Urban design consultant hopes New platform Urpla will end ‘soul destroying’ process during development applications

An urban design consultant has launched a platform he hopes will relieve town planners of the “soul destroying” process of spending days and weeks preparing “repetitive” development application reports.

URBAN design consultant Finn Jones has launched a platform he hopes will relieve town planners of the “soul destroying” process of spending days and weeks preparing “repetitive” development application reports.

Mr Jones, a former principal urban designer and architect at the Gold Coast City Council and branch president of the Gold Coast and Logan branch of the UDIA, started working on Urpla three years ago.

The web-based platform was launched five weeks ago and already eight town planning firms are using it.

Urpla is town planning software designed for business owners and urban planners looking to reduce the time spent researching and writing development applications.

When a user searches for an address the platform automatically adds property, planning and mapping information into an application and report.

Finn Jones. Photo: David Clark

It pulls information from federal, state and council planning schemes and regulations to determine what issues or ‘triggers’ such as flight paths apply.

The AI-assisted platform is designed to avoid ‘double handling of data’ and leave urban planners to focus on strategic planning rather than repetitive report writing.

Mr Jones said repetition is common when preparing DAs. He said most reports contain just four pages of original content.

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“There is so much standardisation involved in writing DAs,” he said.

“You do the same things each time. These are things like looking for state, federal and local government triggers such as the horizontal plain for the flight path or acid sulfate in the soil.

“Rather than going to three different sources to find the information you need, our platform gathers that information for you meaning you save time.”

Mr Jones said the industry was behind the times when it comes to technology.

Microsoft Word is the key tool.

“The industry has got so good at writing these reports and putting in additional information to justify their fees,” he said.

“We are saying let the software do what it can do and give time back to the town planners to focus on strategy and not report writing.”

Finn Jones. Photo: David Clark

He said some planners may fear that a platform may lead to reduced work.

However he said accountants feared the same thing when cloud-based accounting software platform Xero came along.

“Xero stopped accountants computing receipts and start advising on the best way to run a business.”

He said this had actually resulted in higher wages.

Mr Jones said developers want two things from planners: speed and good advice.

He said Urpla can help accomplish both tasks.

“We had one planner who had set aside 22 hours to write a DA. With Urpla it took just two-and-a-half hours. He was happy because he not only saved time but got to focus on what he enjoys, which is working with clients on achieving their goals for a development.”

The platform is currently available for Gold Coast projects but Mr Jones is hoping to roll it out in Brisbane by September.