Permit performance metrics

This page is a resource from PermitSF, reforming the City’s permitting process to make it customer-centric, fast, predictable, transparent and unified.

The first dashboard gives the typical time it takes applicants to finish the entire process from submitting a complete application to Planning Application approval or Building Permit issuance.

The other dashboards focus on how long the City takes to complete reviews of both Planning or Entitlement Applications and Building Permit Applications. There are three types of review steps for these processes: completeness check, first plan review, and revision review.

The City sets targets for review times as part of PermitSF. You can also find more information about the permitting process.

The dashboard below provides estimates of the median number of days it takes for a Planning Application to be approved or a Building Permit to be issued.

The process starts when the City confirms that an application is complete and all required filing fees have been paid. Next, all relevant City departments review the application and plans for safety and code compliance. If corrections are needed, written comments are issued to the applicant.

This dashboard includes both the time the City spends reviewing a plan or permit for safety and code compliance, and the time the applicant spends reviewing the City’s comments, correcting and resubmitting plans, and paying various issuance fees. There can be multiple rounds of review and resubmission before a Planning Application is approved or a Building Permit is issued.

The dashboard below provides the median number of days it takes the City to complete each step of the process for a Planning Application to be approved. This only includes the time the City spent reviewing a Planning Application.

The dashboard also includes the current review time target the City has set for each step and the percent of reviews that met this target.

The review times below do not include very large projects such as those covered by Development Agreements or that have multiple phases of construction over several years. You can find out more about these projects from the Planning Department.

The dashboard below provides the median time it takes for the City to provide comments to the applicant after each round of review. The data below does not include the time the customer spends reviewing comments, making corrections, and resubmitting plans.

The dashboard also includes the review time target the City has set for each stage and the percent of reviews that meet this target.

The review times below only include in-house permits, these are more complicated permits, typically larger, more complex projects that cannot be reviewed over-the-counter at the Permit Center within one or two days.

The City set performance targets for each review step: completeness check, first plan review, and revision review. To set these targets, the City reviewed past performance and identified ambitious yet attainable goals that could be achieved the majority of the time. The City will review targets periodically to ensure they remain relevant.

Our goal is to meet these targets at least 75% of the time.

A small percentage of permit applications have timelines established by the state, which the City must adhere to. For permit applications without state-mandated timelines, the City will strive to meet the targets in the dashboards above.

Planning or Entitlement Application review

The planning application review process is where the City checks that a proposed construction project is allowed under the City’s Planning and Zoning laws. This usually results in a Planning Approval Letter being issued to allow you to submit a building permit application.

Building Permit Application review

The Building Permit Application review process is where the City checks that a proposed construction project meets all the safety and code compliance requirements under the City’s Building Code and other laws. Building Permit Application data includes review times by any relevant department for a specific project, including Department of Building Inspection, Planning, Public Works, Fire, Public Utilities Commission, Public Health, and others.

Only department stations that conduct “plan review” were included in this analysis. This includes: BLDG, MECH, MECH-E, PAD-STR, PID-PC, CP-ZOC, DPW-BSM, DPW-BUF, PW-DAC, SFFD, SFFD-PRT, SFFD-HQ, SFPUC, SFPUC-PRG, HEALTH, HEALTH-FD, HEALTH-MH, HEALTH-HM, HEALTH-RF, HEALTH-MB, HEALTH-PL, HEALTH-HP, HEALTH-AQ, HEALTH-CN, HEALTH-SW, and REDEV.

Time to approval or issuance

This is the total time it takes for all the steps from when your first submit your complete planning or permit application to when we approve the plans or issue the permit. This includes both the time the City spends reviewing applications and plans as well as the time you spend reviewing comments, revising plans, and paying any fees.

Completeness check

This is when we make sure all the parts of an application are complete and ready for review. This is the time period from when you first submit your application to when you receive a list from us of the materials that are missing in order for us to begin the substantive review.

First plan review

This is when we do a thorough review of the project plans submitted for compliance with relevant laws and codes. This time period starts when the application is deemed complete and ends with a Plan Check Letter (for Planning entitlements) or an “Issued Comments” entry in the Department of Building Inspection’s Permit Tracking System tracking system. If the plans don’t comply with local laws, we may need to request changes.

Resubmission plan review

Once we receive your revised plans, staff complete another check for code compliance and issue another set of comments, if needed, or approve the application.

Median days

The review times above are the median number of days it took to review, approve or issue a permit or planning application. The median is the middle value in a set of numbers when they are arranged in order from smallest to largest. The median number of days to review represents the permit or review in the exact middle of all permits or reviews when they are arranged from shortest to longest number of review days. It's shows what’s typical in the data. We use median days to demonstrate the typical duration of plan review or approval times because it is not affected by extreme values, unlike averages.

You can read this page for additional technical documentation and information on how the estimates above have been calculated.