Symbium Receives CALBO Industry Achievement Award for Innovation, Collaboration, and Leadership in Permitting
Sacramento & San Francisco, CA, April 16, 2026 — The California Building Officials (CALBO), a Sacramento-based nonprofit organization comprised of building officials across the State, announced during its Annual Business Meeting this week that its board has awarded Symbium the 2025–2026 Industry Achievement Award, a recognition that reflects years of close collaboration with building departments across California and a shared commitment to practical innovation in public service.
Presented by CALBO, the award recognizes Symbium’s “collaborative and forward-thinking partnership with local government, seeking solutions that ensure compliance while balancing the needs of jurisdictional staff and the communities they serve.” For Symbium, that recognition carries special meaning. Building officials sit at the intersection of public safety, technical rigor, and community trust. To be recognized by the leaders of this profession is among the most meaningful distinctions our company could receive.
Founded out of Stanford University’s CodeX and Computer Science Department, Symbium was built to transform complex laws and regulations into a practical, intuitive public-facing experience. Today, Symbium is the only solution on the market that supercharges existing permitting workflows with comprehensive compliance checks in a deterministic (I.e. consistently accurate) manner to enable instant and accelerated permits across so many project types. More than 70 jurisdictions across California have adopted Symbium, all through word of mouth and without a sales team. That growth is a reflection of a simple fact: building departments want technology that works with them, not around them.
From the beginning, Symbium has taken a collaborative deployment approach with its jurisdiction partners. Rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all model, the company works alongside local agencies to preserve what matters most: control over local amendments, procedural nuances, and the checks that reflect each community’s priorities. That philosophy has helped jurisdictions modernize permitting while maintaining trust, transparency, and local authority.
Symbium’s recent work in California has shown what that model can achieve at scale. The company has partnered with jurisdictions across the state to support compliance with SB 379, helping agencies implement automated, real-time solar permitting while integrating with existing systems and enabling access to CalAPP funding. In Bakersfield, Symbium also helped power the nation’s first AI-enabled instant permitting experience across a broad range of clean energy and residential project types, demonstrating how compliance, speed, and administrative practicality can advance together.
The company’s commitment to the profession extends beyond software. Symbium CEO Leila Banijamali serves as Co-Chair of the County Building Officials Association of California Legislative Committee, alongside Fouad Barakat, P.E., Senior Civil Engineer, Building Plan Check Section, Los Angeles County Building and Safety Division. In that role, they work to ensure that the voices of building officials are meaningfully represented in legislation affecting local building departments and the communities they serve. CALBO’s own announcement highlighted Banijamali’s role in fostering engagement among industry, government, and code officials.
“This recognition from CALBO is profoundly meaningful to us because it comes from the people who understand this work best,” said Banijamali. “In our field, there is no higher honor than being recognized by building officials themselves. They carry enormous responsibility, often with limited resources and little fanfare, and they do so in service of safer, stronger communities. We have always believed our job is to support that mission with rigor, respect, and technology that reflects the realities of local government.”
“Symbium has earned this recognition by showing that modernizing the permitting process can actually strengthen local control and code integrity,” said Mike Brinkman, CALBO President and Building Official for the City of Newman. “When I first heard Leila speak at our Annual Business Meeting a few years ago, I was excited by the potential to address the complexities of SB 379. After working with their team, I was elated to find a true partner for jurisdictions with limited resources. Symbium listened to the needs of building officials and delivered tools that empower departments of all sizes serve their communities with greater efficiency.”
Symbium is especially honored to be recognized alongside an exceptional group of CALBO award recipients whose work reflects the depth of leadership, service, and innovation across California’s building safety community: the County of Butte Building Division, named Building Department of the Year for its digitally transformed, community-centered service model; John Caprarelli of the City of Santa Clarita, a Symbium partner, recognized as Building Official of the Year for his technical leadership and commitment to public engagement and mentorship; the CAL FIRE Office of the State Fire Marshal team, honored as Fire Official of the Year for its statewide leadership in wildfire resilience, code development, and interagency collaboration; Susan Dowty, recipient of the Course Development Merit Award for helping build the foundation of CALBO On Demand and expand access to high-quality professional education; and Susan Moe, named CALBO Training Institute Educator of the Year for her outstanding leadership in accessibility training and code education. We are proud to be recognized among professionals and organizations whose work strengthens not only the building safety profession, but the communities it serves every day.
Symbium shares this recognition with the public servants, building officials, plan reviewers, inspectors, and staff members who have trusted us enough to build alongside us. Their willingness to engage, challenge assumptions, and shape better systems is what makes progress possible. We are proud of what we have built together, and even more energized for what comes next.
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About Symbium
Symbium is the leader in automating compliance checks for planning and building departments across the US, empowering permit applicants to obtain instant permits, reducing administrative overhead, and accelerating the deployments of clean-energy and housing projects. Symbium is currently available in hundreds of jurisdictions across multiple states and continues to expand nationwide. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, inside Autodesk.
Contact: press@symbium.com
