Information Technology Streamlines Construction Processes

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A community’s housing needs pose significant challenges to its state and local governments. Tight budgets, affordable housing supply and demand, and concerns over disaster preparedness and recovery can get officials thinking about their procedures for administering and enforcing local building codes. Initiatives to make these practices more efficient and responsive are being showcased by groups such as the National Partnership to Streamline Government and its predecessor, the Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age, who have worked with HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) to produce the Guide to More Effective and Efficient Building Regulatory Processes through Information Technology.

The Guide is a tool for state and local elected officials and for heads of public service agencies who oversee construction. It helps them determine whether to use information technology to modify or improve building codes administration and enforcement. Although information technology is not always a be-all and end-all solution, the Guide shows how to assess in-house technical expertise, existing technology, and the capacity for communicating and coordinating across departments. In addition, the Guide provides technical assistance for:

• Identifying stakeholders and engaging their help;

• Mapping processes;

• Calculating the costs and benefits of using information technology;

• Accessing a template of software and hardware procurement requirements;

• Locating funds to cover the cost of improvements;

• Preparing a Request for Proposals;

• Evaluating vendors;

• Implementing and integrating technologies;

• Locating people with relevant experience to share; and

• Exploring the role information technology can play in disaster recovery.

This list above suggests that using technology to streamline local building codes administration and enforcement can be a complex undertaking, and yet if we consider the example of Fairfax County, Virginia, where a one-day construction delay caused by the regulatory process cost a builder $100,000, the importance of such reform becomes abundantly clear.

The Guide outlines a number of strategies, practices, and programs known to reduce construction costs. For example, Los Angeles has cut the waiting time for permits from approximately 3 hours to 7 minutes, plan check times from 10 weeks to 10 days, and wait times for inspections from as long as 5 days to less than 24 hours. At the same time, the city has had an 88-percent increase in construction volume with only a 1.5-percent increase in staff. In one year, an online permitting process saved Clackamas County, Oregon over $400,000 in costs and reduced staff by two people. Portland, Oregon is testing an electronic permitting program that allows contractors to apply and pay for multiple trade permits from multiple jurisdictions on a single website. Other communities have added online plan tracking, online call-in systems to schedule inspections, and tools such as geographic information systems and electronic zoning maps.

The Guide to More Effective and Efficient Building Regulatory Processes through Information Technology outlines these and many other examples of high-tech success in streamlining building regulatory processes. The Guide can be downloaded for free at www.huduser.org/publications/polleg/Bldg_Reg_Process.html. Other related documents are also available online, including a 2002 Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) report, Electronic Permitting Systems and How To Implement Them (www.huduser.org/publications/destech/electronic_permitting.html) and “Alliance Model Procurement Requirements for State and Local Government Acquisition of Hardware/Software for Codes Administration and Enforcement” (www.natlpartnerstreamline.org).

For those with an interest in regulatory reform that promotes affordable housing, PD&R’s Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse (www.regbarriers.org) offers over 6,000 state and local strategies, practices, and related resources, all housed in an easy-to-use searchable database.