Construction Permit Timeline

You need a construction permit before beginning work on most construction projects. SDCI reviews construction permit applications to ensure that they meet safety, environmental, land use, and other requirements. Multiple teams at the City review each application. It can take several rounds of back-and-forth between SDCI and the applicant to complete review, approval, and issuance of a construction permit, depending on the complexity of the project.

We've heard from the community that the permitting process can be confusing. In response, we've developed a Construction Permit Timeline tool to show our permit review process.

The Construction Permit Timeline includes data for construction permits back to 2018. If you’re looking for historical information or for a different type of permit, please reference SDCI’s Research a Project webpage.

Launch the Construction Permit Timeline

When to Use the Construction Permit Timeline

The Construction Permit Timeline is a graphic visualization of how a permit application moves through plan review from intake (when SDCI accepts an application) to issuance (when SDCI issues a permit).  You can use the Construction Permit Timeline to:

• understand the status of your construction permit
• determine when reviews were completed
• identify status of active reviews
• research permit history for individual construction permits
• learn about the process of getting a construction permit

One of the frequent questions we get is how long it took SDCI to issue a permit considering only the time the City was in control of the application. The Construction Permit Timeline makes this very easy to determine. It quickly shows, on a single timeline, when an application moved from City control to applicant control and back again. Within each period of City control, it shows which reviews were completed and when. For applications that are still in progress, the tool shows the status of each review, as well as the results of completed reviews.

How to Use the Tool

1. Launch the Construction Permit Timeline.
2. Type your permit number in the Permit Number search box on the left of the tool (e.g. 6703106-CN). Click on a permit number to select it.
   1. You can also scroll through the list of permit numbers to select one.
   2. If you are not able to scroll through a list of permits, make sure there isn’t a number entered in the search box.
3. Review the permit details in the boxes at the top of the dashboard. Click the Services Portal link to open the permit details in the Seattle Services Portal.
4. Hover your cursor over each bar in the Review Timeline visualization to see details about each review, including:
   1. start and stop dates
   2. review cycle
   3. duration
   4. assigned reviewers
   5. category, such as Complete: Approved or In Progress: Assigned
5. Click on a bar in the Review Timeline visualization to see activity details (such as the review’s result) in the Details box in the top right.
6. Click the arrows or the “1 of 4” at the bottom to navigate to the other pages:
   1. Timeline is the primary visualization.
   2. Table shows the same data in a different format.
   3. Getting Started has more information, including about ADA access to this information.
   4. Learn More has additional detail about about the colors and categories in the tool.

Tips for Interpreting the Construction Permit Timeline

Your permit review process will likely include more than one review cycle:

1. The City reviews your application and issues a correction notice.
2. You update your plans and resubmit your application.
3. This cycle repeats until you have resolved all issues and the permit is ready to be issued.