Construction Advisory Services

Both the Construction Supervisory Office ("Bauaufsicht") and the City Planning Department ("Stadtplanungsamt") are responsible for providing advisory services and local authority approval for construction projects in Frankfurt. Since 2005 the Construction Supervisory Office has had overall responsibility for advisory services on urban planning, for assessing projects in terms of construction planning laws and construction decrees, as well as for approving construction projects.

The City Planning Department provides advice and an expert opinion in the case of special complex cases and in the districts that come under the planning jurisdiction of the City, in other words in areas involving ongoing urban planning tasks. The latter are primarily defined by formal development planning procedures and other statutory processes under the German Construction Code or the Hessen Construction Code. That said, informal planning (such as overarching urban planning concepts or areas to which special municipal construction laws apply, examples being city modernization and city development areas) can be defined as the prerogative of the City Planning Department.

For the construction advisory services in both offices the following applies: In order to obtain a decision for your building project as quickly and smoothly as possible, you should enquire about all the necessary formalities in advance of submitting your building application and have the chances of your project being approved assessed. The City Planning Department or the Construction Supervisory Office will be happy to help you with this.

General building advice for projects outside of reserved areas is available from the Advice and Acceptance Proposal ("Beratung und Antragsannahme") Department of the Construction Supervisory Office. In order to assess the specific approvability of a building project, you may be referred by the Advice and Acceptance Proposal to the Construction Supervisory Office team responsible for you.

You can find further information and contact persons from the construction advisory service of the Construction Supervisory OfficeExternal Link. 

Click the planAS information systemExternal Link to find which municipal officials are responsible along with their phone numbers and the offices where they are to be found.

In addition to the actual building permit, other independent permits or authorisations from other areas of law may be required for a building project. These are, for example, water law, trade law, monument law or nature conservation law. If necessary, the building owner must obtain these permits/permissions on his own responsibility from the respective competent authorities. 

More on the construction advisory services of the Construction Supervisory Office ("Bauaufsicht")External Link (German only)

More on the construction advisory services of the City Planning Department ("Stadtplanungsamt")External Link

To the planning information system planAS of the City Planning DepartmentExternal Link