Houston permitting staff say third‑party reviewers keep backlog from growing but do not reduce it

Houston Public Works and leaders at the Houston Permitting Center told the City Council’s Government Operations Committee on an October meeting that third‑party plan‑review contracts have prevented permit review times from worsening but have not reduced the backlog.

Rudy Moreno, deputy director of the Houston Permitting Center, told the committee that the city reviewed more than 60,000 unique projects and performed about 85,000 project reviews in fiscal year 2025. “We are not eating into our balance of plans that are in the queue, which essentially we almost broke even,” Moreno said. “With third party staff augmentation contracts, we're just maintaining. We are treading water.”

Why it matters: plan reviews are a gate for construction and development permitting. Moreno and Joanna Clark, deputy city engineer with Houston Public Works, said the city depends on external contracts to handle reviews across multiple disciplines — structural, electrical, plumbing, traffic and mobility, storm water, flood‑plain and telecommunications reviews — while it builds internal capacity.

Staffing and cost

Moreno said the Permitting Center reported about 122 vacancies, roughly a 20% vacancy rate, with plan‑review positions comprising about 15.5% of the vacancies. The agency has shortened its service level agreement: 80% of plan reviews are to be completed in seven days or less. Moreno said routing at the front and back ends effectively allows about five business days of active review time per discipline.

Moreno and Clark described a cost gap between hiring city employees and contracting private reviewers. Moreno said the city is paying about three times more for third‑party plan‑review services than for regular plan‑review employees, while the difference for engineering classifications was smaller. A slide shown to the committee said the Permitting Center is currently using roughly 25% of the Michael Baker contract capacity and under half of the Versa contract capacity. The presentation listed Michael Baker (contract in use since 2020, identified as expiring January 2027), Asani (utilized through January 2023), Bureau Veritas (no longer used) and Versa (in use since mid‑2023, contract expires June 2028).

Backlog and workload

Moreno said the Permitting Center began fiscal 2025 with just over 400 plans in the system, received about 2,800 plans in the first quarter and performed a similar number of reviews in that period. He said third‑party reviewers have allowed the agency to maintain throughput but have not produced a net decline in the ending backlog. Moreno estimated roughly 1,000 plans presently in the queue and said the system peaked at almost 5,000 plans in earlier months.

Plans to reduce dependency

Officials described a multi‑pronged strategy to rely less on third‑party reviewers: strengthen hiring and retention through competitive pay and career ladders, expand training and cross‑training so new hires reach full productivity (which staff said typically takes 12–18 months), broaden the scope of the customer‑paid overtime/revamped after‑hours program, and modernize digital review tools, including exploratory talks with artificial‑intelligence vendors. “We are being tasked and we are so much committed to serve the public and be sure that we meet these timelines,” Clark said, emphasizing the need to preserve review quality while improving speed.

The Permitting Center has started a cost‑of‑service study; Moreno told the committee the procurement has begun and staff expect the study to take about a year to 18 months to complete. Committee members pressed for more rapid fee and compensation benchmarking with nearby public agencies; Moreno said earlier salary adjustments in the engineering job family have helped but that many public agencies still pay about 30% more than Houston for comparable positions.

Coordination with other departments

Moreno said the Permitting Center currently funds three additional health reviewers through a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Houston Health Department and is preparing an MOU with the Houston Fire Department to fund reviewers there because those departments are general‑funded and do not have the same fee revenue. Clark said the office is also evaluating where to deploy third‑party capacity most effectively — front‑end intake, first reviews or resubmittals — to maximize the value of contracted work.

Questions from council members

Councilwoman Amy Alcorn asked for a breakdown of the 122 vacancies by function; Moreno said staff would provide more detailed information later. Councilwoman Abbie Peck and Councilman Ramirez both praised recent improvements in permitting timeliness and asked about timelines for phasing down augmentation; Moreno said staff hope to begin phasing down within 12–18 months but that the plan depends on hiring and training progress. Ramirez asked whether external reviewers perform at the same level as internal reviewers; Moreno said they “are pretty much equal,” adding that third‑party firms also manage their own backlogs.

Next steps

Moreno said the Permitting Center will continue contracting while it pursues hiring, pay adjustments and digital modernization. Staff are also in early discussions with AI‑product vendors (Project Doxia and Archistar were named in the presentation) and plan to refine internal strategy for using contracted reviewers. Moreno said any phase‑down of contracts will wait until the center has a sustained staffing plan and the cost‑of‑service study results.

Ending

There was no formal committee vote. The presentations closed after committee members’ questions and staff said they would follow up with requested staffing and performance numbers.