Learn to walk before you run. That’s good advice for anyone learning a new skill or process — and now, it aptly applies to the city’s troubled Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP).

DPP recently announced that starting July 1, building permit applications for all commercial projects must be submitted through the department’s Electronic Plan Review (ePlans) system; no more paper plans. Combined with the earlier 2021 directive for all residential applications to go through ePlans, this would funnel most permits — with the exception of civil, or technical site, drawings — through DPP’s new electronic system.

And that’s generating a wave of dread among many already stymied by the system’s inefficiencies.

The feedback from industry insiders — such as builders, architects and contractors who must interface with DPP — is that ePlans’ routing remains glitchy. So much so that instead of speeding things up, as intended, it’s actually slowed processes, and the backlog is building.

In 2021, with hopes of improving things, DPP launched ePlans for residential projects, requiring all requests to be submitted via an online permit application process for prescreening. Learning-curve glitches, and complaints, can be expected — but now, more than a year in, some DPP “customers” say the software scanning remains too sensitive and inflexible, bouncing back plans for even minor formatting issues.

But it’s really the next phase, once the gatekeeping “eBot” moves the plans on, that the system starts getting clogged, waiting for a first look by a DPP manual plans reviewer, which can take months. Only then will ePlans send the application, simultaneously, to relevant agencies for review and comments; every one must weigh in before a DPP staffer gathers the round of comments and communicates back to the customer. Imagine that process repeating, for each cycle of back-and-forth.

Where issues might’ve been more quickly rectified, back in the day, by talking with a DPP staffer, this electronic routing system allows communications only via ePlans. Retaining a paper-plan pathway, at least, allowed for better interactions.

Such rigid and time-consuming cycles will only bloat the backlog as time goes on. What’s needed now — and quickly, before commercial projects are mandated onto ePlans — is for DPP to dialogue with industry experts to trouble-shoot the shortcomings, and seek logical places to streamline. Also, industry leaders need to step up, to be engaged and enlisted to do basic training sessions that would help applicants to avoid automated pitfalls, and minimize the back-and-forth with ePlans’ review process.

To be sure, today’s DPP seems earnest in trying to overhaul its long-dysfunctional operations — mired by clunky technology, severe understaffing, and in recent years, a bribery scandal involving some of its top officials. Mayor Rick Blangiardi, who rightly calls fixing DPP a top priority, has authorized 80 new positions and the filling of 80 existing jobs — not easy — as well as modernization of its technology. It’s on that last score that DPP must now be candid and persistent in fixing known problems.

The financial risks due to many months of delays, for commercial jobs at least, was quantified by Eddie Flores, L&L Hawaiian Barbecue founder, in a Hawaii News Now report June 9: “Once you sign the lease, you have to pay rent. And if you’re paying about $5,000, $10,000, $20,000 rent, it’s very simple. It costs me additional $100,000 to $200,000 extra for that delay.”

Earlier this month, DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna called the switch to ePlans for all commercial jobs “another piece to the major overhaul of the permitting process to streamline and improve permitting,” toward DPP’s goal of going paperless. “We urge design professionals to visit our website to familiarize themselves with the ePlans process.”

Fine — but what’s also essential at this crucial juncture is for DPP to heed valid criticisms and work with its industry clients to improve ePlans, to provide better certainty and timeliness in the permit-review process. That, surely, is in the best interest of all concerned: DPP, architects, builders, homeowners and businesses who have a stake in projects, who know only too well that time is money.