SFpermit go‑live pushed past September; city and vendor aim for end‑of‑year launch

City technology staff and vendor Exela told the Building Inspection Commission on Aug. 15 that the SFpermit permitting and project‑tracking system will not meet the September target and that the city now expects a later, end‑of‑calendar‑year go‑live after more testing.

"September go live is unattainable at this point," Brian Webber, senior director for Exela, said, citing complex fee rules (more than 700 fee calculations), property‑lookup rearchitecture and data migration work. Webber said the vendor rebuilt significant portions of the codebase and switched to a private‑cloud, single‑tenant deployment for San Francisco.

Linda Jarrell, director in the Department of Technology, outlined the principal risks the project must avoid: inability to process permits in production and incorrect fee calculations that could require months of remediation. "Until that [regression testing] runs completely through and we're confident, 100% confident that we have no fee errors, I would not be recommending go live to you," Jarrell said.

Exela and city staff said they have added resources and redesigned components, and they described a testing and gating plan that must be completed before users begin broad acceptance testing. Commissioners said they supported the quality‑first approach but asked for clear communications to staff and customers about timelines and the rationale for the delay.

Next steps: Exela and city teams will complete regression testing, resolve data migration issues, and produce a revised project plan with gate criteria for user testing; the city team said the revised target is to be live by the end of the calendar year, contingent on successful tests and zero fee‑calculation errors.