Electronic plan check will reduce costs for commercial customers and allow for more efficient delivery of service

Today the City of Sacramento unveiled ePlan Check – the latest improvement as part of Sacramento Streamline, a comprehensive program to eliminate barriers for development. ePlan Check enables commercial customers to submit building plans electronically, thereby reducing the need to reproduce several sets of hard copy plans. In addition, ePlan Check saves time during the approval and permitting process for development projects.

“It has been our goal to provide a service to our customers that will eliminate the need to print costly and environmentally unfriendly building plans,” said Ryan DeVore, chief building official. “In the past, hard copy processing required numerous sets of building plans. Today, commercial customers can submit their building plans using a disk or flash drive, and only a single hard copy at completion is necessary.”

The immediate roll out of this new program will yield dividends for the customer. First, there will be immediate cost savings with the almost elimination of paper plans. For example, on a four-story, 48,000 square foot building, it is estimated that reproduction costs are roughly $7,000. Secondly, this mostly paperless processing will also result in improved processing time that will be passed down to the customer.

“Delivering services in an more streamlined way is environmentally and pocket book friendly but will also improve our time on service delivery,” said DeVore. “By virtue of going digital, this will allow staff to review and approve building plans digitally.”

The ePlan Check project is part of a sundry of improvements that have been implemented under last year’s launch of the Sacramento Streamline program. Since then, the City has incorporated a solar fee program that allows significant savings on both commercial and residential solar projects. In September, the an express line was at its building counter to provide a quick way of getting simple requests completed in less than 30 minutes.
 

“ePlan Check further exemplifies the city’s commitment to be business-friendly,” said Councilmember Darrell Fong. “This new tool provides customers with an easier way to do business with us, and our hope is that the ease of use will also increase our ability to process projects quicker.”

“The City has shown their commitment to deliver services efficiently and effectively,” said Joshua Wood, vice president with Region Builders. “As an advocacy organization for the building and construction trades, we believe that the services now being offered will certainly improve the timeliness on project approvals, which translates into money saved for many of our local businesses.”

Other streamlined improvements are on the horizon this year, including an electronic permit program that will allow customers to conveniently obtain building permits online without having to come to the City’s public counter. For more information about Sacramento Streamline, visit this link.