Building Permits issued for the City of Miami
Completion Date:
Project Overview
Being a developer can take a good amount of patience, but in Miami that virtue has long been put to the test. Initial approval for a commercial or residential project can take between six months to a year. Physical plans are carried from one city department to the next, and any changes in an application can lead to more submissions and more delay. Once the initial step is secure, a developer usually can wait up to a year for a building permit. This data represents the Building permits information for the City of Miami from 2015 to 2020. The Department of Building permits for the construction, remodeling, and repair of buildings and structures in the City of Miami. Any owner or authorized agent who intends to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish, or change the occupancy of a building or structure, or to erect, install, enlarge, alter, repair, remove, convert or replace any required impact-resistant coverings, electrical, gas mechanical or plumbing system, the installation of which is regulated by this code, or to cause any such work to be done, shall first make application to the building official and obtain the required permits.
Role:
Problem Statement
In Miami, between 2014 and 2018, wait time for permits rose dramatically in all categories. Alteration and remodeling permits (Condos) experienced the biggest increase from 8 days in 2014 to 40 days in 2018. For single-family homes, it went from 43 days to 119 days. For an office remodeling job, the wait went from 35 days to 83 days over the same period.It took developers an average of 2,164 days to get their permits for new construction in 2018. To combat this issue Miami introduced a high tech update of Electronic Plan Review in 2018. Will the New Electronic Plan Review system bring in any new change to the antiquated permitting system in Miami ??
Executive Summary
Data Dictionary
Key Takeaways
Next Steps
1. According to the New Residential Construction Report, COVID-19 negatively affected all stages of housing construction, but new building permit authorizations and housing starts fell further than completions of existing projects. This is quite evident looking at how Miami\'s growth in Permits has dramatically increased in 2019 due to Introduction of the E-Plan system and then fallen down by 6.46% and 9.66% for resdiential and commercial permits respectively . Staffing seems to be one of the major cause for it . Though the E-plan helps in electronic submission of the plan , the Permitting system still needs staff to review the plans to approve it . In the city of Miami, the building department had 61 employees in 2007. That shrunk to 55 by 2012 then rose to 91 as of January 2019 . According to the city’s building department director, Jose Camero, there are a number of open positions, including for building, plumbing and electrical inspectors, as well as supporting staff still open . Increasing the staffing could prove more beneficial in quicker approvals and increase in issuance of permits .
2. There are many customer complaints reported on long queues with wait times and also lack of customer service in answering calls , Improving customer service and further digitization by enhancing the eplan to accomodate more services that can avoid customers coming inperson for issues that can be resolved online can help in reduced wait times .
