An investigation into Hawaii County’s building permit process found systemic flaws, but no real surprises, county officials said Wednesday.
Last year, county Managing Director Lee Lord commissioned an assessment of the building permit process from James Tinner, a consultant based in Washington state.
In early December, Tinner submitted his findings, which were presented Wednesday to the County Council at a meeting of its Communications, Reports and Council Oversight Committee.
“There were no terribly big surprises,” Public Works Director Steve Pause said during the meeting. “A lot of it was stuff we already kind of knew.”
The report largely consists of a series of question-and-answer interactions between Tinner and various county staff members, including permit clerks, plan examiners, inspectors, and more. From those interactions, Tinner highlighted several shortcomings throughout the entire permitting structure, particularly a lack of documentation for matters ranging from basic meeting agendas to policy and procedure manuals.
“Permit processing systems are extremely complex,” Tinner wrote. “Without written documentation such as policy/procedure manuals, it becomes extremely difficult to keep complex systems organized and predictable for permit staff and permit applicants. The result is inefficiencies, personal preferences, and some level of chaos creeping into the system.”
Lord said Tinner was hired because of the need for someone with an outside perspective on the county’s permitting process who could testify about how other municipalities handle similar issues.
To this point, Tinner found several practices within the permitting process that are “extremely unusual” in the industry, such as delegating “virtually all” structural plan reviews for conventional single-family homes to licensed engineers on staff. Tinner wrote that the talents of the county’s licensed staff should be reserved for more complex projects.
Similarly, rooftop photovoltaic systems are often exempt from planning requirements, with many municipalities waiving the need for solar installations to be designed by licensed professionals. Not so in Hawaii County, which Tinner judged to be another major inefficiency.
Tinner also acknowledged that many of the county’s permitting process woes stem from the implementation of the Energov and EPIC systems.
While Tinner concluded that the EPIC implementation “to a great extent looks to have been successful,” he added that Energov is notorious throughout the industry as being frustrating to work with and leading to problems that require additional expenditures to resolve.
Other problems he cited included a lack of awareness among staff aboutcertain civil concepts and management practices, and a lack of participation by department management in the annual updates to the International Building Code.
Ultimately, Tinner made a series of recommendations, ranging from minor technical changes in its software implementation, additional training for staff, and increasing plan review fees. Currently, the county’s plan review fees are 20% of the building permit fee, but the industry standard is a 65% fee, although Tinner noted that “raising fees brings political implications.”
Pause on Wednesday acknowledged that most of these recommendations can be implemented, but said he has not yet developed a timeline or a priority list to determine when those changes can occur.
He added that the Public Works Department is understaffed at the moment — the Building Division, he estimated, is “barely 60% staffed” — and that the wages offered by the county for those open positions are not enticing for some prospective candidates.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
