The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Society of Engineers (BSE) president yesterday hailed as “long overdue” plans to slash building permit turnaround times by going digital, branding the 60-80 percent reduction target as “achievable”.

Quentin Knowles told Tribune Business it was “about time” the Ministry of Works and its Building Control Department shift to electronic processing of the 1,000-1,500 applications they receive annually, adding: “We live in the 21st century.”

Arguing that it was critical that approvals from the likes of the Department of Environmental Planning and Protection (DEPP) be obtained in “parallel” to those from the Ministry of Works, he added that execution and implementation were key to ensuring the turnaround reduction targets outlined by Desmond Bannister, deputy prime minister (see other article on Page 1B), are achieved.

“We’re very happy that it’s finally here, and look forward to it,” Mr Knowles said of the Electronic Permit Review and Inspection System’s (EPRIS) planned introduction within the next six months. “If it works the way it’s supposed to work, it will definitely help to speed things along. It’s long overdue.

“We live in the 21st century, and we’ve had a paperless capacity for so long that it’s about time they leverage it.” Bahamian engineers, architects, contractors and other construction-related professions have been calling on the Ministry of Works to digitise the building permit process for the better part of two decades so that the true potential of Bahamian real estate-related industries can be unlocked.

Agreeing that EPRIS will be a “substantial benefit” to construction and the industry’s various professions if it works as advertised, Mr Knowles told this newspaper: “I would hate to have millions, and tens of millions, of dollars in construction held up in a review process. A lot of times the review process done at the Ministry of Works is not very structured, and there are a lot of bottlenecks.

“You have circumstances where clients are so frustrated, and are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars, but they can’t start a project because of delays. We hope it works the way they intend it to work. I can tell you that any improvement we have over what they have now will be of great benefit to construction.”

Voicing hope that DEPP certification can be obtained in “parallel” to building permit approvals issued via EPRIS, Mr Knowles responded when asked about the issues with the current process: “Let me put it this way: It’s imperfect.

“The issue is the bottlenecks. There are too many bottlenecks, particularly for large projects where you are likely to have hundreds of drawings, and in some departments reviewing those projects you may have one person looking at those projects. If that person has a backlog, the process stops until they get through it. Those type of delays add up, and months after you’ve submitted the drawings hopefully you get approval.”

Citing a project he is currently working on, Mr Knowles said the electrical component alone ran into 200 pages of drawings. These have to be copied three times’, meaning that 600 pages in total are required. When other disciplines such as plumbing, fire safety and civil are included, project drawings “can easily balloon from 600 to 2,000”.

Urging the Government to consult with private sector stakeholders so that implementation “hiccups” are avoided, and that EPRIS works the way it was intended, the BSE president said that if structural, electrical, plumbing and volatile substance reviews were all conducted in parallel than a 50 percent reduction in turnaround time could be achieved through these four disciplines alone.

“If we bring the other departments in to look at the drawings, you could get an even higher level of turnaround,” he added.

Gustavus Ferguson, the Institute of Bahamian Architects (IBA) president, told Tribune Business that the planned EPRIS system introduction is “certainly a great boost for us. We were asking for this from many years ago; about two decades asking for this type of change to happen, not only for the construction professionals but the industry in general”.

Noting that it sometimes took construction projects up to six months from application to gain approval, Mr Ferguson said Mr Bannister’s ambition to reduce the turnaround time for residential submissions from 55-75 days to two weeks (15 days) represented a “significant decrease”.

However, he added that it was still more than the two-seven day turnaround times for residential building permits in the likes of Miami-Dade County and New York. “Those are very much achievable,” he added of Mr Bannister’s goal. “It’s not out of the realm, but if we compare to other jurisdictions it’s down to within two weeks, and two weeks is considered a lengthy time.”

Brent Ferguson, the acting building control officer, yesterday described EPRIS as “a world-class product”. And his predecessor in that office, Craig Delancey, said efforts to digitise Building Control processes had begun “over 15 years ago” in 2005 with the introduction of Shorepoint software.

Mr Bannister said the project had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Dorian, with the Minnis administration having moved to “reinvigorate” the initiative upon taking office in May 2017.