In the Star-Advertiser editorial, “DPP must support ePlans customer” (Our View, June 19), the Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) is advised to “learn to walk before you run,” railing against the upcoming implementation of ePlans in place of paper plans for commercial projects.

At DPP, we are focused on making any and all improvements to provide certainty and timeliness in the permit review process in support of and to the benefit of our customers. In deciding to require ePlans for commercial projects, we consulted with stakeholders, including representatives from the Building Industry Association of Hawaii, the American Institute of Architects Honolulu, large and small developers, government and non-government agencies, third-party reviewers, routers, draftsmen and more.

The feedback was generally neutral or agreeable with concerns about civil drawings, to which we agreed to exempt until a phasing approach could be determined. There was only one complaint regarding the conversion to ePlans, saying that changing office standards in place for decades to meet ePlans requirements was “no small feat.”

While we cannot please everyone in our decision to move to commercial ePlans, and we understand that adjustment can be challenging, the overall advantages are well worth the temporary inconvenience.

Currently, these large rolled-up paper plans, fondly referred to as “trees,” require staff to physically log in, unroll, roll and carry the plans to and from their assigned plans examiner. Staff must manually stamp each page for approval. Paper plans are often misplaced and picked up by the wrong applicants. Paper plans must be contracted out for scanning and conversion to electronic files and recordkeeping.

The physical routing and transport of plans among the various outside agencies, as well as to and from the applicant for revisions, takes substantial time, which is calculated within the permitting process times. All of this can be eliminated with a simple click of a button. ePlans will eliminate the need to provide multiple sets (typically three) of paper plans, and the final approved plans will be available electronically for easy downloading. And, DPP staff can be reassigned to more effectively perform building permit prescreen and code review, and speak directly with applicants as was done back in the day.

Notably, the backlog itself cannot be attributed to ePlans, but largely other factors, such as high vacancy rates coupled with difficulty in filling positions, lack of training and standard operating procedures that create inconsistent reviews, and two-decades-old permitting software that lacks automation. ePlans for commercial projects is not the silver bullet, but is among the many improvements we are working on, including adding server capacity to ePlans, hiring more staff, streamlining the prescreen process, developing training and standard operating procedures, and upgrading our permitting software.

Another contributor to building permit wait times is low-quality plans, which require greater review by DPP staff and multiple cycles between our reviewers and applicants. Sometimes, applicants fail to address comments cycle after cycle. We continue to support our customers, but we should not be constantly developing the plans for them. To this end, we are working on elevating the quality by providing more information to applicants on requirements, as well as disincentivizing bad quality, which may mean rejection of plans after a certain number of egregious errors.

Change is never easy, but we must move forward. Resistance to commercial ePlans, yet wanting the system to improve, are diametrically opposed positions. It will take time to implement all of the improvements and there will be bumps along the way, but at some point we all need to stop crawling and learn to run.

Dawn Takeuchi Apuna is the director of the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting.