Form Architects · Business case · October 2026

One Stair

Objective. Develop and validate a rules engine and parametric fitting method that determines whether a single-stair point access block is permitted and buildable on any Fraser Valley lot. One Stair selects a professionally designed scheme from its library and places the right form on the chosen lot. It simplifies the complexities of municipal plans, zoning, building code and market into parametric, tailor-made solutions for each site, starting in the Fraser Valley, with British Columbia and Canada to follow.

1.0

Executive summary

One Stair is a web application that tells a builder or landowner, in seconds, whether a single-stair point access block is permitted and buildable on a lot, and places a predesigned building form on it. It is built in two phases. Phase 1 is a four month proof of concept across eight Fraser Valley municipalities, from Surrey, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge east, running from 1 December 2026 to 31 March 2027. Phase 2 takes it to Vancouver, Vancouver Island, the rest of British Columbia and beyond, with live data. The engine is designed to extend to every municipality in British Columbia.

• The opening. Zoning reform in 2023, a building code change in 2024, and new municipal plans in 2025 and 2026 arrived together, while the pre-sale condo market stalled and rental demand rose.
• The gap. Whether one stair works on a lot depends on seven layers of rules published by different bodies in different formats. Today an architect works it out by hand, one lot at a time, over days.
• The market. 17,367 houses on land the new Fraser Valley plans designate for apartments, from Surrey to Chilliwack: 15 to 19 m lots in Surrey's SkyTrain transit areas, 20 to 24 m lots on apartment streets in Langley, Abbotsford and Mission, and larger assembled sites in Maple Ridge and Chilliwack. Each step changes the zone, the setbacks and the market, and one engine has to hold all of it.
• The product. A knowledge base about point access blocks, a library of standardized forms, and an interactive map of Fraser Valley lots that shows how the two come together: a verdict and a building form for any lot. Data, Form and Site are free; Build, the buildable scheme for one lot, is paid.
• The path to market. In phase 1 One Stair is used in house but built mainly for others, earning recognition and leads, with a small paid element in Build. In phase 2 it stands on its own, with developer subscriptions and municipal licences.
• The ask. A proof of concept of up to four months, with at least 200 hours of architecture work in house and about 40 hours of developer consulting, and an IRAP contribution of $40,000 to $50,000 requested. A second phase follows in the next fiscal year, scoped from what the first proves: Vancouver, the Island and the rest of BC, with the data kept live.
• The result. The proof of concept returns a verdict, with its evidence, in under a minute for every lot in the eight Fraser Valley municipalities, from a one time data import, and agrees with an independent architect review on at least 90 percent of lots in a validation round of about 50 lots, checked against real permit outcomes where available. It places one of six standard forms, covering lot widths from 15 to 24 m, on the lot. Phase 2 adds live data and the rest of the province.

2.0

Background

2.1 The landscape

Fraser Valley housing comes in three types and no more: the detached house, the townhouse row, and the apartment bar, a long double-loaded corridor with two stair cores and shallow homes that face one way. Each is built by a different industry at a different scale, and nothing sits between them. The bar needs five to eight assembled lots, a developer with deep pockets and a pre-sale market to finance it, so it lands only where a whole block can be bought at once.

The result is sprawl. For fifty years the valley grew outward: subdivisions on farmland at the edge, townhouse enclaves behind arterials, apartment blocks where a developer could assemble a block near a highway. The older house lots in the middle, wide, front-loaded, served by roads and pipes already paid for, stayed as they were, because no building type fitted one of them and no builder was set up to try.

Infill on those lots is hard for reasons the Vancouver answers do not solve. There are no rear lanes, so parking and servicing come off the street. Lots are 15 to 24 m wide rather than 10, so a laneway house or a fourplex leaves most of the land unused and a bar building needs the neighbours. Parking minimums are real because transit is thin. The tools designed for Vancouver's narrow lanes and 33 ft lots produce the wrong building here, and the valley has had no tool of its own.

[Expand from The Future Fraser, Section 1: two or three sentences on who builds, who finances, and who is left out.]

2.2 The Market Shift

The way housing gets financed and sold in Canada has changed underneath the building types. For two decades the model was the pre-sale condominium: a developer assembled land, sold units off plan to investors, borrowed against those contracts, and built. Cheap money, rising prices and investor demand made it work from Toronto to Surrey. Since 2022 every leg of that model has weakened at once, and British Columbia, with the highest land costs and the most investor-driven market in the country, has felt it first.

What has not changed is need. Population growth, household formation and the shortfall in homes are all still there, so demand has moved from ownership to rental, and from large phased projects to anything that can be built in one go and held.

