Originating as a special project out of Commissioner Ryan’s Office, the Permit Improvement Project is now housed in the Community and Economic Development Service Area. This provides a solid grounding for embedding the projects into City infrastructure for long-term sustainability as well as position the team to look for city-wide efficiencies, collaboration and accountability for development services and performance.
Providing development permits is a foundational and essential City service. The City needs to better serve Portland residents and the development community by responding to the critical need to support economic recovery, listen and respond to customer complaints, and address the challenges with staff recruitment and retention. An efficient, understandable and effective building permitting process will in turn support the city-wide priority of a healthy, safe and thriving built environment.
Background
In early 2021, Commissioners Dan Ryan and Mingus Mapps appointed a cross-bureau Permitting Improvement Task Force (PITF) to identify solutions to delays and other concerns with the City's building permit processes, which were called out in a 2021 City Audit Report. With Council bureau reassignments in January 2023, Commissioner Carmen Rubio has joined as a task force co-chair.
The Task Force – which includes representation from all Council offices, permitting and planning bureaus, and the development community – adopted three overarching goals:
- Reduce permitting timelines
- Improve the customer experience
- Improve performance management
These focus areas were developed with the goal to identify gaps, improve processes, establish and implement performance metrics, and create systems improvements.
Audit
A year later, the 2022 Audit Update - City Advanced Building Permit Reforms - found that the city made substantive progress across the five audit recommendations (see Audit Imperatives, below). Less progress was made on the speed of building permit reviews and the City still does not follow its own customer complaint policy to resolve delays. Sustained, focused leadership remains necessary for these long-term reforms to result in a noticeable change for Portland’s customers.
The audit specified the following imperatives:
- Implement a city-wide performance management system Implement a complaint policy for resolving and reporting customer complaints.
- Dedicate resources and hold permitting bureaus collectively accountable to full and timely implementation of city improvement initiatives.
- The City Council to follow policies and implement the recommendations from the 2018 study (Strategies for Accelerating Housing Development in Portland) or adopt alternatives.
- The City Council holds the Bureau Directors accountable for the implementation of this set of audit recommendations.
Task Force Recommendations
In May 2022 the task force made specific recommendations to the City Council to make changes in the permitting structure, process and staffing to implement improvements, specifically to:
- Reorganize the development services teams in the four infrastructure bureaus to create cross-bureau teams with one manager.
- Create and implement a regulatory process that works wholistically across bureaus and with policy makers including creation, implementation, compliance and evaluation.
- Explore the feasibility of a single point of contact model for customers.
- Provide one-time funding to increase capacity for planning and implementing task force recommendations – the Permit Improvement Transition Team.
Permit Improvement Team
In September 2022, the Permit Improvement Team (PIT) received special appropriation funding from the City Council through July 2024 and was charged with leading, coordinating and building capacity for the city-wide permit improvement effort. PIT will support discrete projects, cross-pollinate process improvement efforts and work as change management agents. The team will work across bureaus to lead, advise and maintain a city-wide awareness about city-wide permit improvement work to achieve efficiency and interconnectivity. PIT is guided by and accountable to the Permit Improvement Task Force (PITF) and its recommendations, and the 2021 City Auditor recommendations.
Active Projects
Areas of focus:
- Customer support
- Process and workflow improvements
- Code and policy coordination and clarity
| Project name | Description |
|---|---|
| Regulatory Process Workflow and Feedback | Implement across-bureau code and policy coordination process to ensure regulatory alignment and monitoring needs. Identify code conflicts, confusion, volume, and complexity and implement solutions. Review existing codes and policies impacted by PP&D creation and make necessary regulatory changes. |
| Website Coordination, Design and Content Cleanup | Design and implement a user-friendly website using plain language that supports customers and their ability to complete projects. |
| Business Process Analysis | Work with teams to review existing business processes and identify improvements that support effective and transparent reviews, increase customer satisfaction, and meet city-wide timeline goals. Facilitate implementation of prioritized changes. |
| Digital Services Transition | Implementation of a modern approach to software development and support to better serve customers and staff.A Digital Services approach puts the human being in the center of technology improvements, focusing on outcome and impact and not output. |
| Public Works Permit Workflow | Implementation of a ProjectDox Best-in-Class Capital Improvements workflow, supporting an aligned process with the Building and Land Use review teams. |
| Permitting Metrics | Building a culture of using data to inform decisions to recognize what is working and where focus is needed to drive improvement. |