Review
Checks a site plan against the zoning ordinance, flags an incomplete application before it is filed, and reads aerial imagery for structures with no permit behind them.
Products
Two products. One record.
Vantage answers the applicant. Planalyze runs the department. Both read the same parcel record and the same ordinance, so the two sides of the counter cannot disagree.
Vantage
For residents, contractors, architects and agents.
The public side: find a parcel and ask a zoning question in plain English before a project reaches the counter.
Worked example on real, public Ivanhoe, CA GIS and zoning data — illustrative, not a live customer deployment.
- Map and parcel record, open to anyone. Click any parcel for its zoning, boundary and facts — no account. The assistant itself asks for a sign-in your department approves.
- Plain-English zoning answers, cited to your own ordinance section by section.
- Permit history, read live from the permit system you already run. Read only — nothing is written back.
- A fee estimate, line by line — state fees exact, local lines marked illustrative — plus an exportable parcel report.
- A Google Maps view beside the county map, for Street View and nearby businesses, where the jurisdiction enables it. Google's tiles never load inside the county map.
Planalyze
For planning staff and their subject-matter experts.
Where the department writes down what it knows. A published answer is the only curated answer the assistant can serve; everything else it says is drafted from your ordinance record and cited to the section.
- Inspectors, engineers and technicians write; planners and admins publish. Nothing reaches a resident without an approver's name on it, and every change carries a name and a time.
- An unapproved answer is unreachable, not just hidden — and a proposed source is not loaded into the record until it is approved.
- Accuracy is measured against your own ordinance; coverage against what residents actually ask. Two different questions, two different reports.
- One county-level answer set is shared, labelled as shared in the console. A jurisdiction that ships its own zoning standards is answered from those instead.
Staff modules
Four modules on top of the record.
Licensed per jurisdiction and enforced on the server: an unlicensed module is switched off, not hidden behind a button.
CEQA Copilot
CEQA screening, the parcel's environmental evidence record, and an Initial Study or EIR structure the lead agency completes and signs. It never records a determination.
Notify
Permit status alerts by text, case subscriptions for residents, and inspection requests without a phone call to the counter.
ADA Compliance
Find the published PDFs and web pages your readers cannot use, in plain language — then let staff confirm each finding and apply the safe fixes.
Pricing is per jurisdiction and scoped to which of these you turn on.
Review, in practice
Catch code conflicts before staff do.
A submitted site plan is checked against your ordinance — setbacks, height, coverage and parking — with every conflict flagged and cited to its section.
Worked example on a real parcel (Ivanhoe Community Hall) using real Tulare County zoning code — illustrative, not a filed permit application.
Try it on a real parcel.
Click through what your jurisdiction gets — and try a few questions to see how each one answers.
Vantage
GIS & 3D Parcels
Explore a public parcel in 3D — then ask the assistant about it.
- Interactive 3D site & massing view
- Zoning, hazards, parcel & permit data in one place
- Zoning, fire, flood & lot size — 11+ data layers
- The selected parcel feeds straight into the chat
Pick a parcel
Try asking
Book a demo for a live walkthrough
Search Ivanhoe Elementary School
APN 108-050-030R-1
ZoningR-1 Single FamilyLand usePublic schoolFire hazardNon-VHFHSZFlood zoneFEMA Zone XLot size~14 acres
Synced to the assistant — now ask about this parcel
County Assessor + GIS
In the live product — ask in your own words
Integrations
It reads your permit system. It never writes to it.
Building and planning records are read through one interface, whichever land-management vendor is behind it. Your permit system stays the system of record; there is no path by which OpenCivic can change a record in it, and nobody keeps two copies in step.
Tyler EnerGovAccelaCityViewCivicPlusOpenGov
GIS, code and single sign-on connect the same way — see the full list. Running something else? We add connectors on request.
Deployment
Every jurisdiction has its own setup.
Big enough to transform, small enough to deliver a specialized solution — which in practice means this:
- Its own GIS layers, ordinance, branding and approved answers, each scoped to that jurisdiction. One county-level answer set is shared and is labelled as shared; a jurisdiction that ships its own zoning standards is answered from those instead.
- One deployment, no forks. Every jurisdiction runs the same software, so a fix for one is a fix for all — and a rule for one is a rule for one.
- Your permit system stays the system of record. OpenCivic reads it; it never replaces it.
Visual tools
See it, check it, model it
Three visual tools on one real parcel — the Ivanhoe Community Hall (C-2): read a submitted site plan, pre-check an application for completeness, and model the parcel's buildable envelope in 3D.
Online Site Plan Review
Upload a site plan and OpenCivic checks setbacks, height, use, and parking against your code — flagging the rear-setback conflict a planner would catch, before the file is opened.
See it liveApplication Assistant
Residents and applicants get a plain-language pre-check — the assistant reads the submitted plan, extracts what's there, and lists exactly what's missing, so staff receive complete applications.
See it live3D Buildable Envelope
Model what a parcel can actually hold — setback- and height-clipped buildable volume in three dimensions, so applicants and staff see the real envelope, not a flat number.
See it live