jar546
Forum Coordinator
This is an absolutely true story(zero exaggeration), and I have several very similar to this one.
A homeowner is giving one of my permit technicians a very hard time and demands to speak with the building official which is me. This is how the conversation went when I picked up the phone:
Owner: You people are holding up my renovation. I want to know what the problem is. My contractor submitted his paperwork over a month ago and has not heard back from the town at all. Why are you taking so long?
Me: Ma'am, I am sorry to hear that. Can you please give me your address? What type of work are you having done?
Owner: (gives me address) We are getting our kitchen and two bathroom remodeled. You know we have company scheduled to come and now the contractor doesn't think he can finish it time because of your delays.
Me: Ma'am, what is the name of your contractor?
Owner: (gives me the name of the contractor)
Me: Ma'am, just so you know, your contractor just signed up on our system and started filling out the permit 46 minutes ago for the first time. There are 7 required documents to upload and so far they have uploaded 1 of the 7 required documents. They are just filling it out and have not officially even submitted it to us yet.
Owner: Silence
Me: Ma'am, are you still there.
Owner: He told me he dropped off the paperwork over a month ago.
Me: Ma'am, we don't accept paperwork over the counter and even if we did, we would have to input it into the system. I am sorry but I think you need to have a conversation with your contractor. They are not even registered with the town as a contractor yet and like I said, just started the application 46 minutes ago. Ma'am you have a contractor problem, not a building department problem. I don't know why he would tell you that he applied for a permit over a month ago, when, in-fact, he has not. Our system keeps an audit log of every time a contractor or we log into the system and change something in the online application. Forty-six minutes ago he logged in as (I gave her his email address) at exactly 13:04 today.
Owner: How long will this take once he is done uploading everything.
Me: Ma'am that depends on whether or not all of his paperwork is correct. Hold on one second. (I then look at the application he uploaded) Ma'am I am looking at the actually application he submitted and you did not sign it as required and it is not notarized so our front office staff will be rejecting it. You may want to go over the paperwork with your contractor before he submits anything else incorrectly.
Owner: Thank you for your help. I will call him now.
You see in the past, we would have spend time looking around for the missing application that we never actually got. This is why I love this system. Another great thing is that we track the amount of time we wait to hear back from a contractor so it is nice to be able to report to an owner that so far the application has been in the processing state for 32 days. Two of those days were waiting for us to review and 30 of those days were waiting for the contractor to reply to a deficiency notice.
A homeowner is giving one of my permit technicians a very hard time and demands to speak with the building official which is me. This is how the conversation went when I picked up the phone:
Owner: You people are holding up my renovation. I want to know what the problem is. My contractor submitted his paperwork over a month ago and has not heard back from the town at all. Why are you taking so long?
Me: Ma'am, I am sorry to hear that. Can you please give me your address? What type of work are you having done?
Owner: (gives me address) We are getting our kitchen and two bathroom remodeled. You know we have company scheduled to come and now the contractor doesn't think he can finish it time because of your delays.
Me: Ma'am, what is the name of your contractor?
Owner: (gives me the name of the contractor)
Me: Ma'am, just so you know, your contractor just signed up on our system and started filling out the permit 46 minutes ago for the first time. There are 7 required documents to upload and so far they have uploaded 1 of the 7 required documents. They are just filling it out and have not officially even submitted it to us yet.
Owner: Silence
Me: Ma'am, are you still there.
Owner: He told me he dropped off the paperwork over a month ago.
Me: Ma'am, we don't accept paperwork over the counter and even if we did, we would have to input it into the system. I am sorry but I think you need to have a conversation with your contractor. They are not even registered with the town as a contractor yet and like I said, just started the application 46 minutes ago. Ma'am you have a contractor problem, not a building department problem. I don't know why he would tell you that he applied for a permit over a month ago, when, in-fact, he has not. Our system keeps an audit log of every time a contractor or we log into the system and change something in the online application. Forty-six minutes ago he logged in as (I gave her his email address) at exactly 13:04 today.
Owner: How long will this take once he is done uploading everything.
Me: Ma'am that depends on whether or not all of his paperwork is correct. Hold on one second. (I then look at the application he uploaded) Ma'am I am looking at the actually application he submitted and you did not sign it as required and it is not notarized so our front office staff will be rejecting it. You may want to go over the paperwork with your contractor before he submits anything else incorrectly.
Owner: Thank you for your help. I will call him now.
You see in the past, we would have spend time looking around for the missing application that we never actually got. This is why I love this system. Another great thing is that we track the amount of time we wait to hear back from a contractor so it is nice to be able to report to an owner that so far the application has been in the processing state for 32 days. Two of those days were waiting for us to review and 30 of those days were waiting for the contractor to reply to a deficiency notice.