Travis County · Austin–Round Rock–Georgetown · City of Austin Development Services Department
Austin quantities have to separate the building code from the drainage rules
Austin is the Travis County seat in the Austin–Round Rock–Georgetown metro. Building permits inside the corporate limits are filed with the City of Austin Development Services Department. That department’s reviewers also see site and drainage sheets that are not “the building code.” Texas leaves the model-code year to the city, above the 2012 statutory floor, and Austin’s land-development and watershed rules sit beside whatever International edition the building official is on. A set that ignores the site package will under-measure paving, detention, water quality, and erosion control even when the architectural areas are perfect.
West of the downtown grid the limestone and the steep streets change excavation, and the eastern and central clays still produce the pier-and-beam or drilled-pier notes familiar to anyone who has priced Texas foundations. Those are not the same detail as a Dallas pier schedule, and they should not be copied from one. Flash flooding on the creeks is a civil-drawing problem: finish-floor elevations, culverts, and retaining walls are measurable only where they are drawn. Do not add a flood contingency because the city has creeks.
The work that shows up in bid rooms is a mix of downtown and domain-area offices, university and state-agency buildings, infill multifamily, and a steady run of hill-country custom houses. That is a description of the drawings contractors send, not a client list and not a volume statistic. State facilities can follow a different review path than a private restaurant on South Congress. Name the owner before you assume the city is the reviewer.
Contractor registration is a city matter. There is no statewide general-contractor license. Prevailing wage appears on covered Texas public work and, separately, on federally assisted contracts. A private tech-office fit-out does not inherit either one. F&K does not staff an Austin trailer. The deliverable is a document takeoff or a priced estimate from the files you upload, with assumptions written where the watershed notes and the structural notes disagree.
Before an Austin number goes out, line up the building sheets with the site package: watershed notes, detention, water-quality structures, and any cut-and-fill that the civil engineer quantified in a table. Hill-country houses often carry retaining walls and long driveways that are not in the architectural area. State-agency and university work can use a different front-end than a private multifamily set. Flag the owner. Do not invent a Save Our Springs compliance credit or a fee; those are owner and civil-engineer determinations. The remote review stops at what the files show.
Austin bid questions
Is an Austin ETJ parcel reviewed by City of Austin Development Services?
Not always in the same way as a lot inside the full-purpose city limits. Extra-territorial and limited-purpose geography changes which rules apply. The drawings or the civil engineer need to say who the authority is.
Do Austin and Dallas use the same foundation allowance?
No. Both cities deal with expansive clay, and the repair is whatever that project’s geotech and structural sheets specify. Do not reuse a pier count from another city.
Can the estimate include permit fees or a site visit?
Permit fees belong in the bid only if you ask for them as an allowance you will verify. F&K does not pull the permit or walk the site. The work is remote and based on the plans.