• Rates are up. The Bank of Canada moved from near zero to 5 percent in 2022 and 2023 and has eased only part of the way back. Construction loans and buyer mortgages are priced for a different decade. [Insert policy rate path 2022 to 2026.]
• Pre-sales are dead. Investor buyers have left, projects that cannot reach their pre-sale threshold cannot draw financing, and launches across Metro Vancouver and the valley have been cancelled or shelved. [Insert absorption or cancelled-project figures, 2024 to 2026.]
• Construction costs have not fallen. Labour, materials and development charges stayed high while revenue fell, so the margin on a large project is thin or negative.
• Rentals are up. Rental demand, rents and purpose-built rental starts have all risen, helped by federal and provincial measures that favour rental over strata. [Insert vacancy and average rent, Abbotsford-Mission and Surrey, latest CMHC report.]
• Starts are down. Fraser Valley housing starts have fallen from their peak even as the region keeps growing. [Insert starts and completions from the CMHC 1990 to 2026 dataset.]
• Small projects still pencil. A building on one to three lots, financed by its owner or a local builder, built in one phase and held as rental or sold without a pre-sale campaign, is the project that still works. That is the point access block's opening.

2.3 Housing Reform

Politicians watched the same market stall and stepped in. Between 2023 and 2025 Ottawa and Victoria passed more housing law than in the previous twenty years, and British Columbia went furthest: it took zoning power away from municipalities, set density floors around transit, rewrote the building code and changed the tax treatment of flipping and rental, all within about two years. It was a shotgun approach. Each measure was aimed at a different target, by a different ministry, on its own timetable, and none was written with the others in mind. The result is a set of rules that only work together when someone reads them together.

The four that matter for a single house lot:

• Taxes changed. Federal and provincial measures now favour building and holding rental over pre-sale flipping: the GST rebate on purpose-built rental, BC's home flipping tax, and changes to the speculation and vacancy tax. [Insert the measures, thresholds and dates to cite; verify each.]
• Zoning changed. Bills 44 and 47, passed in November 2023, allow three to six homes on most lots and set minimum heights and densities in transit-oriented areas around SkyTrain and bus exchanges, with no resident parking minimums. Apartments became legal on single house lots near transit.
• Local plans changed. Every municipality had to bring its official community plan and zoning in line with its housing needs by 31 December 2025. Abbotsforward 2050, Chilliwack's OCP 5500, Maple Ridge's area plans and Surrey 2050 followed between late 2025 and mid 2026, drawing the map of where six storeys are now expected.
• The building code changed. In August 2024 BC Building Code 2024, Revision 3, Subsection 3.2.10 began allowing a single exit stair up to six storeys, with sprinklers, smoke control and a wider stair. The second stair and the corridor are gone, so one lot is enough.

Most lots that gained multiplex rights get three storey buildings, where homes with their own front doors avoid the stair question. The single stair makes the difference at four to six storeys, which is exactly where the new plans and transit areas point.

2.4 The point access block

The point access block is the new tool in the developer's toolkit. It is the building type that can unlock the in-between properties: the tens of thousands of wide house lots on paid-for streets that were too small for an apartment building and too valuable for a house. For the first time in a generation, one lot and one owner are enough.

In plain terms it is a mini apartment building with one staircase instead of two. Every home opens straight off a shared stair and lift. There is no long corridor, no second stair, and the homes reach from the front of the building to the back, with light and air from both sides. On a 19 m lot that is four homes a floor, two of them three bedroom, up to six storeys.

It is the building the two reforms make possible, and it is the middle ground the Fraser Valley has been missing: small enough for one lot and one owner, dense enough to meet the transit-area minimums, simple enough to repeat.

Almost nobody has put the pieces together. Developers know the code changed, or that their lot was redesignated, but not both, and not what the overlap means for a specific site. Lenders have no precedent to price. Planners have maps that assume buildings nobody is yet designing. Form Architects' aim is to break this opportunity open and show the development world what is possible, one lot at a time.

[Pull two or three sentences from The Future Fraser, Sections 3 and 4, on the position and the toolkit.]

3.0

The market

Form Architects screened all the Fraser Valley municipalities for opportunity: land the new plans designate for apartments that still holds a single detached house. The conclusion, in October 2026, was over 17,000 lots ripe for opportunity, 17,367 across eight municipalities, recorded in the Fraser Valley Lot Study.

3.1 A valley upzoned

The ground has shifted in the valley's favour. Under direction from the Province, every municipality has spent the last two years up-designating and up-zoning its land, not block by block as applications come in, but across whole cities at once. Surrey 2050 paints Low-Rise and Mid-Rise across thousands of house lots and designates all seven Surrey Langley SkyTrain stations as transit-oriented areas, where six storeys and 3.0 FAR are the floor, not the ceiling, and resident parking can no longer be required. Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Maple Ridge and Mission have adopted new plans that expect apartments where houses stand today. Some areas are already pre-zoned for apartments on single-family lots, so a project needs a permit rather than a rezoning. And municipalities are beginning to meet the code halfway: the City of Langley already acknowledges single egress in its guidance, and others are following. [Verify the City of Langley reference and add any other municipalities that have adopted single-egress guidance.]

