Hello from Ulama! I’m Tyce, Co–Founder and CEO of Ulama. My Co–Founder Max and I will be periodically sharing insights on construction permitting and what we’re building to fix it.

The Permit Predicament 😵‍💫

To start, a little framing for the work we’re doing. Construction in the United States is a trillion dollar industry. The construction industry is hugely consequential to the economy but is facing major challenges on several fronts: labor shortages, lingering covid-induced supply chain issues, and, most relevant for us at Ulama, a Kafkaesque regulatory landscape. Nowhere is the impact of this regulatory complexity more on display than in permitting processes.

For the uninitiated: permitting is the process of getting governmental approval to start construction. The specific governmental body that approves a project is typically called the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ). Project approval hinges on whether the project design, created by architects and engineers, meets all of the conditions laid out in an AHJ’s rules and regulations on construction. These rules and regulations are typically referred to as “codes.” The AHJs will have multiple codes that apply to any given project. AHJ plan reviewers must check that the project design is compliant with all of the relevant codes before construction can start.

The permitting dance kicks off with the submission of a heap of forms and design drawings to the AHJ. The design drawings are the interesting bit: they contain all the relevant details of the project, from high-level features like building size and number of floors to specific details like the exact dimensions of a toilet’s placement in a bathroom. Increasingly, these 2D construction drawings are derived from 3D building models as architects and engineers switch to doing their design work in 3D. A 2021 market report found that almost 90% of architects use 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM) for over half of their projects.

Once these forms and drawings are submitted to the reviewers at the AHJ, the reviewers compare the drawings to codes and flag elements in the design that need to be revised to be compliant with the codes. They then send the plans back to the architects and engineers with their revision requests.

Right here is where the permitting process really breaks down. The feedback that reviewers give is notoriously inconsistent, and architects often must explain and rework their designs multiple times before the reviewers finally approve them. Architects colloquially refer to the first set of designs submitted as the “rejection plan set” because it’s effectively certain that they’ll have to provide further proof that their designs are code-compliant or make design changes based on the individual reviewer’s particularities.

This back and forth can go on for months or even years. A proposal to build a public toilet in San Francisco underscores how bad permitting can be: even though the actual building is being constructed for free by contractors, the project will still cost $1.7M and has been stuck in permitting limbo for over fifteen months. Getting approval to build the bathroom requires sign-off from 8 different municipal agencies!

This problem isn’t just limited to toilets in SF. One troubling example: over the last 10 years, the average time to build residential buildings has steadily increased, with multi-family buildings seeing an increase of 63% in time to completion (see the chart below). Much of this extra time is directly attributable to permitting.

Average length of time to complete privately-owned residential buildings in the U.S. from 2012 - 2022

Our Solution 💡

We’re tackling the permitting predicament by addressing the broken code compliance review process. We’re building a plugin for Revit—the industry standard design tool used by architects to create 3D building models—to integrate code compliance analysis directly into the building design process and catch code compliance errors before designs are submitted for review.

We also provide the code analysis results as a supplemental report for the architect to submit alongside the design drawings. AHJ reviewers can use our analysis results to review design drawings and respond to architects more quickly with fewer revision requests. This translates into faster permit approvals and more shovels in the ground.

Our Story 📖

Max and I started Ulama after meeting as master’s students at Cornell Tech. I have over seven years of experience in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry as an urban planner and data engineer and have prior executive experience at an UrbanTech startup. Max has over ten years of technical leadership experience in software engineering and AI at several startups and Amazon. We’ll each introduce ourselves further in subsequent newsletter dispatches.

We’re driven by a simple thesis: we need to build stuff, fast. With delivery of housing and climate-action infrastructure more urgently necessary than ever, the construction industry needs to move at an unprecedented scale, but the lengthy and complex permitting process limits our ability to build.

Highlights 💪

We’ve been busy since we dreamed up Ulama! Here are some of our greatest hits (many thanks to Sarang Pramode, who launched Ulama with Max and I):

• Conducted 100+ stakeholder interviews, guiding our MVP development and business strategy

• Completed the National Science Foundation (NSF) I–Corps program

• Partnered with computational designers and won best overall hack at the AEC Tech Hackathon sponsored by CORE Studio at Thornton Tomasetti 

• Invited to submit an application for NSF SBIR funding, totaling up to $3M in non–dilutive funding

• Participating in the IP and market research program with the Innovation Law Center at Syracuse University

• Semifinalists in the TechImpact Startup Competition

• Completed the Talentpath Accelerator

Work With Us!

Our closed alpha for architects is about to launch, unlocking code compliance analysis within Revit. If you have faced delays in your projects due to code compliance and want to try a software solution, we’re here to help!

As an alpha tester, you’ll get:

• Early access to our Revit plug–in for automated code compliance

• The opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions and help shape our product roadmap

• A chance to influence the future of permitting

Want to reach us directly? Email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!