RS9 Planning · Development assessment
RS9 GroundworkThe application — read, checked and ready — before an officer opens the file.
Development assessment is the most document-heavy statutory process a council runs, and most of the time it consumes is not planning judgement — it is finding out what is in the package and what is not. Groundwork does that work at lodgement, so your planners start where their expertise starts.
Groundwork · Assessment brief
DA-2026-0413 · 24 Example Street
2 gaps foundAlterations and additions · Lodged 9:41 am · Read in 3 minutes
- Statement of environmental effects
- Site and elevation plans
- Owner's consent
- BASIX certificatemissing
- Stormwater concept planmissing
- Cost summary report
Cited control
Development within the R2 zone must not exceed a building height of 8.5 m — LEP cl. 4.3, Height of Buildings Map. Proposal states 8.2 m at the ridge.
Drafted for officer approval
Request for information — 2 outstanding documents
Dear applicant,
Thank you for your application for alterations and additions at 24 Example Street. Before assessment can proceed, Council requires a BASIX certificate and a stormwater concept plan…
Nothing is sent without an authorised officer's approval. Every action is logged.
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How it works
Five jobs, done before the file is opened.
Read it
Groundwork reads the whole package at lodgement — forms, plans, consultant reports, certificates — and pulls out the facts that drive the pathway.
Check it
Every document is checked against the lodgement requirements before an officer spends a minute on the file. Gaps are found on day one, not week three.
Find the rule
The applicable planning controls are surfaced with citations — the clause, the instrument, the source — so nothing rests on an unattributed answer.
Draft it
Requests for information, referrals and report sections arrive drafted. An authorised officer approves, edits or rejects every one. Nothing goes out on its own.
Show it
Applicants see where their application is up to without ringing the counter, and Council keeps a complete, auditable record of every step.
Governed AI
AI-assisted. Never AI-decided.
Groundwork is built for the scrutiny a council decision has to survive — the applicant's, the auditor's and the community's.
Officers keep every decision
Groundwork does not determine planning merit, exercise a delegation, or approve or refuse anything. It prepares; your officers decide. The name is the design.
Deterministic checks first
Where a reproducible rule is the right tool, a rule runs — versioned, owned and testable. Language-model reasoning is reserved for the reading no rule can do, and it cites its sources.
Sovereign by default
Delivered as a managed service on Australian infrastructure in AWS Sydney. Council data is hosted and processed in Australia, stays Council's, and is exportable.
No training on your data
Council and applicant content is never used to train models — RS9's or anyone's. The contractual data-use terms say so in plain words.
Built on proven ground
The platform underneath has run a council since 2017.
Groundwork is built on the same RS9 platform that has operated the City of Canterbury-Bankstown's resident booking and logistics service continuously since 2017 — around 500,000 bookings for a community of more than 380,000 people, re-awarded at open competitive tender in 2025. The intake, rules, integration and audit machinery under Groundwork is not new. The product points it at development assessment.
Since 2017
Continuous council production operation
~500k
Resident bookings handled
Re-awarded 2025
Won open competitive tender
See Groundwork on a development application.
A 20-minute briefing, on your screen, with your questions. We'll show you the readiness brief, the checks and the drafted correspondence end to end.
Or write directly: [email protected]