Bahria Town's own SOP, read for Enclave commercial: L.G+G+3 at 100% coverage, the design and CDA fees by plot size, the 3-year start rule and the papers a plaza needs before anyone can move in.
Short answer: Bahria Town's own building SOP (2023-24 edition, page 79) lists Bahria Enclave commercial plots of 30x40 and 40x45 feet as Neighborhood Commercial, L.G+G+3 with 100% coverage. That means a lower ground, a ground floor and three upper floors on the full plot, but with fixed elevations, an approval process and a completion deadline attached. What the SOP cannot tell you is whether your plot sits inside the layout CDA approved.
Direct line: Muhammad Hasnain, plot specialist for Bahria Enclave & DHA Margalla Enclave — WhatsApp 0300 0399322. Verified before you pay; drawbacks in writing.
Most pages that rank for these searches are dealer posts that say "build a plaza, earn rent" and stop there. This page does something simpler: it reads the rulebook. Everything below comes from Bahria Town's "Standard Operating Procedures (for operations, designing, execution and monitoring of buildings) 2023-2024", 8th revision, published by its Planning & Designing Wing on the Building Control Department site. It runs to 178 pages. Where we cite a page, you can check it yourself.
Read this first: the SOP is Bahria Town's rulebook, not a CDA approval. The Enclave is in Zone IV, and on 25 September 2026 CDA wrote to Bahria Town about the scheme's layout and building plans (details in the section on open questions). Rules on paper and a plot you can safely build on are two different things.
Page 79 of the SOP is a classification table. The row that matters for this page reads, in Bahria Town's words: "Commercial (30' X 40'/ 40' X 45') Bahria Enclave — Neighborhood Commercial — L.G+G+3 — 100%". The first figure after the class is storeys, the second is ground coverage.
In plain English: lower ground, ground, and three floors above, built across the whole plot. That is five levels. Compare the neighbouring rows on the same page:
| Plot class | SOP category | Storeys allowed | Coverage | SOP page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial 30′ × 40′ / 40′ × 45′ — Bahria Enclave | Neighborhood Commercial | L.G + G + 3 | 100% | p. 79 |
| Commercial 20′ × 30′ — all phases | Neighborhood Commercial | L.G + G + 1 | 100% | p. 79 |
| Commercial 15′ × 20′ — all phases | Sub-Neighborhood Commercial | L.G + G | 100% | p. 79 |
| Shops — all phases | Sub-Neighborhood Commercial | Single storey | 100% | p. 78 |
| Phase VIII 1-A, 30′ × 40′ (Rawalpindi, for contrast) | Central Business District, FAR 1:8 | L.G + G + 7 | — | p. 78 |
Source: Bahria Town, Standard Operating Procedures (for operations, designing, execution and monitoring of buildings) 2023-2024, 8th revision, published on Bahria Town’s Building Control Department site; read 2 October 2026. L.G = lower ground. The Enclave row is the only line in the SOP that names Bahria Enclave commercial.
Two things stand out. First, the Enclave's 30x40 and 40x45 plots get a taller envelope than the generic 20x30 commercial plot (L.G+G+1) or the 15x20 plot (L.G+G). Second, coverage is 100%, so the building fills the plot. Ask the Design Wing what that means for your plot's light and ventilation.
Elsewhere in Bahria, the Phase VIII 1-A Central Business District allows far more (up to L.G+G+7). Do not let a dealer quote that figure for an Enclave plot. It is a different class of land.
Page 65 (clause 5.2.3) allows one basement. Maximum depth is 12 feet from road level for plots up to one kanal. Use as a residence is prohibited, and waterproofing, shoring and an emergency exit are mandatory. If you are budgeting for a basement, budget for the shoring and waterproofing as separate line items.
The fee table on page 81 lists commercial plots under headings such as B+G+3 and B+G+4. The page-79 row for the Enclave says L.G+G+3. The fee table is about fees, and the classification table is the Enclave rule, but the headings do not match exactly. Before you pay anything, get the floor count for your exact plot number confirmed in writing by the Design Wing.
Clause 5.21.2 on page 80 says: "Elevations are fixed for all Commercial Areas. However, Client may have Floor Plans of his/her Choice." So the street-facing look of your plaza is not yours to design. Your freedom is inside: shop sizes, stair and lift positions, services.
The SOP gives the Design Wing a turnaround of 14 working days for a pre-approved plan and 20 working days for a new design. Page 80 also says Bahria Town does not take responsibility for soil, structural or MEP design. Those stay with your consultants.
