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What century is your building department in? (POLL)

Does your Building Department use software for the permit process?

  • NO We do not use software at all and use nothing but paper

    Votes: 1 3.6%

  • YES We use a combination of computer and paper

    Votes: 10 35.7%

  • YES We use permitting software but not for all aspects of the permitting process

    Votes: 9 32.1%

  • YES We use permitting software from soup to nuts including inspections and plan review

    Votes: 8 28.6%
  • Total voters
    28
JPohling said:
Here in San Diego I would say we are in the stone age. After 2 years of digital permit submittals, the process has gotten so bad that I just cannot see how it is sustainable for anyone to actually get a permit. I am only speaking about Tenant Improvement permits because that is what we do. We just got a few tidbits of information that is laughable at best. Here are the time frames they just sent out. From receipt of the digital submittal until they have the project set up in the system will be 30 business days. That is nearly 2 months of admin. Then you will be assigned a plan reviewer and plan check can begin. obviously plan review time is dependant on the scope and size of the project, but safe to say it is painfully slow. Then after all approvals have been completed they move the project to Permit Issuance. The time frame to issue the permit once it reaches permit issuance is 20 business days. That is another month. So just for the most basic of permits the admin time involved to obtain a permit is 3 months.
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Do you have a law that requires permit to be issued or denied within so many days?
Here in PA we have 30 days, for stamped residential we have 5 days.
We are mostly stone age.
 
Inspector Gadget said:
and is essentially creating a customized database system....
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And when he leaves who will have the knowledge to maintain it. We had a locally customized data base for about 10 years until updates from the underlying platform and support where no longer available from the manufacturer, Think Microsoft versions that are no longer supported for example.
 
mtlogcabin said:
And when he leaves who will have the knowledge to maintain it. We had a locally customized data base for about 10 years until updates from the underlying platform and support where no longer available from the manufacturer, Think Microsoft versions that are no longer supported for example.
Click to expand...

This is all mySQL stuff, with a generic interface ... in fact, that's the reason the boss said "screw it, let's do it ourselves" because companies go under, change platforms, demand more, etc.
 
Rick18071 said:
Do you have a law that requires permit to be issued or denied within so many days?
Here in PA we have 30 days, for stamped residential we have 5 days.
We are mostly stone age.
Click to expand...
You can reject the drawings within the 30 or 5 day timeframe and the clock goes away. You don't have to approve them in 5 or 30 days.
 
I work for a city full time and a village part-time. We have a software system for my city position, but we have no system at all at the village. Not for permits or complaints or anything.
 
Where I now work we have proprietary software, which is good, I have identified no issues with it thus far. The same problem still exists...GIGO. The human interface (or lack of) is where most things experience issues. That is not a software problem, that is a people problem.
 
We are almost done transitioning from Energov to Cloudpermit. The service from Energov sucked. Never got our portal up and running. We have had portal day one with Cloudpermit. It isn't as automated as Energov but is easier to set up and the implantation is 10 times better than with Energov. It does seem to be geared toward smaller AHJ's that don't have any or little data to import. If I had one complaint it would be the data transfer from Energov has been painful to say the least. Mostly the way it came from Energov, but also the none matching fields that they are have issues with mapping into Cloudpermit. We have a permitting, code enforcement and planning module. They are in development of a property module also. After 5 yrs. with Energov, I'd almost rather go back to 100% paper, so hoping this will be a better experience.
 
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