Did you get lost in the tangle of building permits required to turn your dream into reality? • Yair Levy and the architect Dafna Biran cleared the veil of fog • Episode 07
In the seventh episode of ‘The Capitalist’ presented by Yair Levy, an expert in business real estate, on all the intricacies of the Israeli real estate world, he hosted Dafna Biran , managing partner of one of the leading architectural firms in Israel, for a conversation about building permits, the journey to the property, and the bureaucracy along the way.
“Thirty years ago, an architect would handle the issue of building permits himself while planning,” she shared. “It was a byproduct of the planning process. Little by little, this system got more and more complicated, and added many, many areas to itself. Today it is already a pupa that has risen from its creator. It is simply something that has an independent life. One of the problems is really the lack of uniformity – you come across different processes. Another problem is the uncertainty. There are projects that go through a long and tedious process. The system today is targeted, that is, without personnel in its absorption phase. Apparently we thought it would be a better thing, which would allow us to run faster, but in practice it is not so, we encounter the authorities Their level of familiarity with these tools is very problematic.”
Later, she added: “There is a problem of professional personnel in the authorities, in the licensing departments in particular. count the processing time again. I mean, they wanted to optimize, but they made the process endless. The process today is very inflexible.”
“There is an anomaly in the system”
What are the differences between the responsibilities of the architect and those of The city engineers, in terms of building permits? “The subject of self-licensing has been circulating in the legislative corridors for many years. There is an insatiable desire for control by the authorities in some ways. In advanced countries, a person who has completed 5 years at an academic institution and is planning as an architect or engineer, in addition to his rights, has many duties and responsibilities. When he submits Licensing program, all the responsibility is on him. This puts the developers and planners at a level where they will be careful not to work according to the standards and according to the instructions. When you only submit files to the Authority and it is the one that approves or disapproves you, a great deal of the responsibility remains with the Authority in the end. There is an anomaly in the system here.” .
In conclusion, Byrne clarified: “There are definitely regulators who take the power given to them and exploit it. At the same time, we also know of other authorities where they see that the power is going in the right directions, who do not want to complicate the processes. I think this should be the way.” .