For a landowner or a builder this is the rare moment when the plan, the zoning, the code and the transit investment all point the same way. The lots are there, the permission is there, and the SkyTrain opens in 2029. What is missing is a way to see it, lot by lot.

The transit-oriented areas are the sharpest edge of this. Within 800 m of a SkyTrain station the Province sets a floor of eight storeys and 3.0 FAR in the inner ring and six storeys and 2.5 FAR further out, no resident parking can be required, and a council cannot refuse a rezoning for height or density within those minimums. Around the seven Surrey Langley SkyTrain stations alone that covers thousands of house lots that were zoned for one home three years ago. [Verify tier heights and densities against the provincial TOA regulation.]

3.2 The opportunity by municipality

The opportunity is not evenly spread. Surrey holds two thirds of the lots and the SkyTrain; Abbotsford has the clearest land economics; Mission and Chilliwack have the lowest entry cost; the Langleys and Maple Ridge have smaller but well-defined pockets. Each has its own plan, its own zones and its own market, and each rewards a slightly different building.

Municipality	Lots	Opportunity	What moved recently
Surrey	11,736	The largest single-lot opportunity in BC: thousands of 18 to 21 m house lots inside SkyTrain transit areas where six storeys and 3.0 FAR are the floor and parking is waived. The 2029 SkyTrain opening sets the clock	Surrey 2050 OCP; seven Surrey Langley SkyTrain stations designated as transit areas in June 2024; 74 percent of Low-Rise lots inside a transit area
Township of Langley	1,622	Mostly townhouse plan areas on narrow lots, with a core of apartment and mixed-use sites along 200 Street and around Willowbrook where the SkyTrain terminus lands	[Insert: new OCP or area plan status]
Mission	1,438	Wider, cheaper lots near the West Coast Express and the downtown, with the lowest land cost on the list, so a modest form pencils	[Insert: Mid-Rise, Neighbourhood Centre and Downtown designations, adoption date]
Abbotsford	1,048	Apartment-designated streets where the house is worth 8 percent of its land and most are worth under a quarter: the clearest redevelopment economics in the valley	Abbotsforward 2050 adopted; RMM zone has no minimum lot size
Maple Ridge	831	Three area plans drawn for exactly this scale of building along Lougheed and in the Town Centre, best suited to two-lot assemblies	Town Centre, Lougheed and Hammond area plans
Chilliwack	385	A fresh OCP and the lowest entry cost for a first point access block outside Metro Vancouver	OCP Bylaw 5500
City of Langley	232	Small but ready: transit-oriented designations around the SkyTrain terminus and a city already acknowledging single egress	[Insert: Low Rise, Mid Rise and Transit-Oriented designations; verify single-egress guidance]
Pitt Meadows	75	A small set of narrow lots in residential high and medium designations and the town centre, suited to the smallest form	[Insert: OCP status]

Source: Form Architects, Fraser Valley Lot Study, October 2026, from municipal open data. Across the eight municipalities, nearly every single lot falls between 15 and 24 m wide on 36 to 38 m of depth, which is what makes a small library of standard forms possible.

3.3 Many moving parts

For the developer or builder standing in front of one of these lots, the opportunity is real and the path to it is anything but clear. The building code is provincial, but everything else changes at every municipal boundary: the names of the designations, the zone the plan points to, setbacks, minimum lot sizes and assemblies, parking, servicing, fire department capability, and the local market and demographics that decide whether a 19 m lot in Clayton and a 21 m lot in Abbotsford should carry the same building. Surrey's R3 zone still allows only two dwellings inside a transit area; its apartment zone MR7 asks for 36 m of frontage and 2,000 m² that no single lot has. Abbotsford's RMM has no minimum lot size but its 6 m interior setbacks leave 9 m of width on a 21 m lot. Maple Ridge writes a 2,000 m² minimum assembly into its Lougheed plan. The code ties the single stair to fire department capability without a measurable standard, so the same building can be straightforward in one municipality and contested in the next.

A builder has to read the OCP, the zoning bylaw, the transit-area regulation, the building code and its explanatory notes, the servicing map and the assessment roll, and then reconcile them for one parcel. Most do not. The ones who try spend days with an architect to answer a question that should take a minute, and the answer is out of date the next time a bylaw is amended. That is why a 17,000-lot opportunity has produced so few buildings: not a lack of permission, but a lack of a way to see it. One Stair is built to hold all of those moving parts at once, which is what makes it hard and what makes it valuable.

• [Insert: province-wide estimate of qualifying lots, or state that measuring it is a phase two task.]
• [Insert: one or two named prospective users, a builder, a landowner group, a municipality.]

