Portland's approach to streamlining and bringing transparency to its building permit processes has taken another step forward with the introduction of new dashboards that provide detailed insights. The City of Portland has announced updated versions of their permit review dashboard, aiming to clearly inform all stakeholders on the inner workings and timeframes associated with the permitting procedure. This enhancement comes in an effort to strengthen the collaboration between the city and its customers, with interim director of Portland Permitting & Development (PP&D) David Kuhnhausen stating, "Permitting is a partnership between the City and the customer, and we are committed to strengthening that partnership," according to a report by the City of Portland.
The dashboards were originally launched in 2022, and they have been designed to regularly update every Monday morning, offering data in trio formats that quickly generate an understanding of the municipal permit landscape. Users can now easily dissect information on commercial and residential permits, filtering by work type and sub-type to suit their needs. In addition to providing average and median times to reach "approved to issue" status, these dashboards also reflect the total valuation of selected issued permits. Such tools are now available for users to retrospectively analyze permit data going back to January 2020.
The historical data offered by these dashboards starts from the year 2020, showing the numbers of permit applications received and issued, their valuations, and the crucial times taken to reach "approved to issue" status. Meanwhile, the new Review Snapshot conveys the median and average number of business days taken by city staff and applicants for each type of review across all commercial and residential building permits.
Portland leaders intend to use this data to pinpoint opportunities to further refine the permit review process. The power of this transparency lies not just in oversight but equally in recognizing the successes and efficiencies within their systems. In a statement made by the City of Portland, Kuhnhausen shared that since the initial dashboards came to life, "we worked with our customers to refine and improve this critical tool." It is a testament to their commitment to evolve and enhance these interfaces, striving to keep to provide greater clarity into the permitting stages.
The roots of these efforts date back to 2021 when then-Commissioners Dan Ryan and Mingus Mapps formed the Permit Improvement Task Force. They set ambitious goals to reduce waiting times for permits to achieve "approved to issue" status. Since then, PP&D has been diligently updating their system with real-time dashboards that not only include weekly updates on permit phases but also provide comparative data from previous years.
