Introduction
Councils and planning consultancies are increasingly exploring the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) into planning decision-making to increase efficiency, improve decision accuracy and consistency, and reduce costs.
This article looks specifically at how AI can improve workflows related to planning decisions and reports (e.g. resource consents, development applications, environmental impact assessments, and assessments of environmental effects) and practical considerations for successfully implementing solutions within organisations.
Current State and Pain Points
Councils currently rely on largely manual processes for planning decisions and reporting. These processes involve:
Use of Word templates, practice notes, and conditions manuals.
Knowledge retained in senior planners' experience and judgment.
Manual review and quality assurance (QA).
GIS tools to analyse spatial information.
Reliance on past projects to inform decision-making.
Limited or incomplete recording of rules assessments, with a degree of trust required to ensure all rule triggers are identified.
Key Pain Points
Extended timeframes, additional costs, and high burden on senior planning staff all result from:
Template Adaptation: Significant time is spent customising templates for each proposal. Planning decisions often require a structured, methodical approach, but existing templates can be clunky and manually intensive to adapt.
Template and Process Maintenance: The constantly evolving planning framework demands continuous updating of templates and processes. This maintenance is time-consuming and can prevent more strategic efficiency improvements.
Comprehensive Reporting Requirements: The legal framework requires highly accurate and thorough documentation, leading to repetitive tasks and the need for senior oversight.
Top-Down Assessments: Decision-making can be driven by high-level analysis without fully narrowing down key issues, leading to inefficient or unfocused assessments.
Potential AI Applications
AI presents several opportunities to improve the planning assessment and reporting process:
Report Generation: Automating the production of planning reports by selecting relevant templates and pre-populating sections based on past reports and responses to similar issues.
Guided / Assisted Plan Assessments: AI-powered tools can match proposals and application documents to the planning framework, completing technical assessments and mapping out compliance pathways.
Decision Support: AI can analyse past decisions and surface relevant cases to inform planners and improve decision consistency.
Automated pre-lodgement advice and screening: AI can assist improving application quality upfront by automating quality checks and providing feedback prior to applications being lodged.
Benefits
Efficiency Gains: Automation reduces the time required for template adaptation, document review, and report writing.
Improved Accuracy and Consistency: AI tools can ensure all relevant rules and considerations are identified and assessed.
Cost Reduction: Reduced reliance on senior staff for repetitive tasks allows planners to focus on higher-value assessments and decision-making.
Risks and Barriers
Reliability
AI outputs must be accurate and dependable. Inaccurate or vague outputs erode trust, leading to additional QA effort and undermining efficiency gains.
Going from ‘looks good’ to ‘actually useful’. There is significant work in taking AI solutions from producing good looking results occasionally to reliable and trustworthy results at scale.
Defining Processes
Many councils lack planning processes being defined to required levels. Current practices are fragmented across templates and planner knowledge. Without clear processes, AI systems risk producing inconsistent or inaccurate outputs.
Human Judgment and Accountability
Decisions can’t be fully automated and planners need to stay in the drivers seat. Planners remain ultimately responsible for decisions and need transparency and oversight of AI-generated content and logic. Legal accountability cannot be shifted to AI systems.
Key Considerations
Human-in-the-loop Approach: AI should support, not replace, human judgment. Outputs should guide planners while allowing for manual oversight and adjustments.
Process Mapping: Councils should define and document their planning workflows to ensure AI systems operate on accurate, structured inputs.
Transparency: AI-generated assessments and recommendations must be traceable to source information and explainable to planners and external stakeholders.
Implementation Pathways
Process Definition: Engage planners to map and standardise decision-making workflows before deploying AI solutions.
Iterative Deployment: Masterminding projects upfront leads to scope expanding in the absence of the real data and feedback that grounds results. Gather feedback from early adopters to refine AI tools before wider rollout.
Structured approach: Avoid ad-hoc and inconsistent use of technology. Identify proven technical solutions and specific areas for applying them in workflows.
Upskilling: Provide targeted training based on staff needs.
Conclusion
AI adoption offers significant potential to improve efficiency, accuracy, and consistency in planning processes. However, successful implementation requires:
Reliable tools that produce repeatable results.
Planners to maintain full transparency and control over decision-making.
Better defined processes to give workflows structure and clear direction.
What Rico Offers
Off-the-shelf platform for integrating technology, purpose built for planners.
There are few purpose-built solutions available. That means getting technology into planning workflows often means either tailoring more general solutions or developing something in house.
Tailoring or developing bespoke solutions can take a significant amount of time and comes with significant risk. We’ve seen examples where councils invested heavily in bespoke systems only for them to fail to deliver what was originally envisaged and blow out timeframes and budgets.
Rico takes the trial-and-error and risk out of implementation. Rico works with a network of planners, consolidating industry knowledge and spreading development costs. This ensures you get the most bang for your buck and sees you benefiting from learnings across the entire industry.
Rico integrates with local GIS and Plans to improve accuracy and efficiency. Additional data from GIS (e.g. spatial information and planning notations applying to a site) and Plans (e.g. rules and provisions to be assessed) can be integrated into workflows. This further streamlines processes.
Easy to stay up to date with best technology and regulatory change. Rico is cloud-based software, continuously evolving with seamless updates to keep you at the cutting edge of technology. Its no-code interface makes it easy to adapt to changes in plans and assessment processes.
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