Streamline Your Commercial Building Permit Process in 2021

The world changed for just about every industry in 2020, and if preparing for a commercial construction project was part of your strategy this past year, you probably ran into some hiccups. Although some building permit processes were online before the pandemic, others have had to adapt to digital methods as access to government buildings and in-person meetings with local officials and staff became restricted due to COVID-19.

This has added even more confusion to the already complex building permit process since potential requirements like producing original documents with wet signatures, stamps, or seals may be temporarily changed and reduced staff and technical limitations may lead to additional holdups. As if it wasn’t already difficult enough to reach the right person in the right department — now permitting may be even more complicated than before.

Ready to bypass the headaches and holdups of permitting? Find out how here or contact us to get started today.

As you consider your approach in 2021, there are several things to keep in mind when it comes to the building permit process. You’ll want to ensure that commercial construction projects go into plan review as quickly and efficiently as possible. This is where submitting the right information at the right stage of the process to the right authorities is key in order to obtain the proper permits and approvals.

While permits are only part of the overall process, they’re critical to success — without the right permit, the project can’t be completed. Here’s what to consider with your 2021 permit strategy.

Time

Depending on how many locations or stores you’re planning on opening or upgrading, obtaining permits can take significant time. If you’re short on in-house staff, it’ll take even longer. And if you’re planning a multi-site build or upgrade and operating with a large footprint, understanding the minutiae of each site’s local requirements will prove both challenging and time-consuming.

Permitting hold ups are easy to run into without the proper knowledge, local expertise, and relationships. This can make an already long and red-tape-ridden process even longer — putting your projects behind schedule and leaving precious resources tied up for months on end.

Scout Services can help mitigate the time restraints of your project to keep construction on schedule with our deep understanding of all the requirements needed for a multitude of permit types. Our national database of area-specific requirements means we have local expertise at a large scale. We use this to gather the information needed and ensure it’s accurate upfront so it gets approved on time, the first time.

Outsourcing the permitting process also saves you from having to hire new people or dedicating existing resources to permit work they might not understand. Saving you trouble leads to saving you time — ultimately keeping your projects on their intended schedules despite potential additional challenges due to the pandemic.

Cost

As mentioned above, even minor mistakes in the permitting process can set you back, requiring resubmittals and taking up valuable time. In terms of costs, these setbacks can easily add up.

The last thing you want is to be paying staff just to spend all of their time playing phone tag or waiting in lines at building departments trying to figure out what’s necessary for submittals. Not knowing the unique order required for submitting materials or not having all of the necessary documents in place with complete and correct information will throw your projects off schedule, eating up both time and cost.

Due to this, the ROI of hiring a permit expediter far outweighs the cost of outsourcing the building permit process for commercial construction projects, especially for larger brands that need to mitigate the different processes of a wide variety of municipalities at once. Drawings can get approved faster due to an expediter’s vast knowledge of requirements, key relationships within building departments, and focused follow-through on all projects.

Our expertise ensures permits are prepared and submitted correctly, preventing costly delays and additional work that slows projects down and ties up your team and construction leaders. Scout Services cuts out the middleman by working directly with municipal reviewers to ensure all projects get through different departments as quickly as possible, keeping track of your permits and keeping you apprised of the process along the way.

COVID

Historically, you may have sent your own project managers, contractors, or partners to building departments. Now, even runners, which made the process faster, might not be an option due to COVID-19 restrictions.

As mentioned previously, many cities are adopting more digital solutions to make the building permit process faster and contactless. However, this might make the process even more difficult in some situations if your contacts are used to the current process. It can be difficult to keep track of which requirements and processes have or have not changed — especially when you’re trying to secure commercial permits for multiple sites at once.

That’s why a partner that has experience with thousands of different permitting processes across the country proves so valuable to brands and commercial construction leaders during such a tumultuous time. With a national database containing more than 7,000 municipalities’ unique requirements, relationships with building departments across the country, and vast experience in permitting, Scout Services is able to adapt effortlessly to changes and get your permits approved more efficiently.

Following COVID-19 restrictions is essential to keep communities safe and healthy, but less direct interaction with building departments and plans examiners may make the building permit process feel disjointed and take even longer than usual. Our permit specialists prepare permit packages and submit them seamlessly whether online or in-person, ensuring you save time, protect your people and partners, and keep your project on track. This makes the permitting process simple for you — we do our work so that you can do yours.

As you develop your building permit strategy for the new year, consider working with a reliable permit expediter that can help you automate and streamline the process for greater success. Scout Services is a partner you can trust to keep your projects moving forward.

Connect with Scout today and put our experts to work on your next project to save you from headaches and holdups, and preserve your most valuable assets.