Office of Planning and Economic Development publicly announces plan to reform development review

Brian Flanagan, Deputy Chief at the Office of Planning and Economic Development, is guiding the city’s efforts to reform development review. Flanagan is working to create a simple, efficient, consistent, and cost-effective business process for issuing permits. The goals are to reduce construction costs and increase investment.

Flanagan summarized the effort to address permitting timeline problems at an October 13 gathering of the When We Fix It Coalition, as well as the regular monthly session of the Philadelphia Zoning Code Commission on October 14. At the beginning of its term, the Nutter Administration tracked the amount of time a project takes to make its way through the development review process at between 205 and 1,111 days and quantified this in terms of the cost of doing business in Philadelphia. Time delays in obtaining permits make up between two and five percent of total development project costs per year. Therefore, streamlining this process was critical to bringing down the city’s high cost of construction, which is 18 percent above the national average.

Flanagan researched permitting processes in other cities to identify best practices. More efficient methods include: a single gateway into the process; better coordination among agencies; electronic services; a way to fast-track certain types of minor applications; an internal tracking system; development packets; and training and information sessions. Based on these findings, the city has chosen four priority action steps to start reforms:

1. Create clear submission requirements to discourage incomplete applications.The city will screen applications for completeness at the counter, charge increasing fees for re-submittal, and rate professionals based on the strength of their applications. The goal is to reduce staff time spent on incomplete applications, which currently takes up 30 percent of development review agency capacity.
2. Create better coordination among agencies. Using a permit wizard or rules engine, the city will ask the applicant a series of questions and then direct them as to what approvals, applications, and permits are needed. The online permit wizard will also provide a review time estimate and will create a Transaction ID which will allow the applicant and city staff to track the project through the process.
3. Offer a Director of Development to manage and expedite a project through the system. To date, it has been solely up to the applicant to facilitate the movement of applications between departments. The city will initially offer the assistance of this new office for free and then plan to charge a fee.
4. Allow online payment of multiple agency invoices through a single method of payment.

Flanagan plans to complete these action steps over the next 6 months but cautions that the city’s budget woes will make it difficult, for instance, to fully staff the Director of Development Office any time soon.