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Application Pre-Screening Software

steveray said:
I have not, but I do talk to a good amount of people...If you have a bottomless budget, the bigger software companies I am sure are making strides and will make more if you pay for it. The way I see it, you can make your application super complex and weed out some stuff and piss a lot of people off or you can staff up and give people actual customer service.
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Makes sense. Do applicants react well to instant plan review comments? Need to know if that pisses them off. As long as those "AI" comments are spot on, I don't see reasons why my applicants would hate it.
 
bristol9238 said:
Makes sense. Do applicants react well to instant plan review comments? Need to know if that pisses them off. As long as those "AI" comments are spot on, I don't see reasons why my applicants would hate it.
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Yeah, imagine you're trying to submit plans for a small residential deck, and it tells you that you need an energy report, a soils report, structural calculations, smoke alarm affidavit, and a grease interceptor. Not a happy applicant. It's almost impossible to create a system that's going to catch everything based on yes/no questions. There is no one-sized-fits-all for building permits.
 
My two cents, and maybe a little more thread creep. Been around the block with a lot of different software. Frankly I guess I don't know exactly what "pre-screening" software is, or why it is needed. IMHO pre-screening is a function of human interaction. Whether it is a face to face across a desk interaction, or a critical reading of a permit application, making a determination of what is missing or needed for a given scope of work.

Maybe there are some programs that are better than some people. Maybe there are some people better than the programs. I think a competent person using junk software will usually have better results than an incompetent person relying on a great program. As they say, junk in=junk out.

So very often, I get a plan review for a project that has been going through the program for a week or two. Apparently, in all that time, no human or program ever once flagged missing seals, missing reports, sometimes missing plans altogether. I have seen new buildings show up as furnace replacement permits. I have seen risqué pictures uploaded instead of contract documents. Whether its purposeful, opportunistic, or ignorance (or all 3), everything seems to get a pass until it bumps up against a diligent review, or inspection. But sometimes it just gets a pass all the way through. In the old days (old being just a few years ago) if someone came to an actual counter, the actual permit tech would be able to tell them in that first interaction what they need, send them away and tell them what they would need to be successful upon their return. The applicant would take notes, ask questions and get a full understanding of what it would take for a successful submittal. They even got a name to go with the interaction, and a face. It seems like retaining that information had a higher success rate than we have now. Sometimes they even developed a business casual relationship with the staff. Many times I watched as a permit tech flipped every page of a plan set, called out missing seals, or asked why there were no MEP pages. When the push for online everything started I raised this issue more than once. I was told, "it will be the same", with the only difference being that the initial interaction would be via email or online, and the Q & A would take place over the phone. They lied.

My preferred "pre-screening" software is flesh and bone, not zeros and ones (or whatever makes up A/I). Maybe that will change, but I haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that a program can pick up the slack for a human...competent or otherwise.

Competent permit techs, with strong work ethics and critical thinking skills are one of the most important parts of the process (if not THE most important part). But maybe they are a dying breed. For sure they are a rare occurrence in my world, but that may be more a result of pay and management. Much of what we do can and should be done electronically, and is faster and more efficient. But not the first part. (Pre-screening?)

JMHO.
 
Joe.B said:
Yeah, imagine you're trying to submit plans for a small residential deck, and it tells you that you need an energy report, a soils report, structural calculations, smoke alarm affidavit, and a grease interceptor. Not a happy applicant. It's almost impossible to create a system that's going to catch everything based on yes/no questions. There is no one-sized-fits-all for building permits.
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Ha agreed. That's why we're starting with ADUs only. Intake alone can take weeks for us, and ADU applications are more or less the same.
 
But Sifu is correct -- how can software pre-screen for anything? Say you have a checklist for what's required for a deck permit. You need a zoning approval, a site plan, a deck plan, a framing plan, some framing details. The applicant provides a screen grab taken from the Google Maps satellite view of their house with a square drawn on it using Microsoft paint, and checks the box for "Site Plan."

How does a software program deal with that?
 
Our floodplain software uses AI to review Elevation Certificates and generate deficiency notices. It actually does a great job and is highly customizable. It is not perfect, and you have to review the deficiency list, but it is lightning fast and rather accurate. Of course, the ECs are all PDFs, with no handwriting, so that helps. Even the scanned ECs are reviewed accurately. However, we still need to keep an eye on the deficiency list generated by the software's AI. Overall, it is very accurate, and we were surprised at the number of ECs that were improperly filled out, which we previously would have accepted. ECs are not quite as simple as you think,
 
Yankee Chronicler said:
But Sifu is correct -- how can software pre-screen for anything? Say you have a checklist for what's required for a deck permit. You need a zoning approval, a site plan, a deck plan, a framing plan, some framing details. The applicant provides a screen grab taken from the Google Maps satellite view of their house with a square drawn on it using Microsoft paint, and checks the box for "Site Plan."

How does a software program deal with that?
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Oh so often.....
 
Yankee Chronicler said:
But Sifu is correct -- how can software pre-screen for anything? Say you have a checklist for what's required for a deck permit. You need a zoning approval, a site plan, a deck plan, a framing plan, some framing details. The applicant provides a screen grab taken from the Google Maps satellite view of their house with a square drawn on it using Microsoft paint, and checks the box for "Site Plan."

How does a software program deal with that?
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Believe it or not, it can. You just have to program the requirements, and it can check the documents. It can make sure that the documents are present and filled out completely and accurately. Stuff like that takes the place of the intake personnel but still requires plan review.
 
