I am a licensed architect…

I am a licensed architect with over 25 years of experience in both the construction and architectural industries. Every majour submission I've been involved in (not a single family house) resulted in miscommunication, extensive delay and lack of recourse when applications weren't simple. Almost all the creative multi-family housing projects I have worked on required "Alternative Solutions" under the code; some as many as 5 per design. A digitized submittal process can not handle the complexity of the permitting process. This process requires responsible, well trained people who can think.

I have found that that submittals which utilize the internet are self-defeating and never live up to their promise. Instead, municipal staff hide behind the technology to avoid interacting with engineers, architects and in many cases the owners. In addition to this, the introduction of e-permitting has required me and others who utilize the system to take "tutorials" on how to use the systems which are extremely complicated. If every municipality starting using a system and "customizing" it for their own preferences, this would mean learning "software" for what used to be a relatively simple process of handing in documents over the counter every time you needed to submit docs.

I have also found that the process of creating my documents is changed due to the overly rigid and inflexible requirements. I have had to organize my drawing names, numbers and sets to satisfy municipal e-permitting requirements; RIDICULOUS!