Pretty straight forward question? Not really. The City of Seattle, Washington, Department of Construction and Land Use provides some great assistance memos that are very helpful for the average user. They have one client assistance memo that tells us to submit (3) sets of drawings for a commercial office building. The DCLU web site even tells us (3) sets are to be required.

Not good enough though. It was changed a year ago to four sets of drawings. Unless you have been through a recent submittal with this 19th largest city in the country you would go in with three sets of plans to make application and your submittal would be incomplete.

The lesson here is always take an extra set of plans and other documents, just in case. Several jurisdictions require 3-4 sets of drawings but also need extra site plans or extra floor plans. Save yourself a lot of time and print some extra drawings and take them with you when you make application.