Digital building application

Building documents and building applications must be submitted electronically in text form in accordance with Section 53 (2) of  the State Building Code (LBO) (opens in a new tab). The state capital Stuttgart does not make use of the possibility of a transitional regulation in § 77 Para. 5 LBO. An application and submission of building documents in analog form is therefore inadmissible and ineffective.

We will continue to accept applications in digital procedures via the platform  www.service-bw.de (opens in a new tab) until the introduction of the state’s new application platform “ViBa” and use the service-bw email address you use for initial communication (confirmation of receipt and deficiency letters).

For follow-up communication or if you wish to send electronic messages to a different e-mail address from the outset, please inform us of the desired e-mail address using the “Declaration of electronic communication” form, which you simply submit together with the application.

Electronic building documents must be submitted in an archivable Portable Document Format (PDF/A) (Section 3 (2) sentence 1 LBOVVO). Other file formats are not permitted!

The dialog-guided processes via the service portal of the state of Baden-Württemberg  www.service-bw.de (opens in a new tab), which can also be accessed via the city’s website, are to be used for the application and submission of building documents (§ 3 Para. 2 Sentence 2 LBOVVO). Service-BW is a service provided by the state of Baden-Württemberg, not the state capital Stuttgart. The Building Law Office has no influence on the design of the application dialog.

In future, service-bw will also be replaced by the new state platform “ViBa” (Virtual Building Authority) at the state capital Stuttgart. However, the exact date has not yet been determined.

In particular, the transmission of applications by e-mail to a mailbox of the city or a city employee, transmission via other data exchange platforms or transmission on a data carrier (e.g. USB stick or CD) is not permitted. Such transmissions do not result in an effective application; the data will be deleted or destroyed.

Please note the following specifications for the naming and transmission of the files belonging to an application. Differently named construction documents lead to considerable delays and difficulties in processing, other structures of the transmitted data do not correspond to the specified transmission channels.

• Each document must be submitted as a single PDF, multi-page documents as a multi-PDF. It is not permitted to bundle several documents into one multi-PDF.
• Each plan must be submitted as a single PDF; digital plan folders/plan booklets may not be submitted as multi-PDFs. The term “document” refers to a text document (i.e. traditional correspondence), while “plan” refers to any type of construction drawing.
• The documents should be named in accordance with the specifications listed in the table, as otherwise processing will be more difficult and delayed for all parties involved. The following form must be observed: [Serial number]_[Document type]_[Name]_[Year]_[Month]_[Day]_ [Street] [HNo].pdf

• If no house number has yet been assigned, the parcel number is entered instead. For example, a plan designation would then be: 1_Lageplan_2021_08_04_Flst Stuttgart 4711_1.pdf

• If plans are changed, a completely new document with a new name must be submitted (important: different date).

• If an outdated floor plan from March is replaced by a new version in August, this means, for example:

  1_Lageplanan_2023_08_04_Königstr. 43A_to_43F.pdf replaced

  1_Lageplan_2023_03_21_Königstr. 43A_bis_43F.pdf

• The date given in the document name is the date of the plan drawing. A PDF document in which the date in the file name differs from the plan date in the plan legend is not correctly named and may be rejected.

As the state does not yet offer a separate dialog on service-bw for the approval procedure, the dialog for the preliminary building permit can be used as an alternative for the approval application. Please indicate in a suitable place that this is an approval procedure, for example in the “Description of the building project” or “Description of the issue” field.

You have submitted a digital building application and the building authority requires further documents? Then you must also submit these online via the state service-bw.de service portal  . (opens in a new tab)

Regardless of the procedure in which the building application was submitted, this is only possible via the building permit application service  . (opens in a new tab)

Regardless of the procedure in which the building application was submitted, this is only possible via the building permit application service and the Stuttgart location selection.

We have put together a step-by-step guide on how exactly the subsequent submission works:

Special regulations apply to the designation of documents for structural engineering certificates to be submitted. Further information can be found in the “Flyer Specifications of the Testing Office”.

Documents for the Prüfamt für Baustatik must be submitted in archivable Portable Document Format (PDF/A). Other file formats are not permitted.

Only the service portal of the state of Baden-Württemberg is to be used for the transmission of documents. The documents can be uploaded there via the  mailbox of the Prüfamt für Baustatik (opens in a new tab).

It is quite possible that no structural engineering proofs are required in building application procedures.

However, the standardized dialog procedures stored on service-bw by the state of Baden-Württemberg for submitting applications in building law procedures require entries to be made in the sections for “structural engineering evidence”. If no entries are made here, no send button is offered at the end of the dialog, so the application cannot be sent.

The system must be bypassed in these cases. Here you will find instructions on how to do this:

If, in building permit procedures or notification procedures, structural verifications are not checked by the Testing Office for Structural Analysis but by commissioned external test engineers, this structural verification also includes, in addition to the actual plan check and the test report, the on-site structural inspection and, after completion of the inspection, the transmission of the structural verifications provided by the test structural engineer with a test note to the building authority.

If an external inspection body is commissioned by the building authority in the building permit procedure, these documents are forwarded to the structural engineering inspection office.

If an external inspection body is commissioned by the client in the simplified building permit procedure or notification procedure, these building inspection documents are sent to the responsible building department.

Regardless of the procedure, the documents examined must be arranged completely in digital form in the specified order. Changes are not permitted.

The specified order structure is available for download.

Digital decisions by the building authority can be issued in different legal qualities. For example, Section 58 (1) of the State Building Code (LBO) stipulates that building permits “shall be issued in written form or electronically in text form in accordance with Section 126b of the German Civil Code (BGB)”. This applies accordingly to other decisions based on the LBO.

In the case of electronic text form in accordance with Section 126b BGB, the transmitted document must be legible, for example a PDF file, must name the person making the declaration in the text, in this case the City of Stuttgart as a legal entity, and must be reproducible for the recipient. The file must therefore be storable and be able to be retrieved in the future. A signature, in particular a qualified electronic signature, is not required for the electronic text form.

However, other legal provisions require written form or specifically a qualified electronic signature, for example in Section 8 (3) of the General Administrative Regulation for the Issuance of Certificates under the German Condominium Act (AVA). In these cases, the documents are provided with a qualified electronic signature by the Building Law Office before being sent to the addressee.

This signature is destroyed by any change to the document and can then no longer be restored. However, it can be checked in an application that can open PDF files without changing the document and thereby destroying the signature.

If the recipients receive a PDF with a qualified signature from us and are unable to read the signature, this could be due to their PDF program, such as Acrobat Reader. The verification software sometimes works incorrectly here.

This is due to the fact that Acrobat Reader cannot handle certain character sets and graphics. The error has been documented by various sources. This is also a major reason why the state capital of Stuttgart does not use Acrobat Reader, but instead uses a different product (PDF-XChange).

In individual cases, the situation arises that a PDF document correctly created by the plan author, which has been correctly signed electronically by the authority and sent to the addressee, cannot be verified with Acrobat Reader.

The verification problem can only be solved by using a suitable software product to verify signatures. The EU offers a  free tool (opens in a new tab) that can be used to verify signatures. Please refer to the handout below to view and verify qualified signatures using PDF-XChange, Adobe Acrobat and the EU verification tool.

The digital application does not work or an error message is displayed? The following PDF document explains possible sources of errors and provides assistance in solving the problem: