Dear Customers,
It was another year of change and improvement at the Department of Building Inspection (DBI), and we want to take a moment to share some of the progress we’ve made over the past twelve months.
Of course, the biggest change this year was Mayor Lurie’s creation of the PermitSF initiative, which has had great success in bringing all the permitting departments together to solve big challenges and address permit applicant headaches.
DBI started the year by launching a new building permit and comprehensive application report and enabling simultaneous plan review by all City departments.
We streamlined application routing by eliminating physical stamps on In-House Review building permits and removing the school district from the routing process altogether.
At the same time, we expanded public counter hours at the Permit Center and DBI and eliminated the Information Counter to save customers a step in the process.
Our Code Enforcement team cleared a two-year backlog of Code Enforcement Director’s Hearings that had built up during COVID.
To improve transparency and access to records, we added all Housing Inspection Notices of Violation to our public Complaint Tracking System.
We also worked with other City departments to fix the City’s addressing process by launching a new, comprehensive addressing lifecycle. This change is already saving applicants an average of eight days compared to earlier this year.
Alongside improvements to our services, we created a working group to review the San Francisco Building Code and identify opportunities for streamlining. This work led to successful legislation reforming slope protection, driveway load and lighting requirements to start.
We updated our Continuity of Operations Plan to help ensure we can continue serving you and support the City’s recovery after a disaster. We also launched the Concrete Building Screening program earlier this month to enhance seismic safety.
Finally, we streamlined the legalization process for existing, unpermitted security gates.
Altogether, these improvements are reducing permit review and issuance times. Today, our teams issue most over-the-counter permits within two days and meet first-review targets for in-house projects two to three times more often than they did just three years ago.
Despite our progress, we know there is still have plenty of work to do ahead, and we will keep at it in 2026.
We wish you a safe and happy holiday season. Thank you for your ongoing support and partnership.