The same section (5.21.10) states: "There are no approved contractors of Bahria Town". Nobody can sell you a "Bahria-approved contractor". Choose your own, and read our plaza construction cost page before comparing quotes.
For commercial plots, page 81 sets out design charges where the architecture is done by Bahria's own Design Wing (the SOP calls it "Situation 1"). It also lists security charges, a charge for extra land design, and separate charges for preparing CDA submission drawings, repeated again for the CDA completion submission. A completion certificate charge of Rs 40,000 applies.
| Fee (PKR) | 30′ × 40′ (B+G+3) | 30′ × 40′ (B+G+4) | 40′ × 45′ | 40′ × 60′ | 50′ × 90′ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design charges (Bahria Design Wing) | 530,000 | 600,000 | 690,000 | 935,000 | 1,250,000 |
| Security | 32,000 | 32,000 | 32,000 | 65,000 | 65,000 |
| CDA submission drawings, preparation | 60,000 | 60,000 | 95,000 | 95,000 | 125,000 |
| CDA completion submission, preparation | 60,000 | 60,000 | 95,000 | 95,000 | 125,000 |
| Completion certificate charges | 40,000 | 40,000 | 50,000 | 55,000 | 60,000 |
| Listed fees, total (our arithmetic) | 722,000 | 792,000 | 962,000 | 1,245,000 | 1,625,000 |
Source: Bahria Town, Standard Operating Procedures (for operations, designing, execution and monitoring of buildings) 2023-2024, 8th revision, published on Bahria Town’s Building Control Department site; read 2 October 2026. Page 81, “Situation 1” (design done by Bahria’s own Design Wing). If your own architect designs it, page 84 charges 90% of the design fee up to 10 Marla. Extra land: Rs 125 per sq ft of design charge. The fee table writes floors as “B+G+3 / B+G+4”; the Enclave row on page 79 says L.G+G+3 — get your plot’s floor count from the Design Wing in writing. The RDA/MCR rows in the same table apply to Rawalpindi phases, not the Enclave.
If you bring an external architect instead (page 84, "Situation 2"), the SOP charges a scrutiny fee: 90% of the design fee up to 10 Marla, or Rs 37.8 per square foot above 10 Marla up to 10 kanal. For larger plots it is paid in stages: 40% upfront, 40% on elevation approval by the CEO, and 20% at the final architectural NOC. You submit architectural, soil test, structural and MEP drawings either way.
Note what the CDA lines tell you. Bahria Town's own fee schedule expects drawings to go to CDA, twice. That is the rulebook acknowledging a second authority. For the residential equivalent, see map approval and bylaws.
Page 134 (clause 12.16) is the one buyers skip. The member "must start construction of building within three years from the date of issue of first possession letter", failing which Bahria Town "reserves the right to take any punitive action including non-Utilization fee, cancelation".
Once you start, the SOP requires completion, with a completion certificate, within 18 months for plots up to one kanal. Bahria Town may penalise, and if construction has not reached slab completion it may demolish.
What that means in practice: a commercial plot bought as a "hold" carries a three-year clock from the possession letter, not from the date you bought it. Ask the seller when the first possession letter was issued, because that date may have already used up part of your window. A buyer who picks up a plot years after its possession letter may inherit very little time.
Pages 88-89 (clause 5.21.12) set out the final NOC to occupy a commercial building. The list is long, and it is where finished plazas get stuck:
There is also a provision for a single floor to receive provisional completion, but only if the exterior is finished and fire-fighting for the whole plaza is operational. So a floor cannot be signed off in isolation from the building's safety systems. This matters for anyone buying a floor in an unfinished plaza. See our plaza buying checklist.
Built only from the SOP's own requirements, the sequence from possession to occupation looks like this:
These are the two sizes named in the Enclave row. A 30x40 plot is 1,200 square feet and a 40x45 is 1,800 square feet. With 100% coverage over five levels, the gross built area is five times the footprint, before you subtract stair cores, lift shafts and services.
| Plot | Plot area (sq ft) | Levels (L.G+G+3) | Gross covered area (sq ft) | Per level (sq ft) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30′ × 40′ | 1,200 | 5 | 6,000 | 1,200 |
| 40′ × 45′ | 1,800 | 5 | 9,000 | 1,800 |
Our arithmetic from the SOP row: plot area × 5 levels at 100% coverage. Gross area — stairs, a lift shaft and services come out of it before anything is lettable.
