How a Los Angeles design firm fills California city permit forms in seconds instead of 10–20 minutes
Ataman Studio is a Los Angeles design practice that designs ADUs (accessory dwelling units), remodels and new construction, and handles their permits across California. Every city has its own permit forms, and many arrive as flat PDFs with nothing to type into. Making a form fillable by hand took 10–20 minutes each time; with Instafill.ai it takes seconds, and so does filling it.
At a glance
- Company Ataman Studio
- Industry Home and commercial design, drafting and permitting
- Location Los Angeles, California
- Forms City permit applications across California, flat and fillable
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Results
Seconds per permit form, down from 10–20 minutes
8 kinds of city permit forms automated - Catalog forms Application for Mechanical Permit, Application for Plan Review and Building Permit
- Form categories Permit application forms, Building permit forms, Construction permit forms
The challenge
California cities each use their own permit forms, with their own layouts, field names and required attachments. Ataman Studio fills building permit applications, electrical, plumbing and mechanical permits, plan review and correction forms, owner-builder verifications, demolition and grading applications, and zoning and planning forms, and the set changes from one city to the next.
Many of those PDFs are not fillable. Before Instafill.ai, the team added text fields and checkboxes to each one by hand and then re-entered the project's information line by line. That took 10–20 minutes a form, and every small error risked delaying an approval.
The solution
The team uploads the city's permit PDF. If it is flat, flat-to-fillable conversion finds the places to fill and creates the fields automatically, in seconds.
AI field filling then completes the application, keeping terminology and formatting consistent across different cities' forms. The team downloads the filled form, reviews it and submits it to the city.
The results
| By hand | With Instafill.ai | |
|---|---|---|
| Making a flat form fillable | 10–20 minutes, field by field | Seconds |
| Filling the application | Re-typed line by line | Seconds |
| Corrections | Small errors that could delay approval | Fewer |
The permit stage is now a predictable step rather than a bottleneck, and the time goes back into design and delivery.
"The form filler always completes permit forms in seconds, predictably and without errors. Instafill.ai helps us keep our team small and agile without hiring new people, since all paperwork is automated and our services stay affordable for the most people."
— Andrew, CEO and Founder, Ataman Studio
