The planners you'll
be dealing with.
We started whatcani.build after watching too many good projects come unstuck early. Not because the site was wrong, but because the planning advice turned up too late. We're here to fix that.
Meet the team
Between us we cover planning strategy, urban design, feasibility and the approvals process, end to end.
Istvan runs the planning and feasibility side of the practice. He came up through architecture and urban design before moving into planning strategy. He has spent his career at the early, high-stakes point in a project, when the decisions are made before a single drawing is finalised. He built whatcani.build on a simple conviction: good planning advice should land before the money's spent, not after.
He works directly with developers and builders on zoning strategy, feasibility, and the policy arguments that get good projects through council. That means reading a site the way an assessment planner will, weighing controls, context and precedent together. Then he shapes the case for approval early, while there is still room to change course cheaply.
Nathan is the design-literate half of the practice. He reads plans, sections and massing fluently enough to pick up planning issues while a scheme can still be changed cheaply. Before co-founding whatcani.build, he worked across residential and mixed-use projects managing the DA and CDC process end to end, from first lodgement through to determination.
He leads pre-design and approvals work, translating planning controls into briefs that architects can design to, and planning reports that councils can approve. That dual fluency, with design on one side and planning policy on the other, keeps a project moving between the drawing board and the assessment desk without expensive rework in between.
If a project isn't a good fit, we'll tell you in the first chat and point you towards someone who can help.