Digital-Permitting Decision Platform Director — Urban Development

The mandate

Planning, building control, utilities, environment and public-realm teams assess developments through separate workflows, leaving applicants unable to understand dependency, evidence status or accountable delay. A current digitisation programme replicates forms but does not resolve which decision can proceed in parallel, which must wait or how a revised design affects prior approvals. Volume is expected to triple across new districts.

The deliverable is a Digital Permitting Decision Platform Blueprint covering case identity, evidence, dependency, parallel review, revision impact, officer authority, applicant communication and audit. It will include a working reference journey for three permit types, service and data contracts, operating governance and scale economics. Automation must assist rather than infer statutory approval.

Milestone one in week three supplies case observation, decision maps and delay evidence. Week seven concludes milestone two with target workflow, contracts and architecture. At week twelve, milestone three delivers reference cases and revision or outage tests. The accepted blueprint, policy backlog, supplier requirements and scale plan form milestone four in week seventeen.

Acceptance requires officers to reconstruct fifteen unseen cases, identify authoritative evidence and explain every elapsed wait or revision consequence; applicants must receive consistent status without exposure of protected deliberation; and three cross-agency scenarios must route correctly. The two sponsors sign after internal administrators change one dependency rule and rerun cases without consultant help.

The client will provide permit records, policies, evidence requirements, decision authorities, review timestamps, applicant communications, appeals and supplier proposals. Planning, control and utility officers will join design; client engineers build reference services. Statutory officers retain approval, and the planning chief resolves disputed dependencies within two working days.

Why this is external work

Each authority understands its own statutory step but not the combined applicant journey, while the incumbent supplier is rewarded for digitising existing forms. Internal policy teams lack capacity to observe and redesign cross-agency decisions before demand rises. External work can separate genuine legal dependency from inherited queue without selling automated approval as the answer.

What you will own

• Map three permit journeys across application, evidence, planning, engineering, utility, environment, public-realm and appeal decisions.
• Define case, parcel, design revision, condition, evidence, authority and decision identities with effective history.
• Design parallel and dependent workflows that expose accountable wait, requested correction and consequence of changed design.
• Specify applicant status that is useful and consistent while protecting deliberative, security and third-party information.
• Exercise revised plans, missing utility response, conflicting condition, platform outage and officer reassignment.
• Compare platform options through officer usability, transparency, operability, policy change, integration, scale and exit cost.
• Transfer workflow change, case testing and decision-audit governance to planning and digital-service owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Designed live permitting, licensing, planning or regulated case platforms spanning several public authorities and professional disciplines.
• Modelled decision authority, evidence, statutory dependency and human override without automating professional or public judgement improperly.
• Reduced measured case delay by separating genuine sequential review from inherited queue, duplicated evidence and avoidable inter-agency hand-off.
• Governed design revision and prior-approval impact across parcel, engineering, environmental, utility and infrastructure records at effective time.
• Tested applicant communication for useful transparency without exposing protected deliberation, third-party material or personal information.
• Delivered a sustainable public operating model independent of workflow, engineering or smart-city platform suppliers and their implementation services.

Non-negotiables

• The named director must lead Riyadh officer observation and cross-agency case exercises throughout the engagement.
• No commercial attachment may exist with permitting, workflow, engineering or smart-city platform bidders.
• Statutory approval and appeal remain with authorised officials and cannot be delegated to automated workflow.
• Protected applicant, security and deliberative evidence must remain in approved client environments.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a permitting delay you removed by distinguishing legal dependency from inherited process sequence.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you represent a revised design that affects some, but not all, prior approvals?
3. 49 words maximum. Which client cases are necessary to test applicant status without exposing protected deliberation?