We believe zoning intelligence should be accessible to everyone.
BuildWise was built by someone who spent a decade running into the same wall and decided to tear it down.
OUR MISSION
Zoning data is public. It should be easy to use.
Every city publishes its zoning code. Every municipality makes its land use regulations available. In theory, anyone can access the rules that govern what gets built, where, and how. In practice, that information is buried in PDFs, fragmented across websites, written in legal language designed for attorneys. Not developers, not homeowners, not the people who actually need to use it.
The result is a system that quietly blocks smart growth, slows development timelines, and forces people to pay consultants thousands of dollars just to answer basic feasibility questions. Cities talk about incentivizing development and empowering homeowners to improve their properties but the information barrier makes that nearly impossible for most people to navigate on their own.
"BuildWise exists because this data should work for people, not against them. We're making zoning intelligence as easy to access as a Google search."
We’re starting with developers and real estate professionals — the people whose livelihoods depend on getting these answers right, fast. But the mission is bigger: a future where any homeowner, any small builder, any city planner has instant access to the information they need to make smart decisions about land.
THE FOUNDER
Built by someone who lived this problem.
Shane Cordileone, AICP
Founder & CEO, BuildWise
Shane has spent his entire career at the intersection of GIS, zoning, and land use regulation, working across local government, state government, private consulting, and technology. He has encountered the same information problem from every angle of the industry, and understands firsthand the real cost it imposes on projects, timelines, and decisions.
Most recently, Shane led the GIS department at Intersect, a data center infrastructure and renewable energy company that was acquired by Alphabet (Google). The role deepened his understanding of how spatial and zoning data creates bottlenecks even in well-resourced organizations, and reinforced his conviction that the problem wasn’t unique to any one industry. It was systemic.
BuildWise is the product of more than a decade of accumulated frustration and deep domain expertise. Shane isn’t guessing at the problem, he’s been living it since the beginning of his career, across every type of organization that has to navigate it.
