# Methodology: deck permit drawing requirements Study ID: PP-2026-10-12-DECK-01 Version: 1.0, publication edition Collection: October 12, 2026, UTC Publication recheck: October 14, 2026, UTC ## Research question and design What information do selected local offices explicitly ask applicants to supply or account for when preparing a residential deck permit package? This is a purposive comparison of official documents, not an audit of completed reviews. Naperville, Illinois; Madison, Wisconsin; and Zionsville, Indiana were selected for accessible local deck guidance. Each observation is a published requirement or process instruction. None represents a correction issued to an applicant or an observed project outcome. The comparison concerns submission information. It is not an engineering design guide, a complete local checklist or a determination that unstamped plans are acceptable. Design dimensions, adopted-code interpretations, fees, turnarounds and licensing exemptions are outside scope. ## Published sample - 18 selected observations, six per municipality - Seven official pages and documents, including context and corroborating sources - Thirteen observations with no stated source revision date - Five observations from dated sheets in Naperville's composite guide: three from April 23, 2024 and two from November 9, 2023 - No actual corrections, project outcomes or review durations collected A six-observation selection per office keeps the comparison manageable. It does not weight importance or frequency, and it cannot support a comparison of workload or jurisdiction performance. ## Collection and publication review 1. Opened official local sources and followed municipal links to forms and guides. Search-engine publication/crawl dates and copyright footers were not treated as revision dates. 2. Extracted short paraphrases, retained conditional wording, and recorded source URLs and heading or one-based PDF page locators. Practical preparation advice in the article is separate from the documentary evidence. 3. Assigned stable research IDs. Repeated wording within the same source/check/applicability was deduplicated; distinct instructions from different municipalities remain separate rows. 4. Checked the sample counts, source references, required fields, evidence categories and CSV/JSON equivalence. 5. Rechecked the seven official sources and their available municipal links on October 14. The original October 12 retrieval dates remain intact; the source registry separately records the publication recheck date. No applicants, project addresses, case IDs or personal contact information were collected. No city was contacted. The public files contain only policy-document paraphrases, source metadata and research limitations. ## Scope and version cautions Naperville's guide combines sheets from different years. Each row preserves its relevant sheet date. Its site-plan example covers several exterior improvements; the extracted observations concern the annotations it asks the reader to supply, not a deck-specific construction detail. The guide's inclusion on the current municipal page is evidence that the office publishes it, not proof that all embedded code references remain current. Madison's deck page and handout describe their site-plan submission trigger as above three feet; its Deck Data Sheet says three feet or more. The exact three-foot boundary remains unresolved. This study does not decide which wording controls and recommends asking the city about a boundary case. The page also contains apparent shed-template language in a different section; selected observations use its deck-specific Submit Building Plans section. Zionsville's undated sheet remains linked from its permit information page. Its presence does not independently establish that every embedded code reference is current. This comparison omits those numerical construction thresholds and makes no inference about professional-seal exemptions. ## Access and exclusions A candidate Johnson County, Indiana document returned HTTP 403 and was excluded during collection. An obsolete Madison deck URL redirected to a general department page; the current official links were used instead. Naperville's guide was readable through the public web reader, while a direct archival download was unavailable. At publication recheck, Madison's handout remained linked from its live deck page and readable through the public web reader; a direct download returned HTTP 403. These sources are not described as fresh, byte-for-byte origin archives. No access restrictions were bypassed or private portals scraped. The public registry contains verified URLs, source dates where stated, locators and access qualifications. ## Evidence interpretation Every row is categorized as stated_requirement and its outcome_status is not_observed. These values mean no case-level outcome was collected, not that the office approves all submissions or issues no corrections. Source silence is not an exemption. A field on a blank form indicates requested information; it does not show how a reviewer treated a particular project. ## Data dictionary - study_id: stable identifier for this collection - observation_id: unique research row ID - jurisdiction / state: municipality represented by the source - project_review_type: residential deck submission or associated workflow - reviewer_check: short paraphrase of the published instruction - theme: researcher-assigned grouping - applicability: preserved condition or scope - evidence_category: stated_requirement - source_id: key into sources.json and the JSON source registry - source_url: official source URL - source_locator: one-based PDF page and section, or web heading - source_date: explicitly stated date; null in JSON and empty in CSV when unavailable - source_version: edition/date note and known ambiguity - retrieval_date: original October 12 collection date - outcome_status: not_observed - notes: interpretation caveat or corroborating source IDs ## Reuse The CSV is the flat observation table. The JSON contains the same rows, source registry and study metadata. Revisit official sources before using these records for a project. Preserve this snapshot when creating a later version, record changed instructions and revision dates, and separate any future public correction evidence from these policy-document observations.