The City of Dallas Development Services Department (DSD) picked up its Lunch and Learn series Thursday with a continuation of its 2023 training session for its Project Dox permitting software.
The Project Dox 2023 Training Series is DSD’s latest building permit initiative aimed at enhancing the development community’s knowledge, understanding, and expectations regarding Dallas’ building permit process and electronic plan review system.
These efforts at reforming and streamlining DSD processes come amid continued efforts to work through the permitting backlog and issuance delays overseen by City Manager T.C. Broadnax. Under Broadnax’s management, permit wait times have skyrocketed to averages as high as 57 days in November 2022.
The Project Dox series began on March 13, 2023, and consists of a 5-month, 9-module training course detailing the step-by-step process of getting a construction permit application submitted, prescreened, and eventually approved.
Thursday’s Lunch and Learn, attended by The Dallas Express, was the third training session and sixth module in the series, covering the topic of application resubmit tasks. The session was presented by Carolina Yumet, assistant director for DSD’s Customer Advocate Team.
If an applicant needs to address corrections in his plans/drawings during the plan review phase of the permitting process, Project Dox will issue a resubmit task. After accepting the resubmit task, applicants must review and respond to comments, upload new or revised plans/drawings, check the boxes, and then resubmit.
The training session emphasized the importance of ensuring consistent file names across revised plans. Otherwise, existing files will not be replaced with new versions.
Yumet explained that Project Dox’s resubmission steps are in place so applicants avoid getting stuck during the process, which leaves DSD unable to move forward on an application and contributes to the City’s backlog.
“The aim of this initiative is to have our Dallas residents, stakeholders, and the development community more informed and more prepared on the various tasks and the best practices to make for all permit applications,” Yumet said during the training session.
The topics covered in the first two Project Dox training sessions included: how to create an account, application submittals, application upload tasks, prescreen correction tasks, and instructions around initial fee payments.
The next training session will cover Modules 7 and 8, final fee payment and downloading plans and documents, and will take place sometime in June. The final session, which is scheduled sometime in July, will cover Module 9, how to submit an addendum.
Members of the Customer Advocate Team handling the Project Dox Training Series include Yumet, Kevin Delgado (Project Coordinator), Irma Hayes (Senior Project Coordinator), and Margie Saabedra (Administrative Specialist II).