Building Permit. 63 Pages. Which Department Reviews First? 🔥

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County permit office. Commercial construction permit application: 63 pages.

The routing question: Planning, Fire, Public Works, Environmental, Building—who reviews first? Depends on what's in the application.

Manual process: Intake clerk reads entire application. Determines project type. Identifies required reviews. Routes to first department.

Training time for new clerk: 6 months to handle all permit types accurately.

Built a permit classifier.

Application uploaded. System extracts: project type, square footage, occupancy type, location, special features. Determines required review sequence based on code. Generates routing slip.

Results:

- 340 permits processed monthly

- Routing accuracy: 97% (was 78%)

- Average intake time: 8 minutes (was 45 minutes)

- Mis-routed permits: Down 89%

New clerk training: 2 weeks instead of 6 months.

The system knows which project types trigger which reviews. Zoning overlay? Planning first. Hazmat storage? Fire marshal priority. Floodplain? Environmental before anything.

What routing decisions require institutional knowledge you haven't documented?

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