4.0

The product

One Stair is a web-based product. It runs in the browser on any device, needs no software to install, and is built to be graphic and intuitive rather than a typical website. It consists of four parts that work in sequence, from open knowledge to a buildable scheme for one lot, and it is partly free and partly paid: the three parts a visitor explores are free, and the part that brings them together for a specific site is paid.

Part	What it is	Free	Paid
4.1 Data	The knowledge base of rules, parcels, code and market data for every lot in the valley	Yes	No
4.2 Form	The library of standardised point access blocks for the valley's lot sizes	Yes, browse	Yes, download
4.3 Site	The interactive map for finding lots and exploring opportunities	Yes	No
4.4 Build	Data, form and site brought together into a buildable scheme for one lot	No	Yes

4.1 Part 1: Data

At the centre of One Stair is a single, structured record of everything that decides what can be built on a Fraser Valley lot. Today that knowledge is scattered across municipal GIS portals, zoning bylaws, OCP PDFs, the building code, BC Assessment and market reports, in different formats and different vintages. One Stair gathers it into one place and keeps it current: the reference for zoning, code and municipal rules on single-stair housing in the valley.

What it holds, lot by lot and municipality by municipality:

• Parcels. Geometry, true frontage, depth, area, corner or interior, neighbours, from municipal open data and the provincial parcel fabric.
• Plans and zoning. OCP designation, transit-area tier, current zone, the apartment zone the plan points to, setbacks, height, density, minimum assembly, parking.
• Code. BC Building Code Subsection 3.2.10 and its explanatory notes, written as auditable rules with their conditions on sprinklers, smoke control, stair width, occupant load and travel distance.
• Local conditions. Fire service capability, water and sewer capacity, and the designations and exceptions that change at every municipal boundary.
• Market. Assessed land and improvement values, the house-to-land ratio, rents and sale comparables, drawn from BC Assessment, CMHC and Form Architects' own analysis.
• Typical sites. The lot-width bands and site patterns that recur across the valley, so a new lot can be matched to ones already understood.

Every entry carries its source and version, so a verdict can always be traced back to the bylaw clause or dataset it came from, and a changed rule is an update rather than a rebuild.

4.2 Part 2: Form

The second part is a curated set of predesigned point access blocks, each drawn by Form Architects, tested against the code clause by clause, and matched to a lot size and rule set that actually occurs in the valley. They run from small to large and from loose to tight: a four storey form for a 15 m lot at about 1.5 FSR, six storey forms for 18 to 24 m lots at 2.5 to 3.5 FSR, a two-lot assembly form, and variants with full parking, minimal parking and none, for inside and outside transit areas. [Confirm the set: five or six single-lot forms plus one assembly form.]

Each form comes with plans, a section, a unit mix, its code checklist and its numbers: storeys, homes, floor area, density, family-sized units. The forms are published under an open licence so that builders, landowners and municipalities can start from them, and so that tested projects feed better versions back into the library.

Why a small set of forms can cover the valley. The building is simple and the lots are repeatable, so the forms can be repeatable too.

Three things make that true:

• A simple form. Most of the time the point access block is a square or near-square plan with one central core. There is no corridor to shape, no second stair to place, and the units are the same four or so plans turned around the core. That is a building that can be predesigned, tested against the code once, and placed many times.
• Repeatable lots. The valley's house lots were platted in a handful of widths. In Surrey's Tier 3 transit rings, half of the 4,430 R3 lots sit in the 18 to 21 m band, and nearly all fall between 15 and 24 m on 36 to 38 m of depth. Five or six forms cover almost every single lot, and one assembly form covers two lots joined.
• A single provincial code. Subsection 3.2.10 is the same in every municipality, so the code work is done once; only the zoning and plan layer changes at each boundary, and that is the layer the engine is built to hold.

[Insert the frontage band chart from the full business case: six storey FAR on a single lot by width band, 1.4 to 4.6, against the 3.0 transit minimum.]

4.3 Part 3: Site

The third part is where the database and the forms come together: an interactive map of the Fraser Valley, built to feel closer to a game or a drawing than to a property listing. A user finds a lot, sees it drawn to scale with its setbacks, neighbours and nearest station, and gets a verdict: fits on this lot, fits with a named neighbour, or does not fit, with the reason and the source of every rule. The best fitting form drops onto the lot, and the user can swap forms, change assumptions and watch the numbers move.

It serves two kinds of visitor:

• The one with a strict rule. A builder who owns a lot, or a landowner with an offer on the table, who needs to know what this site can carry under today's rules. They enter an address and get an answer with its evidence in under a minute.
• The one looking for an opportunity. An investor, a planner or a curious neighbour who does not have a site yet. They filter the map by municipality, lot width, transit tier, density or house-to-land ratio and explore where the opportunities cluster, then test a form on any lot that catches their eye.

Both paths end at the same door: a lot chosen, a form suggested, and the Build step waiting behind it. [Link the October 2026 prototype.]

