What is a pre-construction notification (PCN)?
A pre-construction notification, or PCN, is the written submission a permittee sends the district engineer before starting work under a nationwide permit that requires one. It starts two separate clocks: a 30-day completeness check, then a 45-day review of the complete package. Both are calendar days, not business days.
General condition 32, in the Corps' own terms
Where required by the terms of the NWP, the prospective permittee must submit a pre-construction notification (PCN) to the district engineer as early as possible. The district engineer must determine whether the PCN is complete within 30 calendar days of receipt and, if incomplete, request the additional information within that 30-day period. The permittee may not begin work until either (1) written notice from the district engineer that the activity may proceed, or (2) 45 calendar days have passed from the district engineer's receipt of the complete PCN without written notice. Longer waits apply where general condition 18 (Endangered Species) or 20 (Historic Properties) notification was required, or where a written waiver to exceed NWP limits is needed. If the district or division engineer notifies the permittee in writing within 45 calendar days that an individual permit is required, work cannot begin until that permit is obtained.
Two numbers get collapsed into one so often that it is worth stating separately: the district engineer has 30 calendar days to decide whether your PCN is complete, and if it is not, to ask for what is missing, within that same window. Only once the district engineer has a complete PCN does the second clock start, and that clock runs 45 calendar days. A PCN that sits incomplete does not quietly start the 45 day review; it stays on the 30 day clock until the district engineer has what it needs.
What goes in a PCN
The specifics vary by permit and by district, but a PCN typically includes a project description, drawings or plans showing the work and the aquatic resources affected, a delineation or description of the waters of the United States involved, and the information needed to evaluate whichever general conditions the activity touches, most often endangered species and historic properties review. A PCN that omits the information the district needs to make a determination is an incomplete PCN, which is what starts the 30 day clock rather than the 45 day one.
The permittee, not the district, carries the burden here. Submitting early and submitting complete is the only lever a permittee actually controls: a thin PCN that forces a completeness request restarts the clock the applicant is trying to run down, and does so at the applicant's own cost in time. Submitting as early as possible in the project schedule, as general condition 32 itself recommends, is what turns a fixed regulatory deadline into a manageable one.
What this dataset does and does not compile about general conditions
General condition 32 is compiled here in full, with its own review-day and completeness-day figures read directly from the Federal Register text. Other general conditions named on this site because GC 32 itself refers to them, endangered species review and historic properties review among them, are named for that reason, not because PermitBird holds their full compiled text as standalone records. See the coverage page for the current state of what is and is not compiled across the whole dataset before assuming a general condition beyond 32 works the way this page describes it in outline.
If the district does not respond
If 45 calendar days pass from the district engineer's receipt of a complete PCN with no written response, the permittee may proceed, subject to the activity's other permit conditions. That default-to-proceed rule has exceptions built into general condition 32 itself: longer waits apply where general condition 18, endangered species, or general condition 20, historic properties, notification was required, or where a written waiver of a permit limit is being sought. If the district or division engineer instead notifies the permittee in writing within the review period that an individual permit is required, work cannot begin until that permit is obtained. Silence past the deadline is a green light only when none of those exceptions apply.
Always, conditional, never
Not every nationwide permit treats notification the same way. Counting across the 57 active permits: 21 require a PCN on every use, 16 require one only when a stated trigger is met, such as an acreage threshold or a special aquatic site, and 20 never require one at all. Conditional is the category worth reading carefully, because the trigger is usually an acreage or resource-type test rather than a blanket rule; see, for example, NWP 14, whose own PCN trigger is stated on that page. Never assume a permit is notification-free just because a similar one is. Run your specific activity through the determination tool to get the PCN answer for your permit rather than a general rule of thumb.