Last month, Honolulu introduced tech from CivCheck, a software platform designed to improve the accuracy and completeness of residential building permit applications before they enter the city’s review process, Davis Pitner, a public information specialist with the Honolulu Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP), said.
“Using artificial intelligence, the software helps applicants — prior to building permit application submittal — check for compliance with applicable code regulations and local permitting requirements, and submittal of all required documents, cutting down the review time and back-and-forth with the city,” Pitner said in an email.
CivCheck was introduced on Dec. 8. Participation is still optional and will be phased in as mandatory at a later date. By the middle of December, projects in the CivCheck’s “prescreen” status — which includes both plan prescreen review and residential code review — were backed up with about a five-week wait time, city officials said.
“While this may still be considered a small backlog, we are confident that CivCheck will not only help us continue clearing it, but will also make the prescreen process faster and more efficient than before,” Pitner said.
That wait time window has been closed to seven days, with about 174 projects now in prescreen. This is significantly quicker than pre-CivCheck in 2023, Pitner said, when projects had a six-month waiting period due to slowdowns and backlogs.
Dheekshita Kumar, CEO and co-founder of CivCheck, was careful to stress the technology’s “human-in-the-loop” ethos, noting CivCheck is “designed to augment plan reviewers, not replace them.”
“Our AI doesn’t make decisions,” she said via email. “It helps humans make better decisions faster by organizing information, flagging relevant code sections and surfacing issues that still require professional judgment. That distinction is critical in public-sector work, and plan reviewers appreciate the design care in this regard.”
City planning departments are increasingly turning to AI tools, as municipalities and other public-sector organizations ease into the technology.
“Cities are moving past ‘experimental chatbots’ and asking for operational AI that reduces rework and improves throughput inside real permitting workflows,” Saf Rabah, founder and CEO of Govstream.ai, said in an email. Govstream.ai technology is used by planning departments in Bellevue, Wash., and, soon, in Louisville, Ky.
Govstream.ai technology is not “general-purpose AI,” Rabah emphasized, but “grounded in city rules and data, designed to work alongside staff and the systems cities already rely on.”
The Louisville Office of Planning will begin a pilot project in the next two months in partnership with Govstream.ai, to help speed up the review-and-resubmit cycle caused by incomplete or incorrect submittals in the residential construction sector, city and company officials said.
The permitting process “has long been a source of frustration for residents and businesses who are looking to get permits,” Mayor Craig Greenberg said during a Jan. 7 press conference to announce the pilot. Permitting, he said, can have impacts across the city, ranging from home renovations to new business developments. “And delays cost Louisville residents and businesses time, and money, and those frustrations add up as well.”
The pilot, Pamela McKnight, Louisville’s newly named chief AI officer, said, represents the kind of application the city is looking to for AI.
“We want to make Louisville a leader in the AI space, in terms of government and public service,” McKnight said during the press event. “We’ll be looking for ways to learn fast, in this space. Try, learn, adjust will be our approach.”
Back in Honolulu, Pitner lamented the common problem where applications get slowed down due to needed corrections, resulting in added review cycles.
“CivCheck aims to reduce the number of review cycles and back-and-forth with applicants by guiding applicants to prepare higher quality and complete building permit applications before they are submitted to DPP staff for review,” he said. “The result is higher-quality applications, shorter permitting times and better-informed applicants.”
