provides them, so you can measure that review lag. Related: permit status and building permit.