The map itself is built on an established mapping platform: a proper basemap with road names, smooth zooming, and tools to sketch a parcel and measure it. That is product and design work, not research. The research question behind it, re-checking zoning, fit and confidence live as a user sketches, sits under geometry in 6.2.

4.4 Part 4: Build

Build is where the data, the form and the site come together in one realistic, buildable building. The user presses Analyze on a chosen lot, and One Stair runs the seven checks against the database, selects the best fitting form from the library, fits it to the actual parcel geometry and setbacks, and returns a scheme: a site plan to scale, floor plans, a section, the unit mix, floor area, density against the plan's minimum, parking, and the code checklist with the clause behind every line.

It is a building, not a diagram. The forms are drawn by architects and tested against Subsection 3.2.10, so what comes out of Build can be priced by a builder, read by a planner at a pre-application meeting, and carried straight into design development by Form Architects. The user can swap to another form, test the lot with a neighbour added, or change assumptions and watch the scheme and its numbers update.

Build is the paid step, and the moment the three free parts become one answer for one site. Each Build can be taken further as a tailored scheme prepared by Form Architects, which is where the design commissions begin. [Decide: whether a Build includes the form's drawing download or whether that stays a separate purchase.]

4.5 Open and Built

Some of One Stair can be copied and some cannot. The open parts let it start quickly; the built parts are what keep it ahead.

Open. Data and information that is readily available to anyone.

1. Open data. Parcel, zoning, OCP and TOA data comes from public municipal ArcGIS servers. Anyone can download it.
2. The Site map and filters. A capable developer could rebuild the map and lot filters in a few months.
3. The software. Coding is fast and getting faster. The app alone is not a barrier.
4. The free forms. Once the standard single-stair forms are public, they can be seen and redrawn.
5. The concept. The general idea of a single-stair screening tool cannot be protected.

Built. Knowledge, design and relationships Form Architects has curated and built itself. Together they form the moat around One Stair.

1. Architectural design. Forms designed by registered architects that fit family-sized units on real Fraser Valley lots, not generic diagrams.
2. Local knowledge. Form practises in the Fraser Valley and knows the nuance between municipalities: how the City of Langley differs from the Township, what Chilliwack or Abbotsford planning staff actually look for, local lot patterns, servicing limits and approval culture. An outside tech company reading the same open data will not see these differences.
3. Tested compliance. Every form is checked against specific zones and bylaw clauses, and each check is dated. This record is the product.
4. Rules history. A dated record of bylaw and policy changes in each municipality, building up over time and hard for a newcomer to rebuild.
5. Track record. What was approved and built, what it cost and how long it took, captured from every Build report and every Form project.
6. Authority. The book, the Fraser Valley lot study and Form's public work on single-stair buildings.
7. Relationships with municipalities. Direct, ongoing working relationships with city managers and planning staff. They are personal, slow to build and cannot be downloaded. Planners give early notice of bylaw and OCP changes, confirm how unclear clauses are applied (for example the City of Langley R3 reduced side yard for single exit stair buildings), share the goal of meeting housing targets, and come to trust Form's designs.
8. Accountability. A firm that stands behind the design, which an anonymous app cannot offer.

Working with municipalities. Bring each municipality its own lot study page. Invite planners to review the forms and log their comments with dates. Propose pre-reviewed forms on the Kelowna model, and offer a municipal pilot licence. Keep a contact log, share findings back, and ask for letters of support.

4.6 Go-to-market

One Stair reaches the market in two phases, in step with its development.

Phase 1: build recognition. All four parts, Data, Form, Site and Build, come together as one product. Form Architects uses it in house, but it is built mainly for others: builders, landowners and municipalities across the Fraser Valley. Data, Form and Site are free. Build carries a paid element, its form still to be decided. Revenue from One Stair itself will be small in phase 1. Its value is recognition and leads: it gives Form a feasibility and site acquisition service no other firm in the valley offers at this scale, brings in new projects, and lets the team grow.

One Stair is also the cherry on the cake for The Future Fraser, Form Architects' book on residential development in the valley. The book makes the case for the point access block, and One Stair lets readers test that case on a real lot.

Phase 2: stand on its own. Once the method is proven, One Stair grows into a full software platform that earns revenue independently of the architecture practice. Five additions, set out as technical layers in 5.4, each widen the market:

1. Every municipality in BC, and beyond. From the eight Fraser Valley municipalities to more than 150 across British Columbia, starting with Vancouver and Vancouver Island, then other provinces. Provincial reach is what makes a subscription worth paying for.
2. Live bylaws. Bylaw and OCP changes are detected automatically and every affected verdict is flagged, so subscribers rely on One Stair to stay current instead of checking each city themselves.
3. Financial feasibility. Land costs, construction costs and rents are added, so a verdict says whether a scheme pencils out: the question a developer or lender will pay to have answered.
4. Near-permit drawings. Build output moves toward a permit set, with less architect correction each time, sold as a paid step and carried into full commissions by Form Architects.
5. Tools for municipalities. A version for planners to test policy before adopting it, such as a 3 m side setback or no parking minimum near transit, and see how many lots and homes it would open. Municipalities become a second group of customers on licences, typically worth far more than a single developer report.

