Sample Basic Floor Plan Diagram

Winners of cannabis licenses in Virginia will need to get floor plans and construction documents created in order to finalize their licenses. This involves bringing together several experts, starting with a cannabis-experienced facility designer who guides the other experts–the architect, mechanical/electrical/plumbing engineers–on what they need to do. 

Don’t start with an architect! This is a common mistake that results in having an unusable cultivation facility that doesn’t account for all necessary spaces and functions and doesn’t take workflow into account. 

Along with our partners, we can handle 95% of your facility design and we think we can do it for the best price with the best service! Contact Us Now to Discuss. 

This is the kind of requirement you can expect the Agency to ask for: 

A detailed facility diagram for each location listed in Section X, in accordance with Chapter X of Virginia Statutes and VCCA regulations. Each diagram must include the following:

• • Fire and smoke detection systems
  • Carbon monoxide detection systems 
  • Enclosed toilet facilities 
  • Product storage areas 
  • Limited-access areas and restricted-access areas 
  • Ventilation and filtration systems 
  • Planned square feet of space for licensed activities 
  • Planned square feet or acres of space for cultivation
  • Planned square feet of space for manufacturing 
  • Planned square feet or acres of plant canopy
  • Planned square feet or acres of space for retail sales
  • Manufacturing equipment
  • All points of ingress and egress
  • Windows and doors, with identification of locks 
  • Alarm systems, including control panel and alarm sensors 
  • Video surveillance cameras and storage devices, including identification of video area coverage
  • Security Lighting
  • Lock keypads
  • Fencing or locked gates

Let’s break down the facility design requirements into groups of required contractors. 

First, you need a cannabis cultivation/manufacturing/retail expert and facility designer (Jennifer Martin, our owner, as an example) to take your line drawing of the building and lay out all the rooms and functions. 

Then, you need an architect to centralize and organize the information from the other contractors. The architect will be the person who will deliver the final document set that includes everyone else’s input. You can use any commercial architect, but architects with cannabis experience will be more aware of how these types of facilities–whether retail or production–are supposed to look and function. 

A regulatory agency’s floor plan requirements don’t require much in the way of engineering, but your local building permit department WILL, so from the list above, so most licensees will need an electrical engineer, a mechanical engineer (HVAC) and a plumbing engineer. Some people will need a structural engineer and a specialized irrigation design engineer. Plumbing design and irrigation design aren’t usually done by the same expert. Architects usually have engineers already working for them or with them, or you can hire a company for environmental controls who also has engineers on staff. We can make recommendations as well. 

The items in the middle of the list above can be handled by cultivation, manufacturing and/or dispensary consultants who will know how to size and orient your rooms based on which license types you are planning. We offer this service, as well as having great partners for architectural, engineering, and environmental controls expertise (Contact us to discuss further). 

Finally, you need a security company to draw out the locations of your locks, alarms, video cameras, security lighting and fencing. Again, make sure they know what format the architect prefers so all of the drawings will be compatible. The electrical engineer will need both irrigation plans and security plans in order to finish the electrical design plans. 

We want the cannabis facility design process to be as seamless as possible for you, so we have worked to create a team that can handle almost everything for you under one roof. This includes cannabis architects, engineers, and cultivation/manufacturing/dispensary facility design experts. You only need to choose your own security company and connect us with them. Our recommended architects will oversee the creation of drawings and construction documents, with your input, and you’ll end up with a set of drawings that meets local and state requirements to complete your cannabis licensing process and become operational as soon as possible. 

Once you have secured a properly zoned cannabis facility and provided a line drawing to the consultant (like me) who will do your initial conceptual layout, the process will take 2-3 months. This is because it takes 5 or 6 experts coming together weekly to exchange ideas, with your input, and come back with drawings that must be merged together and checked against all rules and specifications of your local municipality and the VCCA’s regulations. Each consultant/contractor takes a week or two for their part of the process, but then some time is required for revisions and feedback, and somehow there’s always someone who gets sick or goes on vacation. We’d like to say the process can get done more quickly, but it just never does. All of these contractors have multiple customers they are trying to satisfy at any given time, so 2-3 months is how it usually goes. We just make sure that we are never the ones to hold things up. We work evenings and weekends sometimes in order to keep things moving. 

The price of getting design plans done for your cannabis facility will vary based on the contractors you choose and the size of your facility. $40,000 is a good general goal for a facility design budget considering that each contractor will charge between $1,500-$15,000 for their part. Here’s a likely breakdown: 

• Fire suppression drawings – $1,500
• Conceptual floor plan for cultivation or manufacturing – $7,500 including 2 revisions (Note:  additional revisions and ongoing cultivation business planning come at an additional cost)
• Full consulting oversight including full floor plan and full support throughout the design process – $35,000. (Note: the typical design process includes dozens of revisions because it’s through this process that the owners learn all the details and plans for the business and all of its components and systems, and they inevitably change their minds a lot based on equipment prices and reconsideration of the overall business plan as that happens.)
• Security company drawings – $1,500
• Architectural (project management, local and VCCA requirements and drawings) – $15,000
• Engineering (mechanical/electrical/plumbing) – $15,000
• Irrigation System Design – $4000

For retail dispensaries, the architect can probably do the drawings without input from a cannabis expert. It’s just important to keep the flow of car and foot traffic into account, as well as visitor check-in, limited access areas, and appropriate proportions of showroom space vs administrative, storage and product transfer space. 1 hour of consulting time from us is probably sufficient if your architect needs some input on these items. 

Ultimately, you are your own project manager because you need to make so many decisions and keep all of the subcontractors on task and in communication with each other throughout the process. The more you are nudging your contractors and getting involved in the details, the more quickly and successfully you will become operational. The squeaky wheel often gets the grease when contractors are juggling multiple projects, and there are plenty of cost/benefit decisions to make along the way about building features that are very consequential if not done properly, such as back-up power design and sizing, equipment technologies, electrical capacities, extra building space for future expansion, etc, etc. 

Choose people to work with who you understand, are responsive, trustworthy and on the ball. Get references to ensure they have the proper expertise and good customer track records. 

When you’ve been growing indoor cannabis, rebuilding grow rooms, trying out various cultivation techniques and visiting indoor cannabis facilities for decades, you eventually settle into patterns that represent the most efficient and effective systems. There are certainly many ways to grow cannabis, but certain methods and types of equipment have become industry-standard for a reason–they give you the best bang for the buck. To put it another way, the combination of upfront cost, labor and results produces the most profit. 

The best methods are not necessarily the most technologically advanced or sophisticated. Just having a reliable system is more important. For indoor cannabis cultivation, a solid environmental controls system is the basis for success. There must be enough capacity in your air conditioning and dehumidification systems to cool and dry the plant rooms sufficiently, without moisture or heat spikes as systems are cycling. Air must be well circulated and purified with Co2 enrichment. 

Most projects we’ve seen get sticker shock when they learn the cost of air conditioning and dehumidification, but if they don’t invest what it takes to have solid HVACD systems (heating, ventilation, air conditioning, dehumidification), then they will never succeed. 

One of our best clients, River Valley Relief, in Fort Smith Arkansas, invested fully into a chilled water air conditioning system, as well as proper irrigation system sanitation technology, and they are leading their state in cannabis flower production in 2025. Their upfront financial investments more than paid off with energy efficiency and consistent crop health. Here are some pictures of their facility: