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Officials outline permitting overhaul: Acela integration, ePermitHub and customer experience manager planned
Summary
City permitting and planning officials told the Finance Committee they are implementing a multi‑department remapping of the construction‑permitting process aimed at shortening review times and reducing backlogs.
City permitting and planning officials told the Finance Committee they are implementing a multi‑department remapping of the construction‑permitting process aimed at shortening review times and reducing backlogs.
Why it matters: permitting delays affect housing production, job creation and revenue collection. The department said the package of changes will make intake and interdepartmental reviews more predictable for applicants and subcontractors.
Director Sally Martin O’Toole described the implementation work as multi‑departmental and largely technical: the city retained Baker Tilly to develop 39 recommendations and staff are now integrating permitting records across departments. “We have been implementing recommendations now. Many of them are technology based,” O’Toole said, describing work to integrate Acela records so planning, zoning and MoCap reviews can be tracked on a shared platform. The department has also contracted for ePermitHub to streamline document review and said it recently hired its first customer‑experience manager to prevent applications from “getting stuck” in the process.
Commissioner Naveed Hussain and Chief Vanover said the department is also using targeted outside plan‑examiner contracts to reduce the backlog while they hire permanent staff. Officials told the committee that previously published valuation figures included a numeric transcription error and that corrected 2024 commercial permit valuation is $2.6 billion (the budget book will be revised to reflect the correction on a green sheet).
Staff said they will continue to audit open‑data reporting monthly and to publish permit metrics to the city’s open‑data portal so the public and applicants can see processing times, throughput and outstanding reviews. Council members applauded hiring a customer‑experience manager and asked staff to return with updated timeline metrics after the systems are in place.
Ending: Council asked for a follow‑up report on backlogs and average review times after the new systems and contracted plan‑examiner support are fully implemented; the department committed to periodic open‑data updates and a green sheet correction for the 2024 valuation figures.
