To solve the months-long delay to obtain a building permit, the city Department of Planning and Permitting announced new technological initiatives it hopes will improve the speed at which the city issues them to the public.

The city says these initiatives will use the latest, most innovative systems — including artificial intelligence — to provide auto­- mation, transparency and guidance to streamline the permitting process.

To illustrate these next-level improvements, DPP Director Dawn Takeuchi Apuna said that when Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration took office in 2021 her department was still using an antiquated pneumatic tube system to transfer money payments from one location to the another inside DPP offices.

“We are moving well beyond pneumatic tubes, we aren’t going to suck anymore!” she declared at a Wednesday morning news conference inside Honolulu Hale.

In that vein, Takeuchi Apuna said DPP will move away from its late 1990s-era POSSE permitting software system and launch new software that meets “current industry standards” and “will put us on the leading edge.”

The new system, CLARITI, is part of that change, following “months of research and deliberations by our in-house tech staff team,” she said.

She noted CLARITI — led by Speridian Technologies — is an “all-in-one permitting platform.”

“The solution is a robust, flexible, and user-friendly permitting system, designed to streamline and expedite permit processing and inspections and enforcement,” she said. “With modern web-based customer portals, integrated land management tools, robust mobile applications, intuitive reporting, and workflow features, the new solution will enable the DPP to enhance operational efficiency and service delivery.”

She noted the system, up and running since February, is a $5.6 million project that’s expected to be fully completed in 18 months, or by fall 2025.

Money for that system originated with Honolulu’s receipt of $386 million in 2021 from the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, or FRF, as part of the federal government’s $1.3 trillion American Rescue Plan Act package.

Another system — ProjectDox from Avolve Software, which launched in July — allows users to view, zoom, pan, rotate, measure, annotate and redact documents and images, the city says.

“In the next six months, major upgrades to the ProjectDox system will provide significant advantages to applicants, and will seamlessly integrate with the CLARITI permitting software system,” said Takeuchi Apuna. “In two phases, ProjectDox will move from on premise to cloud for faster processing and higher performance and an upgrade to provide” significant features.

That system upgrade, also paid for with FRF money, cost $206,000, she said.

A third upgrade includes DPP implementing CivCheck, which uses AI-based software for building plan reviews, she said.

“The result is a more rapid, accurate, and predictable permitting experience,” Takeuchi Apuna said. “DPP’s pilot partnership with CivCheck is focused on residential permits for new construction, alterations and additions. CivCheck is an ongoing, four-month pilot project with DPP, at no cost to the city.”

She asserted the system will aid applicants.

“CivCheck will help fill the information gap between DPP and applicants so applicants fully understand what is expected in their plans, thereby elevating the quality of submissions and reducing the number of review cycles for fast, successful review and processing,” she said. “This is a game changer for permit review.”

But other issues, including DPP’s permit backlog, remain.

During a special meeting in July of the City Council’s Committee on Planning and the Economy, Takeuchi Apuna told the panel that her staff had managed to knock down the backlog of 3,600 applications awaiting pre-screening by nearly 70%.

“Today we’re at about 1,100,” she said in July. “So that’s a big drop, and I think the staff are working so hard on that.”

On average, she said, the permit review process had gone from almost 10 months — or nearly 300 days — down to just about six months, or less than 200 days.

As of November 2022, the backlog to pre-screen a building permit application — namely to verify that building plans meet the city’s submittal requirements — had dropped from six months to about 2-1/2 months, she said last year.

But during Blangiardi’s fourth State of the City address held March 14, the mayor claimed DPP’s prior backlog of pre-screen applications was no more.

“A year ago I stood here and explained how DPP was using AI to pre-screen applications and that the average pre-screen wait time had gone from an average of five months to an average of five weeks,” he said during his address. “Today it takes three days — and the backlog has been completely eliminated.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Takeuchi Apuna said the overall permit backlog at DPP continues.

“After we did the pre-screen backlog and got rid of that it has shifted,” she said. “As far as numbers I think we’re kind of holding steady, I think we’re holding steady at 12 months for commercial and maybe six months for residential; I think that’s kind of held steady.”

Still, she said “we’re working on it.”

“We believe in a year’s time residential will come down substantially, down to two to four weeks for residential,” she added, “and for commercial, we hope to have that reduced as well over the next couple of years.”

During reporters’ questions, Takeuchi Apuna noted tech upgrades — like ProjectDox and AI-based systems — will lead to “shorter times” for permit applicants.

“But overall, it’s an 18-month implementation for the CLARITI system,” she said. “I think safely, within that time, you’re going to see major improvements.”

Meanwhile, DPP’s staffing shortage for engineers, plan reviewers and other unfilled jobs persist as well.

“I think we’re hovering around (a) 25% (vacancy),” she said, but noted her department hired nearly 70 people in the past year. “But it’s just very competitive to get engineers.”

She added the city is looking to raise the pay for some of these jobs, in part by “working with the unions” as well as by drawing many of its new hires from the University of Hawaii’s engineering programs.

Jennifer Jackson, owner of Jen Lee Design, showed up at Wednesday’s news conference to learn about the changes coming to DPP.

Jackson, who typically works on smaller-scale residential and commercial building projects, said she’s been frustrated over the years of delays she’s personally experienced in dealing with DPP’s building permit system though acknow­ledged that “they have come a very long way.”

“But I think they need to hire more people, which it sounds like they’re doing,” she said.

Although it appears DPP shows signs of improvement, Jackson claimed she’s faced equally frustrating delays at other city agencies — notably, at the Department of Facility Maintenance’s Storm Water Quality Division, which signs off on its own permits for building projects.

“It suddenly has a huge backlog,” she said. “It used to be over two weeks they’d be able to turn around, but now it’s like over two months.”