Three practical consequences follow. The money is in built area, but only the part that is lettable counts. Stairs, a lift and fire-escape requirements eat into every floor on a small footprint, and a 30x40 footprint loses proportionally more than a 40x45. Second, the lower ground and the upper floors rent very differently, so do not multiply one shop rate by five levels. Third, construction cost per square foot varies widely between sources, so test your numbers against the range on the cost page and the evidence band on the rental yield page before you decide.
The file we read is the 8th revision, 2023-24 on its cover (the file name says 2022-2023). Its own foreword says the SOPs are "updated on monthly basis". A newer revision may exist, and fees in particular may have moved. Treat every Rs figure here as a published schedule to be confirmed, not a quote.
The Enclave is in Zone IV, and CDA approves building plans in CDA-controlled areas. Bahria Town's fee schedule already has line items for CDA submission, so the SOP and CDA are not strangers. But the order of events matters: a Bahria Town design approval is not, by itself, a CDA sanction.
The Nation (25 September 2026) and Daily Times (25 September 2026) reported a CDA letter on Bahria Enclave-I. It says the approved layout is 12,543 kanals, approved in December 2020, and alleges the scheme was extended beyond 18,000 kanals without a revised layout or building plans. It also alleges that land reserved for a park was converted to commercial use. CDA directed IESCO and SNGPL to provide utility connections "only in accordance with the approved layout plan and sanctioned building plans".
We found no report, as of 2 October 2026, that the offices were physically sealed, no court stay, and no statement from Bahria Town on this order. One outlet's headline said the Enclave was "declared illegal"; the fuller reports describe action over the extension and alleged violations, not a cancellation of the approved layout. Read our CDA action page for the detail.
Why it matters here: the final NOC requires utility NOC forms for electricity, gas and sewerage. If utilities follow only sanctioned plans, a plaza whose plot or plans fall outside them could struggle at exactly that step.
Comparing with the DHA side? The Margalla Enclave commercial plots page covers a ballot-based product with its own rules.
Before you pay: send me the plot number and possession-letter date on WhatsApp 0300 0399322. I check it against the SOP and the approved layout and send the drawbacks in writing. No promises on returns.
For 30x40 and 40x45 feet plots, page 79 of Bahria Town's 2023-24 SOP lists L.G+G+3 with 100 percent coverage. That is a lower ground, a ground floor and three upper floors on the full plot. The fee table uses B+G+3 and B+G+4 headings, so get the floor count for your exact plot number confirmed in writing by the Design Wing before paying anything.
No. Clause 5.21.2 on page 80 of the SOP says elevations are fixed for all commercial areas, while the client may have floor plans of his or her choice. The Design Wing quotes 14 working days for a pre-approved plan and 20 working days for a new design. Structural, soil and MEP design stay with your own consultants.
Clause 12.16 on page 134 requires construction to start within three years of the first possession letter, or Bahria Town may apply a non-utilization fee or cancellation. Once started, completion with a certificate is required within 18 months for plots up to one kanal. Ask the seller for the first possession letter date, because the clock may already be running.
Pages 88-89 list a structural completion certificate, fire-fighting and MEP certificates, utility NOC forms, CNIC, possession and allotment letters, a No Demand Certificate, signed inspection cards, façade sign-off and the final NOC fee. A single floor can get provisional completion only if the exterior is finished and fire-fighting for the whole plaza works.
The SOP itself is unchanged, but on 25 September 2026 CDA directed IESCO and SNGPL to provide connections only in line with the approved layout and sanctioned building plans. The final NOC needs utility forms, so a plot outside the approved 12,543-kanal layout could face problems. Check your plot number against the approved LOP first.
Bahria Town ke 2023-24 SOP ke page 79 ke mutabiq Bahria Enclave ke 30x40 aur 40x45 commercial plot par L.G+G+3 aur 100 percent coverage hai, yani lower ground, ground aur teen upar ki manzilein. Elevation fixed hai, sirf floor plan apni marzi ka ho sakta hai. Apne plot ka exact floor count Design Wing se likhwa kar lein.
From Sector A’s finished streets to Sector O’s entry tickets — 5 Marla to 4 Kanal, file to allotment to possession — we keep live options in all sixteen sectors, plus DHA Margalla Enclave ballots, files and resales. Buying, selling, or exchanging: one WhatsApp message gets you today’s real options, with verification built in before any token moves.
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WhatsApp the details. Hasnain checks the plot against the approved layout and the SOP, and tells you what the number really buys.