Construction is complicated. There are schematic designs, 3-D design development plans and blueprints for every layer of construction, from the foundations to the shingles. But perhaps the most complex step to navigate is the permitting process.

Streamlining the process for construction throughout the city has been both a problem and a priority since the time of former City Manager Bill Watkins, but it wasn’t until October 2011 that Mike Matthes, Columbia’s current city manager, reorganized the process in hopes of cutting confusion among the construction and development industries.

According to Pat Zenner, development services manager, Watkins’ original goal was to have each stage of the building process under one roof. Now, those departments, Building and Site Development, Planning and Development and Neighborhood Development, are united under the umbrella of Community Development and a mantra of “Plan, Build, Care.”

“It’s easy for [the departments of] City Hall to become silos, with no collaboration,” says Mayor Bob McDavid. “So you come in to ask a question, and one person tells you one thing, and the person down the hall says something else. If two different departments give contradictory recommendations, what do you do as the customer? You become the mediator.”

He says with the reorganization, there has been more collaboration and easier navigation. “It’s no longer, ‘That’s not what I do.’ Now, it’s, ‘This is what’s next.’”

McDavid boils it down to one goal: customer service.

“Government’s a monopoly,” he says. “There’s only one place you can get a driver’s license or permit. It’s not like when you walk into a Ford dealership, where if no one helps you, you can just go next door to the Chevy dealership. The consumer of government services like this have no other choices, so we need to be sure that we give them good service.”

The answer, he says, is in customer feedback. Although the city has been making an effort to transition to annual citizen surveys to measure its services, McDavid says the sample size of those working with building and site development is so small a similar survey wouldn’t work.

“When you’re dealing with such a small body, it’s best to ask person to person.”

Navigating a complicated system

For many local contractors and developers, the permit system still hasn’t earned its stars in customer service.

“If contractors were asked about this system, the department would find out that it’s not a great system,” says one local developer, who has asked to remain anonymous. “No one wants to openly complain about the department that determines if you get a permit or not.”

A local architect seconds that sentiment. “If you’re on the basketball team, you don’t want to be out in the public saying things about the coach because you’ll still have to deal with him every day.”

With more than three decades of experience in the industry, he says as Columbia has grown and the workload in City Hall has grown, the possibility of things taking longer than before is more likely.

“In a nutshell, it’s more complicated because a whole lot more construction is going on,” he says. “Pair that with tight budgets, and you’ve got a challenge.”

The local developer agrees that during the height of the recession, development was easier. Now, he thinks there just aren’t enough people in the department to manage the increase in construction projects.

For example, city inspectors handled 15.6 inspections per day in 2012, according to Building Regulations Supervisor Phil Teeple. In 2013, they’ve handled 22.6 inspections per day — almost a 50 percent increase.

“What would be ideal for [users] would be a nightmare for the city,” says the local architect. “What I’d like most is the ability to walk in and ask a question whenever I need to.”

The developer says creating a system in which each project has an advocate to carry it through the approval process would be extremely valuable.

Randy Coil, of Coil Construction, agrees that having an advocate would be beneficial, though he says he hasn’t had frequent problems with the department, before the changes of 2011 or after.

“I don’t think it’s more difficult, and I don’t think it’s easier; it’s just different,” he says. He mentions how helpful it is that he can look online to see which departments have approved his applications. “Sometimes it does get stuck on someone’s desk, so having someone to guide it through the process could be helpful. For now, if we need to, we’ll continue to call and ask.”


Answer from a one-stop shop
Other issues customers of the department have mentioned included hesitance among staff to provide answers.

“People are leery to give you an answer because then they’re accountable for the results, and no one can know the answer to every question I’ll have,” says one local contractor. “There’s too much change in this industry, all the time.”

“If it isn’t spelled out for them, [the staff] won’t approve it, and they’ll send you to the code review board, which only meets once a month, so you might have to wait a month to move forward on your project,” the developer says. “Ideally, more problems and questions could be dealt with at the staff level.”

What the mayor thinks is most integral to improving the process is predictability and consistency with rules and regulations.

“If you’re adding on to your restaurant, you need to know at the outset how much it’s going to cost,” he says. “You don’t want to spend $10,000 on an architect to later find out you need to spend another $50,000 to get something else taken care of.”

“At least the city’s cognizant of the problem — and it really is a problem for both sides,” the architect says.

“The collaboration we have now was step one,” McDavid says. “Step two is to see how we’re doing. To say that putting those three departments into one is the final solution would be a mistake.”

Ultimately, he’d like for the department to be more similar to insurance, for which each customer has an agent who can take care of everything.

“The final goal is still to create a one-stop shop.”