12-DELIBERATION ON PRESENTATION ABOUT BUILDING PERMIT PROCESSCITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM BRIEFING SHEET
Submittal Date:
Originating Department:
Presented By:
A.genda Item No.:
09-08-2011
Engineering, Planning
Shawn Napier, P.E. Director of
Council Date:
& Development
Engineering, Planning &
12,
09-12-2011
Development
RECOMMENDED MOTION:
Deliberate on a presentation about the building permit process and departmental changes.
POLICY ISSUE(S):
Permitting
BACKGROUND:
The attached form called "Permit Waiting Period" includes statistics for new residential structures,
remodel of residential structures, new commercial and remodel of commercial structures. The data is
from January 1, 2011 through August 15~h, 2011. The list shows the number of permits written each
month with a total waiting time of all submitted building permit applications from the time the building
permit is submitted to the City of Paris until the time the building permit is picked up. The "Average
Days to Permit" column list the average number of days it took for that particular month's building
permit applications to be permitted.
The bottom table contains a list of all the building permit applications that took over 10 days. The
comment section list why it took so long to issue the building permit. The line at the very bottom of the
page is the average number of days to issue a building permit without the applications that took 10 days
or longer to issue. These 10 projects account far 4% of building permits issued this year.
The document to be presented at the city council meeting will include the changes made in the
Engineering, Planning and Development Department over the past 2'/z years to improve the overall
permitting process.
BOARD/COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION:
EXHIBITS:
Permit Waiting Period, TMAC Report and other information to be presented at the City Council
Meeting
ACTION:
BUDGET INFO:
❑ Financial Report ❑ Minute Order
Expense
$
❑ Department Report ❑ Resolution
Budgeted Amt.
$
Z Presentation ❑ Ordinance
y'I'D Actual
$
❑ Public Hearing ❑ Other
Acct. Name
Acct. Number
FISCAL NOTES:
REVIEWED AND APPROVED BY:
~ Administration Z City Clerk ❑ Community Development ❑ EMS/IT ❑ Finance ❑ Fire
❑ Municipal Court ❑ Legal ❑ Library ❑ Police Z Eng./Public Works ❑ Utilities
City of Paris
Revised 2/04/08
, 1 57
Tr~ A ~ r
~
Work Smart. Grow Smart?'" TRAIN • SERVE • RESPONO
CitY of Paris Plan Review, Permitting and
Licensing Process Recommendations
August 31, 2011
PREPARED FOR:
Paris, Texas Economic Development Corporations
1125 Bonham Street
Paris, TX 75460
www.paristexasusa.com
POINT OF CONTACT:
Steve Gilbert
SUBMITTED BY:
Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC) and
Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX)
301 Tarrow Drive
College Station, TX 77845
(800)541-7149
Fax (979)458-6727
POINT OF CONTACT:
Roger Caldwell
TMAC/TEEX Program Manager
(979) 277-2365
roger.caldwell@teexmail.tamu.edu
58
Report: Plan Review and Building Permit
Cycle Time
The Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center (TMAC) and the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX)
are pleased to submit a final report in response to Steve Gilbert's request to provide the City of Paris
with an onsite Lean assessment of the building permit process cycle time.
Objective
The primary objective of this two day assessment was to collect actual data to determine the actual
building permit cycle time.
An additional objective was to perform extensive interviews with Shawn Napier, Director of Engineering,
Planning and Development, and Jeanna Scott to identify their pain points in the permitting process and
obtain their opinion of opportunities for improvement.
The assessment required the TMAC practitioner to evaluate the city's current administrative processes
and public resources to identify potential lean initiatives that may be used to improve service levels
and/or lowering cost by eliminate waste within the city's permitting operations.
These objectives clearly fall into the scope of work that TEEX has experience in accomplishing as a
member of the TMAC network and previous experience with similar processes at other cities within the
State of Texas.
Data Collection Process
Data was collected for the permits issued for Residential (new and remodel) and commercial (new and
remodel). The process used to collect the permit cycle time data was to actually pull each permit from
the file for a review. The data collected from the files was the customer actual request date as
compared to the permit issue date. All permits were reviewed from January 3`d 2011 through August
15`h 2011.
