In the first post in this series The Cost of Building First, Asking Later, I wrote about what unapproved alterations, missing plans and quiet deviations from the approved drawings cost you later — when you sell, when you insure, when the bank sends a valuator.

This post is the other half of it. What to actually do about it.

If you are sitting with work that was never approved, or a house that no longer resembles the plans in the municipal file, here is how the process runs in the Swartland Municipality — Malmesbury, Yzerfontein, Moorreesburg, Riebeek Kasteel, Darling, and the farms in between.

What an as-built plan actually is

An as-built drawing shows the building as it stands. Not as it was meant to be built. Not as it was approved in 1998. As it is, measured on site.

Where work went up without approval, or where the builder drifted from the approved drawings, that as-built set goes to building control for retrospective review under the National Building Regulations. The municipality then decides whether what you have built can be approved as it stands, or what has to change before it can be.

Nobody enjoys this process. But it is a solvable problem, and it is almost always cheaper to solve now than to discover it three weeks before transfer.

01It has to be signed off by a professional

A hand-drawn sketch will not be accepted, and neither will a plan you drew yourself. Building plan submissions must be prepared and signed by a professional registered with the South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP). That is not a formality. The signature is what carries the accountability.

The architectural professional prepares the site plan, layouts, elevations and sections.

The competent person (engineering) comes in where the structure is involved — timber or steel roof trusses, retaining walls, reinforced concrete slabs. A registered professional engineer completes the Form 2 and Form 4 structural declarations.

That second part is where retrospective work gets interesting. If a slab was poured or a retaining wall built without an engineer ever setting foot on the site, an engineer now has to inspect what exists and be willing to put their name to it. Occasionally that means opening something up to see what is underneath. It is not the news anyone wants. It is still better news now than during a sale.

02The colour coding is not decoration

The standard SANS 10400-A colour notation exists so that a building inspector can see, at a glance, what was approved before, what is new, and what is coming down. Swartland Municipality applies it strictly.

Get it wrong and the submission comes back. Not because anyone is being difficult, but because an inspector cannot verify what they cannot read.

03What goes into the submission

A compliance package is a good deal more than floor plans. Your SACAP professional assembles the full set.

Architectural drawings

• Site plan — erf boundaries, building lines, coverage, floor factor, any setback departures, stormwater flow, and street access.
• Floor plans and elevations — drawn at 1:100 or 1:50, showing wall thicknesses, room uses, window sizes for natural light and ventilation, and finished ground levels.
• Sections — room heights, foundation detail, roof pitches, and the damp-proof course.
• Drainage plan — gulley positions, pipe falls, inspection chambers, and septic or conservancy tanks where the erf is rural or peri-urban. On smallholdings this is usually the drawing that gets queried.

Certificates and reports

1. SANS 10400-XA energy efficiency — calculations proving compliance on insulation, fenestration (glazing area against floor area), and hot water heating. Solar or heat pump, in practice.
2. HOA or estate approval, where it applies — if the property sits in an estate with aesthetic guidelines, Mount Royal Golf Estate being the obvious local example, the drawings need the Aesthetic Review Committee stamp before they go anywhere near the municipality. In that order. Doing it the other way around wastes weeks.
3. SANS 10400-A forms — signed declarations from you as the owner and from every registered professional involved.

04Submitting through the municipal portals

Swartland Municipality runs digital submission portals for both land use and building control, and the sequence between them matters.

Land use / town planning. If the as-built structure crosses a building line or pushes past the permitted coverage, a formal land use departure application has to be lodged and approved before the building plans can be finalised. This is the step that catches people out. There is no point submitting drawings that the zoning does not yet allow.

Building plan portal. Once the planning side is settled, vector PDF drawings and the supporting documents go up online.

05From approval to occupancy certificate

Approved drawings are only half of it.

1. Site inspection. A municipal building inspector visits to confirm that the structure on the ground matches the as-built plans you submitted. It needs to match. That is the entire point of the exercise.
2. Trade certificates. You supply the valid ones:
   • Electrical Certificate of Compliance (CoC)
   • SANS 10400-N glazing / fenestration certificate
   • SANS 10400-P plumbing and drainage certificate
   • Engineer’s completion certificate (Form 4), where structural work was involved
3. Certificate of Occupancy. With everything verified, the municipality issues the occupancy certificate. That document is what makes the property legal, saleable and insurable — and it is the one thing an attorney, a bank and an insurer will all eventually ask for.

A word on why this is worth doing properly

Compliance has a reputation for being red tape. Some of it is. Most of it is not. The regulations exist because someone, somewhere, learned the hard way what happens when a roof structure is undersized or a retaining wall is built on hope.

Forty years of drawings have taught me that much.

The paperwork also protects you in a very ordinary way. An occupancy certificate is the difference between a property that sells and one that sits while the buyer’s bond is declined.