Revenue in phase 2 comes from developer subscriptions and municipal licences, alongside paid Build reports.

5.0

Development

5.1 How One Stair works

At the centre of One Stair is a rules engine joined to a parametric fitting method. The rules engine holds every applicable bylaw, plan and code clause as structured data, each tied to its source and version, and evaluates them against a lot to produce a set of hard limits: setbacks, height, density and the single-stair conditions. The parametric model describes each predesigned form as a set of variables, such as width, depth, storeys and core position, with the ranges it can flex within and still work as a building. Fitting is a search within those ranges for the version of a form that best fills the lot's limits, which the rules engine then checks again before anything is shown.

Data sets the limits, Form supplies the building and Site says where it goes. The rules engine reads the data for the chosen site and sets its envelope: what may be built there, how high, how dense, and whether one stair is allowed. Parametric fitting takes each suitable form from the library and flexes it into that envelope. The rules engine then checks every fitted building, ranks the ones that pass and states how sure it is. If a form fails, the engine tries the next one. What comes out is a verdict, the best form on the lot, and the Build: a full scheme for that site.

5.2 The project

Objective line (the sentence NRC publishes): Develop and validate a rules engine and parametric fitting method that determines whether a single-stair point access block is permitted and buildable on any Fraser Valley lot. One Stair selects a professionally designed scheme from its library and places the right form on the chosen lot. It simplifies the complexities of municipal plans, zoning, building code and market into parametric, tailor-made solutions for each site, starting in the Fraser Valley, with British Columbia and Canada to follow.

5.3 Technical uncertainties

The project is research because the answers are not known. A competent architect or developer cannot resolve the questions below from existing knowledge; each needs to be built and tested. There are five. Section 6.2.1 sets out each problem in full, with a starting approach.

1. Normalising the data. Can every municipality's plans, zoning and parcel data, each in its own format and with its own gaps, be brought into one standard model without guessing at what is missing?
2. Turning rules into code. Can bylaws and Subsection 3.2.10 of the BC Building Code become rules a computer runs on every lot, while an architect can still read and check each one?
3. Geometry: fitting, assembly and custom parcels. Can the standard forms flex to real, irregular lots and stay compliant, and can the tool find the fewest neighbouring lots that unlock a workable floor plate?
4. Vague conditions. Can conditions that are not clear-cut, such as fire service capability and servicing capacity, be stated as an honest confidence level rather than a false yes or no?
5. Drawing output. Can a parametric model produce a clean, professional drawing package that needs little or no correction from an architect?

5.4 Schedule and budget

The project runs in two phases, each inside its own IRAP fiscal year. Phase 1 is a four month proof of concept, from 1 December 2026 to 31 March 2027. Phase 2 starts in April 2027; its scope and length are set with the ITA once phase 1 has results. Each stage ends in something NRC can verify.

Phase 1: proof of concept across the Fraser Valley. Up to four months, from 1 December 2026 to 31 March 2027, starting when the agreement is signed. At least 200 hours of architecture work in house and about 40 hours of developer consulting. All four parts, Data, Form, Site and Build, are built in this phase. It covers the eight municipalities from Surrey, Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge east to Chilliwack, with the data imported once into a dated snapshot. It proves the hard part, one rules engine and one map holding eight different sets of rules, before anything else is built. IRAP contribution requested: $40,000 to $50,000.

Stage	Month	Deliverable NRC can verify	Form, hours	Developer, hours
Data foundation	December	Eight municipalities imported once into one data model, dated, with a gap report	30	15
Rules engine	December to January	Rules file for zoning, transit tiers and 3.2.10 in all eight, each rule tied to its source and version	50	10
Forms and overlay	January to February	Six predesigned forms with plans and code checklists, covering lot widths 15 to 24 m; fitting routine for regular, angled and corner lots, lot assembly and custom parcels; schematic drawings from Form's templates	80	5
Site, Build and validation round	March	Working map with a verdict for every lot in the eight; Build output for a chosen lot; a validation round against independent architect review, and real permit outcomes where available	40	10
Total	Up to 4 months		200 or more	about 40

Phase 1 is static on purpose. The data is imported once and every verdict shows the date of the data behind it, so the work goes into the rules engine and the forms rather than into keeping feeds current. Live updates and the rest of the province wait for phase 2.

Phase 2: from screening lots to shaping policy. Phase 2 starts in April 2027, in the next IRAP fiscal year, with scope and budget set with the ITA on the results of phase 1. It adds five layers, each a genuine unknown rather than padding. Together they form a path: screen lots, then prove they pencil, then produce drawings, then shape policy.

