City seeks renewal of six third-party plan-review contracts to speed building permits

Jake Dishaw, deputy commissioner of code enforcement and zoning, asked the council to renew contracts with six third-party plan-review firms used to augment the city's permit-office capacity.

Dishaw said the arrangement has reduced the backlog of construction-plan reviews and effectively adds the capacity of multiple full-time reviewers. "Prior to having third party plan review, we would have dozens and dozens of projects waiting to just get plan reviewers' eyes on it. Now with these 6 firms, as soon as an application comes in, we put it out within a day to start reviewing," he said.

Councilors asked for quantitative evidence of the improvement and for comparisons to the period before the third-party contracts. "Have we been able to maybe collect data to see from the time when we didn't authorize the third party to the time that we have authorized them?" one councilor asked. Dishaw offered to provide the data and said the program has effectively added substantial review capacity.

The council also discussed how projects are queued and assigned, the potential to expand the program with additional funding and whether the short title and dollar amount in the agenda matched submitted letters. Dishaw said more funding would allow the firms to commit more staff and speed more projects; he suggested the city could scale to larger amounts if council approved.

The council did not finalize a vote during the study session and asked staff to provide the requested performance metrics and to resolve any discrepancies between the agenda and submitted documents.