Tackling the Permit Process

At the onset of a project, architects get passionate about design, details, materials, and experiences that will be enjoyed in the final product, but this is just one part of the project. There is also liaising with your local AHJ or building department. This involves encountering new processes, requests, and protocols, and can be a sobering and numbing experience to work through. There is little logic involved. It’s like a standardized test, but one can become good at getting a permit approved by understanding the building codes and respecting the rules. Extraordinary design that does new things, however, is always a dance between the building codes and the project goals and objectives. The arbiter in this process is the AHJ, who often sees in black-and-white. In reality, the world of building codes exists in shades of gray. On the other side of these groups are the inspectors, who may or may not be in alignment with the building permit plans examiner.

A building inspector can require a change on site that the building department did not require during the plans’ examination. Inspections can happen during and after the work has been completed, and any changes they require typically come with a cost implication. A contingency in the budget can be helpful when this occurs. Your contractor must get approval from the inspectors during specific milestones throughout the construction process to keep building. There are times when the architect and engineers may need to meet with inspectors during construction to clarify and resolve an issue – occasionally involving the original plans examiner from the AHJ. This can require the design professionals to update or add drawings to be reviewed and approved again. These are all unexpected, time-consuming events that can typically be resolved quickly, but do impact the schedule, and occasionally require deviating from the desired design.

The challenge of obtaining building permits is an important conversation as you meet with architects at the beginning of your process. They should be able to give you local insight and talk you through available options. As a rough guide, simple no-drawing permits in a city jurisdiction such as Chicago, for example, may be received the same day, while it could take one to sixteen weeks for an expedited permit, or six to eighteen months for a traditional plan review permit. All these paths have a different effect on your project, its cost, opportunity costs, planning, and scheduling. Intimate knowledge of the nuances is very helpful to plan accordingly.

Permit expeditors are experts in the permit application process and can be very helpful. They typically act as the client’s representative and acquire the permit on their behalf. One of the primary benefits of engaging an expediter is for their relationships with the AHJ. These relationships should increase the ability to coordinate with the reviewers. They are often very affordable too. Services, however, can be different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and their value depends on your project size, complexity, and location. Permit expeditors are more common in larger cities. For example, in a smaller Michigan jurisdiction, a building permit could be obtained with architectural drawings for an entire new building in less than a week. In a larger city like Chicago, it could take six to eighteen months for a permit on a similar-sized project. It might benefit the project process to have a dedicated individual focusing on working with the building department. Time and cost savings are possible through working with someone who knows the ever-changing nuances of the application process and the staff at the building department. This may sound unbelievable, but experienced architects know what can happen once you send your project and application into a building department for review and it seems to become a moving target.

Most of the time, your AHJ will be your local zoning and building department. This may also include other government agencies overseeing the issuance of permits and inspections of construction or capital projects. Zoning administers local land use ordinances. It covers your project and its surroundings, your land, site, or lot in the context of your neighborhood. Zoning ordinances must be followed covering set back (how far you are from the street), building height, floor-area-ratio (FAR), density, lot coverage, use and occupancy, and many more factors. The zoning department will often be adjacent to the building department – not specifically connected, but more complementary. Zoning is often the first step in the building permit process as it is required before beginning the building permit review process.

Architects and engineers will design your project to comply with the building codes and ordinances that are enforced in your project’s jurisdiction. When design professionals begin to work with a site or an existing building, the building code sets boundaries that need to apply to any situation. Every new design project is, of course, slightly different, and the more innovative a design solution is, the more likely it is to push these boundaries. In these cases, the code becomes the tool used to make sure that the building still complies with life and safety requirements. This needs to be demonstrated ahead of the client’s goals and objectives. This means a careful balancing act is required between the building department, inspectors, the project drawings and specifications, and, importantly, how your general contractor and other subcontractors interpret these instructions. There are a lot of moving parts to this process, and it’s not typically done until the final inspections are complete and, ultimately, your new building is in use. You are not expected to navigate the specifics of building permits alone. Your design team and construction professionals will be better advocates for you, especially when the process feels opaque and is hard to understand. 

The permit process involves completing and submitting an application to the local AHJ for review and approval. Each AHJ has an individual application process, usually available for download. They are likely to want an application pack containing property information, a project description, and owner, architect, contractor, and subcontractor details. It will also ask for a value for the construction. This may be used in part to determine the cost of the permit. Any drawing requirements will relate specifically to your project. They won’t necessarily need to see everything. The AHJ may only require a few drawings to approve and grant building permission. Once the drawings and documents are reviewed, the architect and engineers may receive comments that require responses in the form of drawing and document corrections. In some cases, the reviewers give the design team ‘boiler-plate’ comments that are already addressed in the documents and drawings, and it turns into an exercise of showing the reviewers where to look. At other times, the reviewers have different interpretations of the codes and ordinances than the design professionals, which prompts a conversation to clarify which, if any, drawings require updating. Sometimes conversation is helpful, and other times it is not. It is always a celebration when permits are issued. The moment should be enjoyed, and this milestone should not be taken for granted. It is a journey and a process, and it takes the entire team to make it happen.