Need a building permit? Want to be environmentally sound and avoid printing multiple copies of your plans for submission? Want to know which city departments have reviewed your plans and what their comments are? Want to see the changes your architect made to address the city’s comments on your building plans? Want do it all from the comfort of your home office? Then you’d better be developing your project in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Salt Lake City is the only city in the world where development customers can submit their project plans online, pay for building permit(s), monitor the plan review process, instantly access review comments, see architects’ changes to submitted plans, and be notified the instant a permit is issued all without using a single piece of paper or visiting a single city office. After taking the concept of an integrated review process to new levels by incorporating 10 different modules into a single accessible and transparent database, Salt Lake City has pushed e-development to new heights by fully integrating project review software with project tracking software. When people said it couldn’t be done, Salt Lake City didn’t listen.

This case study was submitted to the Alliance for Innovation for consideration at the 2010 Transforming Local Government conference.