Sifu said:
My two cents, and maybe a little more thread creep. Been around the block with a lot of different software. Frankly I guess I don't know exactly what "pre-screening" software is, or why it is needed. IMHO pre-screening is a function of human interaction. Whether it is a face to face across a desk interaction, or a critical reading of a permit application, making a determination of what is missing or needed for a given scope of work.

Maybe there are some programs that are better than some people. Maybe there are some people better than the programs. I think a competent person using junk software will usually have better results than an incompetent person relying on a great program. As they say, junk in=junk out.

So very often, I get a plan review for a project that has been going through the program for a week or two. Apparently, in all that time, no human or program ever once flagged missing seals, missing reports, sometimes missing plans altogether. I have seen new buildings show up as furnace replacement permits. I have seen risqué pictures uploaded instead of contract documents. Whether its purposeful, opportunistic, or ignorance (or all 3), everything seems to get a pass until it bumps up against a diligent review, or inspection. But sometimes it just gets a pass all the way through. In the old days (old being just a few years ago) if someone came to an actual counter, the actual permit tech would be able to tell them in that first interaction what they need, send them away and tell them what they would need to be successful upon their return. The applicant would take notes, ask questions and get a full understanding of what it would take for a successful submittal. They even got a name to go with the interaction, and a face. It seems like retaining that information had a higher success rate than we have now. Sometimes they even developed a business casual relationship with the staff. Many times I watched as a permit tech flipped every page of a plan set, called out missing seals, or asked why there were no MEP pages. When the push for online everything started I raised this issue more than once. I was told, "it will be the same", with the only difference being that the initial interaction would be via email or online, and the Q & A would take place over the phone. They lied.

My preferred "pre-screening" software is flesh and bone, not zeros and ones (or whatever makes up A/I). Maybe that will change, but I haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that a program can pick up the slack for a human...competent or otherwise.

Competent permit techs, with strong work ethics and critical thinking skills are one of the most important parts of the process (if not THE most important part). But maybe they are a dying breed. For sure they are a rare occurrence in my world, but that may be more a result of pay and management. Much of what we do can and should be done electronically, and is faster and more efficient. But not the first part. (Pre-screening?)

JMHO.
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Great comments.

To shed more color here, pre-screening is our way of alleviating the permit technician shortage, the permit turnaround delays, and staff burnout. While we'd like to pay permit techs more and compete with neighboring cities to keep our best techs, it's more of a dream and not an achievable reality in the near future for us.

I agree that permit technicians are one of the most critical functions for fixing our permit backlogs. We'll always have counter service, but for those who want to do things online we now have ways to help people review their applications and correct their code violations immediately. "AI" can catch the basics before our staff needs to spend time on 'em. The "AI" software is proving to be tremendously accurate for pre-screening... at least for ADUs. Like you said, it picks up missing seals, missing sheets, and even more granular checks such as when one of our jursidiction-specific documents is missing or incomplete.

The way I see it, as workforces and permit techs get harder to find and retain, our industry needs to change and adopt the right technology. We want to keep the few permit techs we have, and we don't want to burn them out with endless swarms of incomplete applications. Additionally we're not serving our community if we can't set up our homeowners and contractors for success during the application process and, therefore, they must now wait weeks to get basic comments back.

We'll always need a human touch at the counter or over the phone for those who need or want it. For those who want to do things online though, low quality application = low quality review comments, more review rounds, more applicant frustration, and more permit backlogs. That's what we're hoping to fix.
 
Yankee Chronicler said:
But Sifu is correct -- how can software pre-screen for anything? Say you have a checklist for what's required for a deck permit. You need a zoning approval, a site plan, a deck plan, a framing plan, some framing details. The applicant provides a screen grab taken from the Google Maps satellite view of their house with a square drawn on it using Microsoft paint, and checks the box for "Site Plan."

How does a software program deal with that?
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It's pre-screening based on our requirements and checklists. We gave our ADU checklists to them and they built the "AI" to pre-screen. They'll take an application and go through every checklist item you give them and check off each item as passed or failed with an explanation of why it passed or failed. They also provide the sheet number for each item so we can double check them.

The program we're looking at deals with images, drawings, scanned PDFs, and seemingly other files too.

Their response to me is "We build in-house application and plan check models specific to each jurisdiction. We also use state of the art image processing and reasoning models to evaluate applicable document uploads (including images) similar to how a human would. If an Applicant uploads a screenshot from Google Maps, Cembla will examine it based on your checklist items. For example, it would flag that this is not a sufficient site plan, it does not define the distance from the front property line to the ADU’s farthest exterior point, it does not mark locations of fire hydrants, and so on."
 
bristol9238 said:
It's pre-screening based on our requirements and checklists. We gave our ADU checklists to them and they built the "AI" to pre-screen. They'll take an application and go through every checklist item you give them and check off each item as passed or failed with an explanation of why it passed or failed. They also provide the sheet number for each item so we can double check them.
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If you get the chance, post a sample.....
 
steveray said:
If you get the chance, post a sample.....
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This is the homeowner and contractor view. They can't submit until they clear 75%.
img8395.png


Report (.docx) that is generated for each permit submission. This goes to us for our review. It includes the file name and page number so we can check them ourselves. We configure the checklist "items" and reference codes. The "AI" fills in the status and writes notes in the notes section.
img8397.png
 
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Wow .. you require actual plumbing drawings and schedules for an ADU? I rarely see that requested for any residential under 3K sf. It shouldn't be overly difficult to provide (if you understand plumbing and the codes), but for Joe/Josephine Homeowner it's going to be hard to do.
 
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