We historically go through A LOT of paper! If one good thing came out of the COVID chaos, it has been DIGITAL SUBMITTALS (and our internal effort to do more digital)! Here is a sample of how a few jurisdictions we work in address digital submittals (some are better than others…).
LA City (LADBS)
LA City utilizes a single portal to access all of its services, many of which are completely digital! This is helpful not only for submitting for plan check but also for processing all of the clearances. My only complaint is that once you log into the Angeleno account and select the service you want, you then need to log into your Angeleno account again to use that service …
Once your plans are submitted you can review status on an easy-to-read Dashboard! And although they are still taking paper permit applications, in our experience, digital submittals move much faster.
LA County
LA County uses a single portal for permit applications, similar to the Angeleno service web page. EpicLA allows you to track all your permits and plans via their dashboard, but as all of your submittals are being tracked in one place, sometimes submittals can get lost, or hard to find updates on.
Also, when uploading exhibits, reports, or drawing packages to the portal, they all display in one place, and sometimes it’s hard to sort through what was loaded most recently (once we resubmitted plans without seeing the additional drawing comments because it was so hard to navigate the page).
Ventura (City)
The city of Ventura and LA County have almost identical portals to upload and submit for permits. Same pros and cons…
the City of Calabasas
The City of Calabasas has a digital submittal via e-mail with strict guidelines on file size, organization, and naming conventions. For simple projects, the 25MB size restriction is probably not an issue, but what happens with more complex projects that require multiple reports (Soils & Geology, Archeology, Oak Tree, Biology, etc.) for approvals? I prefer the ability to upload all my documents on one portal to e-mailing.
Jefferson County Washington
An additional perk of the digital submittal is that we can expand our service area!
Although Jefferson County Washington will do in-person appointments ALL plans must be submitted digitally. Similar to Calabasas this can be accomplished via e-mail, or if the files are too large, via a file share portal. Although you can submit everything digitally, this submittal process has proved to be very difficult to track as there is no dashboard site with status updates.
I’m hoping more cities make the leap to digital submittals with an online trackable portal!!