Revised Third Party Plan Check

As part of our continued pursuit of process improvements, Permit Sonoma has revised the Third Party Plan Check policy (BPC-013).  The goal of the revision is to reduce permit processing time by removing some of the obstacles in our previous practice.

The highlight of the changes include:

• Allowing projects in a floodplain, in the Alquist Priolo seismic zone, or in need of correcting a violation to be reviewed by a third party;
• Allowing for an auxiliary permit (grading, septic, etc.) to be applied for rather than issued; and
• Requiring plan review comments submitted only upon completion of the plan review process rather than at each plan review cycle.

A key element of this process improvement is the “Permit Punch List.”  As clients visit each of our customer service stations, staff will be documenting key concerns, what is needed to issue the building permit and what is needed to final the building permit.  This information will be printed out for the client to forward to their third party reviewer.  This information will be key to ensure the client and consultants know what is needed at each stage of the process.

While BPC-013 only applies to building permits, we will be creating parallel policies for other types of permits, including those for grading and septic systems.

Further, we have plans to expand the Permit Punch List to all permits and to create an online version.