1. BC-wide scale. From the eight Fraser Valley municipalities of phase 1 to more than 150 across British Columbia, each with its own data formats and gaps.
2. Live rule updates. Detecting bylaw and OCP changes automatically and flagging which verdicts they affect, so no verdict quietly goes out of date.
3. Financial feasibility. Adding land costs, construction costs and rents, so each verdict says whether a scheme pencils out, not only whether it fits.
4. Near-permit drawings. Moving from schematic packages to drawings close to a permit set, with less architect correction each time.
5. Municipal tools. A version for planners to test policy before adopting it. What happens if the side setback drops to 3 m, or parking minimums go away near transit? How many lots open up, and how many homes could that mean? This turns One Stair from a developer tool into a housing policy tool and opens a second group of paying customers, since a municipal licence is typically worth far more than a single developer report.

Phase 2 realistically needs at least one full-time developer, with a data or support role to follow.

Budget. The phase 1 request is $40,000 to $50,000. [Insert: Form salary rates and the developer quote, sized so that 80 percent of eligible salaries and 50 percent of contractor fees come to that contribution, and so that the total project cost matches the ask.] Form Architects funds the balance and carries the cost of the work ahead of reimbursement. Phase 2 is scoped with the ITA once phase 1 has results. No cost is incurred before the contribution agreement is signed.

5.5 Team and capability

Form Architects is a boutique architecture and design studio in Fort Langley, founded in 2022, working on residential, commercial and industrial projects across Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley. The firm has already done the manual version of this work: the October 2026 screening of 17,367 lots in the Fraser Valley Lot Study, the Surrey setback and frontage tests, and the code audit behind The Future Fraser.

[Insert Form Architects' revenue history since 2022, its number of clients and its headcount. A track record of revenue counts in the firm's favour with the ITA.]

Who	Background	Role on the project
Jochem Moerman, co-founder and principal	[Registration, years in practice, relevant projects.] Author of The Future Fraser	Project lead; rules and code logic; interface
Brent Wiebe, co-founder and principal	[Registration, years in practice, relevant projects.]	Predesigned forms and code review
Lawrence Schobs, PhD, software and development advisor	Lead Machine Learning Engineer at ViewsML Technologies (LinkedIn)	Advice on the software architecture; set-up of the data pipeline and rules engine. Form builds the rest in house
[Fire protection engineer, municipal planner]	Advisors	Review of the rules engine during validation

The ITA will ask who writes the code. Most of the work is done in house by Form Architects. Lawrence Schobs advises on the software as a consultant.

6.0

Benefits and risks

6.1 Benefits

One Stair answers both halves of the housing problem: not enough homes, and homes that cost too much to build.

• The affordability crisis. The valley is shortest of family-sized homes near transit. One Stair opens 17,000 lots on land and services already in place, and the single stair keeps the three bedroom homes the corridor removes.
• Construction affordability. One lot, no assembly, no corridor, one core, a standard form. Drawings and code work are done once and reused, approvals are faster, and the project is small enough for a local builder or a single owner to finance.
• Architecture, not just commodity. The Fraser Valley is rich in landscape, farmland, river and community, and poor in building expression: three building types, repeated. A point access block is small enough to be designed with care and repeated enough to make that care affordable. One Stair puts architects' work into the hands of people who would otherwise never commission one, and gives the valley a chance at streets worth looking at.
• A national priority. Housing supply is a stated priority of the federal and provincial governments. One Stair puts Canadian software behind that goal where it is hardest to reach: small sites in existing neighbourhoods. [Cite the federal and provincial housing measures current at submission.]
• Better housing policy. In phase 2, planners can test a change before adopting it, such as a 3 m side setback or no parking minimum near transit, and see how many lots and homes it would open.
• A new capability, and new jobs. One Stair gives Form Architects a new capability and a new service line in feasibility and site screening. It grows the firm. Phase 2 realistically needs at least one full-time developer, with a data or support role to follow, alongside the design hires a new service brings. [Confirm the hiring plan before it is stated.]

Also: Canadian IP, and skilled work in software, architecture and construction in BC. [Quantify where possible: homes the forms could enable, cost per door against a conventional building.]

6.2 Risks

The technical risks are the research and development this project asks IRAP to fund. The market and protection risks are ones Form Architects is managing itself, and where the ITA's advice and network would add real value.

6.2.1 Technical risks: the R&D, funded by IRAP

These are the genuine unknowns. We do not yet know that each one can be solved well enough, which is why this is research. Each has a starting approach.

1. Normalising the data.

Problem. Every municipality publishes plans, zoning and parcel data in its own format, with gaps. Surrey's data looks nothing like Mission's.

Approach. One standard data model, with a translator for each municipality that maps its fields into it. Every lot records where its data came from and when it was pulled. Missing values are flagged, never guessed, and lower the confidence of the verdict.