Projects less than 5,000 square feet are completed in house without a 3`d party plan review. Projects
greater than 5,000 square feet require 3`d party plan review. If 3`d party plan review is require the
process can take up to one month. The data collected only had 1 project for 2011 greater than 5,000
square feet.
It was very obvious in the interviews and data collection process that both Shawn and Jeanna were
committed and open to any improvement ideas. They were very agreeable to reviewing the actual data
from the files so we had an accurate baseline of the cycle time.
They both were also open to discussion of some of their ideas and mine for possible improvements.
59
2
Results of the Data Analysis
There were 233 total permits issued from January 3`d 2011 through August 15th 2011. The total waiting
time for the 233 permits was 361 days. The average waiting time per permit was determined to be 1.5
days. Fencing/roofing and Sign permits were not considered because during my interviews with Jenna
Scott and Shawn Napier l determined that this cycle time is almost always 1 day or less. Below is recap
of the data used for the analysis. The actual data for each month is on the attached spreadsheet.
Average
Permits Issued Waiting Days Days to
Permit
January
16
25
1.6
February
17
42
2.5
March
28
58
2.1
April
28
39
1.4
May
36
58
1.6
June
55
125
2.3
July
43
6
0.1
August
10
8
0.8
September
-
-
October
-
-
November
-
-
December
-
-
TOTALS 233
These are to date as of August 15, 2011
Top 10 Waits Days Comments
361 1.5
1
Henry McCoin
42
Waited on a drainage easement from the downstream
neighbor
2
Monique's
Antiques
37
Waited on asbestos survey and plan revisions for roof
3
Paris Milling
26
Incomplete set of plans submitted
4
Kevin Kelley
21
Incomplete set of plans submitted
5
Paris Doughnuts
20
Waited for owner to pick up
permit
6
Jessie Owens
18
Waited for a variance request to be acted on
7
erownstone
Homes
15
Waited on plans to be revised to add a firewall
8
Golden China
14
9
Shirley Posey
13
Incomplete set of plans submitted
1
0
Guaranty Bond
Bank
13
Waited for Parking lot Revision in order to add an ATM
219
Average cycle time
without the top 10 0.6
- 1 60
3
Recap of Findings
1. The average cycle time for building permits for residential and commercial leaving in the highs
and lows was 1.5 days. It is our opinion as TMAC from performing similar projects at other cities
that 1.5 days would place the permitting cycle time in the upper percentile of performance.
2. If permits are required for projects greater than 5,000 square feet the cycle time becomes quite
long at 30 days as compared to the 1.5 day average.
3. There are opportunities to improve the cycle time zoning permits or changes.
4. Permits requests are up significantly in 2011 from prior history.
5. The permitting process is very manual.
6. Both Shawn and Jeanna are very open to change and making improvements in the process. In
addition, they both have a positive attitude to delivering the best service for their customers
and have made improvements to achieve improved service.
Recommendations
1. I do not recommend any changes to the permitting process for Residential (new and remodel)
and commercial (new and remodel) for buildings less than 5,000 square feet. This
recommendation is based on the data verified fact that 1.5 days is excellent cycle time and is
very competitive with other cities in the State of Texas.
2. I do recommend that Lean initiatives or a strategy be deployed to reduce the 30 day cycle time
for building permits over 5,000 square feet. This becomes particularly important to attracting
large commercial industry to Paris. It is important to be quick and easy to do business with
potential new industry.
3. I recommend that the zoning approval process be reviewed and improvements made. The
zoning process is typically a 6-7 week process. I was told that the zoning requirements are only
reviewed on the 4th Monday of each month. Depending on the purpose of the zoning and
industry involved more frequent reviews may be necessary.
4. I definitely recommend that a process map be developed of the permitting and zoning process.
This would allow the customers to have process steps to follow rather than staff at the
permitting office manually walking them through the process. Most importantly this is a natural
15t step to moving in the direction of electronic permitting which is ultimately what I feel the
permitting process should offer. The process map can be done by TMAC in about 5 days. This
would include being on site to develop the map with the staff and providing an electronic
version of the map.
5. While there are opportunities within the process, there are many good things happening that
should be communicated to the community and potential new industry. I recommend
community awareness education of the positive things. The process map would be an excellent
tool to use for this communication.
4