Streamlining assessments for South Australian planning

Find out how the City of Marion is streamlining planning assessments and report drafting under South Australia’s Planning and Design Code with Rico.

Initial situation at City of Marion

South Australia uses one statewide Planning and Design Code for all councils.
The Code covers around 1.8 million people, dealing with a wide range of planning issues.
Marion already had strong IT systems for lodgement, referrals, and tracking.
The assessments and reportings still relied on manual workflows and Word templates.
Each planner had their own version of the report template.
Code provisions were exported as PDFs and copied into reports by hand.
Formatting and adapting templates took significant time.
Past reports were stored separately, making them hard to find or reuse.

~30%

of the assessment workload could be optimised.

Implementation Summary

Marion’s existing report template was translated into Rico as the foundation for their new workflow.

The Planning and Design Code was loaded into Rico so relevant rules and provisions could be pulled directly into assessments.

The assessment workspace was configured to support full range of assessments from simple applications to the most complex.

Test assessments were carried out with Marion’s planning team to confirm alignment with the team's desired approach.

The workflow structure was refined based on planner feedback to ensure clarity and flexibility.

Completed assessments are auto-saved and tagged in a shared library, creating a searchable knowledge base.

Before Rico

After Rico

Each planner had their own Word template.

One shared workflow and template structure across the team.

Code provisions copied manually from PDFs.

Rules automatically inserts relevant provisions into reports.

Different templates for different project complexities.

Consistent assessment process that adapts to project complexity.

Past assessments siloed across separate word files.

All assessments saved in a searchable central library.

Reviews slowed by inconsistent structure.

Standard format makes reports faster to understand and review.

Time lost to formatting and admin.

Routine steps handled automatically, saving planner time.

At City of Marion, thanks to Rico:

Assessments now follow a structured, consistent workflow.
Formatting and copy-pasting steps have been removed.
Reports are easier to review and aligned with assessment requirements.
Each assessment adds to a searchable knowledge library.
The pilot is showing clear efficiency gains and scalability across South Australia.