2. Turning rules into code.

Problem. Bylaws and Subsection 3.2.10 of the BC Building Code are written for people. They have to become rules a computer can run on every lot, while an architect can still read and check them.

Approach. Each bylaw and code clause is written as a small, readable rule that links back to the exact section and page it came from. Rules are stored by version and date, so a bylaw change means updating one rule, not rebuilding, and any verdict can be traced back to its source.

3. Geometry: fitting, assembly and custom parcels.

Problem. Real lots are rarely clean rectangles. They are angled, pie-shaped, on corners or with a lane. The standard buildings have to flex to each lot and stay code compliant. When one lot is too small, the tool has to find the fewest neighbouring lots that unlock a workable floor plate, which means searching combinations and is harder than fitting a single lot.

Approach. Each form has set flex points (width, depth, corners) with tested limits, and the tool solves within those limits against the setbacks. For assembly, the tool starts with one lot and adds neighbours one at a time, testing the smallest groups first and stopping at the first that works. The user sees the combined parcel on the map and can add or remove lots. On large assembled sites a conventional corridor building can be the better answer, and the tool will say so.

Custom parcels. Users can test a lot without an address. They enter a width and depth (for example 20 x 30 m) or sketch a shape, then pick a municipality and zone. The tool applies that zone's rules and shows which forms fit and what density they reach. This serves developers still looking for land, and anyone who wants to understand what a typical lot can hold. Re-checking zoning, fit and confidence live as a user sketches is part of this unknown.

4. Vague conditions.

Problem. Some code conditions are not clear-cut. The single-stair permission depends on local fire service capability, and servicing capacity varies. These cannot honestly be a yes or no.

Approach. Each uncertain factor is scored as high, medium or low confidence, based on public sources and planner feedback. The verdict shows its overall confidence and names what drives it, so the user knows what to confirm.

5. Drawing output.

Problem. Can a parametric model produce a clean, accurate, professional drawing package that needs little or no correction from an architect? Generated drawings usually look generic, with messy dimensions, odd line weights and crowded labels. The goal is output that looks as though Form drew it.

Approach. Drawings come from Form's own templates, title blocks, line weights, fonts, dimension styles and drafting standards. Each form only flexes within ranges Form has already tested and drawn, so the tool adjusts a proven drawing and never invents a new one. Automatic checks catch clashes, overlapping labels and missing dimensions before anything goes out. Every package states clearly that it is schematic and must be reviewed by a registered architect. Success is measured by how few corrections Form's architects make on a test set.

6.2.2 Market risks: managed by Form, ITA advice welcome

Market acceptance. A design can meet the code and the zoning and still not sell. Buyers and lenders may resist low parking ratios, for example 20 units with 10 stalls, and the right mix of one, two and three bedroom homes will vary by location.

Approach. During the pilot, Form talks to local builders, lenders and realtors, tracks absorption and rents in nearby new buildings, and lets users adjust unit mix and parking within each form, so the tool shows options rather than pushing one answer. Whether a scheme makes financial sense becomes a technical unknown in phase 2, when financial feasibility is added. In phase 1 it stays a market risk.

Adoption. Builders and developers have to trust a verdict enough to act on it, and pay for the Build tier.

Approach. Every verdict shows its evidence and confidence level. A verdict is guidance, not an approval, and says so; tailored plans are prepared and sealed by registered architects, so Build output is backed by a registered architecture firm. Early users test the product during the pilot, with at least five outside testers as a success criterion.

Timing. Municipal rules and interest rates could shift demand during the pilot, and the single-stair provisions themselves could be narrowed under pressure from fire services.

Approach. Versioned rules keep the tool current as bylaws and the code change, and the forms remain useful as compact buildings under either rule. The pilot is short and tightly scoped.

6.2.3 Protection risks: managed by Form, ITA advice welcome

Copying. The map, the public data approach and Form's layouts and forms can be copied once they are public. The value is in what Form builds on top of them (see 4.5 Open and Built).

Approach. The rules engine and the logic that generates Build schemes stay on Form's own servers, and the public site only shows results. Form owns all code, data processing and designs under its developer contract. Collaborators sign NDAs before seeing internal logic. The One Stair name and logo will be trademarked. Terms of use state that Build output is schematic and must be verified by a registered architect. The curated knowledge in the Built list keeps growing, which keeps Form ahead.

Where the ITA can help. IRAP's IP Assist program could help shape the IP and trademark strategy.

Jochem Moerman
Principal, Form Architects

Sources. Form Architects, Fraser Valley Lot Study, October 2026; Province of BC releases of 18 June 2024 and 29 August 2024; BC Building Code 2024, Subsection 3.2.10; PUBLIC Architecture for BC Housing, Single Stair Residential Buildings, 2023; NRC IRAP program pages; the One Stair IRAP memo and full business case, October 2026.