Process model for international building permit benchmarking and a validation example using the Israeli building permit process

Building permitting in Israel

Despite various initiatives implemented by the government to increase supply of dwelling units in Israel, based on recent reports (Israeli national economics council, 2021) the current supply still fails to meet the increasing demand. Furthermore, prices for housing keep escalating (Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), 2023). Since long and inefficient permitting processes directly affect the time to produce dwelling units and the profit margins for developers, building permitting is one of the aspects that needs to be addressed in order to create larger supply of (affordable) housing. In Israel, one of the most significant initiatives in the building permit domain is a correction to the Israeli planning and building law, referred to as “amendment 101”. The amendment which came to effect in 2016, is the realization of the government’s decision on the matter in 2006, calling for substantial improvement of the quality of construction in Israel, while streamlining and simplifying the procedures involved. The amendment transformed the permitting process in Israel into a digital environment introducing significant changes to the process. We will not discuss all the significant changes, but we will mention a few to explain the scope of the amendment’s impact.

One of the introduced changes was the addition of building control institutes as a supervisory entity in the process. Building control institutes are usually private bodies, certified by the Laboratory Accreditation Authority and licensed by the Minister of the Interior to conduct design review and supervise projects during construction. These procedures include design review during building permitting, visits to the construction site and control of many areas concerning the safety and stability of the structure. To ensure the quality of review and supervision, control institutes are obliged to employ authorized checkers trained by the approving authorities (such as the fire department, Homefront command, etc.) (Israel planning administration, 2023). Building control institutes are meant to coordinate the entire process of design review, instead of applicants seeking the approval of each regulatory body individually. The expectation was for a more centralized process (State comptroller, 2021). Still, there is not a significant impact on the building permit process considering the fact that the institutes work within a very narrow scope and are only responsible for residential buildings lower than 29 m.

Another important aspect of the transformation of the permitting process in Israel is digitalization. Much like in many other parts of the world tackling the same problems, Israel also made efforts to replace the paper-based permit request workflow with a digital interface. However, as in most countries, this digital interface is merely a tailored document management system with built in workflows and time constraints (Shahi, 2018). The state’s system called “accessible permitting” was designed to support all the stages of permitting and execution online. It starts with applying for an information file and receiving the information, to applying and issuing a permit, ending with the management and control of the construction phase - application for approval to start of work, control of the actual construction and application and receipt of a certificate of completion. In practice however, according to the states comptroller report from 2021, the system is not fully fitted for the needs of the involved stakeholders, and many times it leads to duplicate and redundant work (State comptroller, 2021). For example, the report showed that due to the lack of an efficient (automated) interface between the state’s system to the systems of local committees, decisions are often made twice, once in each system. Furthermore, information like the issued date of the permit is often not accurately aligned in both systems (State comptroller, 2021).

Comparing the results for Israel with The World Bank’s “Doing business” report in terms of “dealing with construction permits” for 2015 (World Bank, 2014) and 2020 (The world bank, 2023), the building permit process has shortened by only 9 days (from 209 to 200 days). This illustrates that despite the major changes implemented, in practice, we are seeing limited impact. We suggest that any approach capable of providing significant process improvement should be rooted in a better understanding of all steps and problems of the current process using better tools for process mapping and analysis. The significant changes implemented compared to the mild achieved results make the Israeli case remarkably interesting. By mapping the building permit process in Israel, we hope to be able to identify the issues within the process that have not been addressed yet. We believe that the proposed methodology for process mapping can be useful for identifying shortcomings and opportunities within the permitting process, in any country. To prove this statement, we first aim to validate the previously suggested methodology as a tool that can be used in various regions.

Diverse modeling types of building permit processes

Based on a recent literature review by Bloch and Fauth (2023), research dedicated to building permit process analyses is limited. Even though the number of relevant academic articles is low, countries and municipalities from all over the globe had their building permit process investigated. However, during this process a variety of approaches for describing and visualizing the building permit processes were implemented. While some articles describe the building permit process using words (Sonntag and Wimmer, 2003), or tables (Meijer and Visscher, 2006; Yaakup et al., 2007; Karoui and Sassi, 2016), others introduced visualization tools to describe the process steps. For example, individual kinds of flow charts (Kettner and Diaz, 2000; Nawari and Alsaffar, 2017; De Lima-Omorog et al., 2018; Shahi et al., 2019; Fawzy and Magdi, 2020; Kim et al., 2020; Whitell et al., 2020), BPMN maps (Plazza et al., 2019), and other types of visualization tools such as discrete event simulation (Feng et al., 2009); or total free types of visualization (e.g. (Kpamma and Adjei-Kumi, 2013; Eirinaki et al., 2016)) were used. Due to the different representations, it is particularly challenging to extract the process steps from all the different methods and it is even more difficult to align the process steps with each other. Therefore, comparing the processes in different countries often requires interpretations and assumptions.

Depending on the granularity of illustrating the process steps, different options of visualizations exist. For example, Costa et al. (2021) used a BPMN diagram to illustrate the Italian building permit case but needed to simplify it for better visibility and readability. Also, Shahi et al. (2019) and Schranz et al. (2021) modeled process steps in a free style way. This leads in most cases to the desired expression of the authors' intention but makes the information hardly comparable with other data sets due to its demand of interpretation. The Doing Business report instead was based on written explanation and subdivides subprocesses simply with bullet points (The World Bank, 2023). Other studies show frameworks such as the one proposed by Guler and Yomralioglu (2021) and Messaoudi and Nawari (2021) which need to be separated from the modeling of process steps since their frameworks consider concepts on a broader level instead of considering it at the level of process steps.

Framework for modeling building permitting process

A conceptual framework has been previously developed by the authors to model building permit processes, which consists of three main elements: processes, stakeholders, and business rules. The framework considers all hierarchized process steps and stakeholders' influence on the process. Business rules define authority-specific requirements and circumstances and provide alternatives of action. In some countries, the law does not govern the processes of issuing building permits, resulting in varied processes that need to be analyzed. For example, internal process steps within municipalities vary due to the organization of the municipality (distinct roles, different departments, etc.) which may influence the entire building permit system. After data sets on building permit processes are acquired and analyzed, processes can then be modeled based on the proposed framework. The framework provides a consistent and comparable basis that allows other researchers to replicate building permit process models for their respective country, identifying shortcomings and best practices. It is essential to model processes based on a consistent framework to avoid distorted results when comparing processes based on different approaches and data sets. The framework is illustrated in Figure 1.

To conclude, understanding the building permitting process in its current state is essential for any further developments and improvements. A conceptual framework for a standardized building permit process modeling has been previously suggested and implemented in Germany and in the US. Further validation of that conceptual framework, from a global perspective, is required to substantiate the results. Israel has been striving to simplify and streamline the permitting process, while considering construction quality. Despite the efforts, reports show that the results achieved are not as expected. This makes Israel an interesting case for testing and validating the framework, which is the focus of this work.

Methodology

Since the Israeli building permit process has not been scientifically investigated, we had first to collect data. For this study qualitative expert interviews were chosen as the most appropriate method for data acquisition because preliminary research demonstrated that quantitative surveys are not suitable for collecting detailed and specific process information (Fauth, 2022). Qualitative research is used in theory-generating or inductive research, which allows, among other things, an in-depth understanding of complex phenomena and an exploration of subjective ways of thinking. In contrast to quantitative research, this also applies to a small number of cases (Gläser and Laudel, 2010). However, individual case investigations can be used for generalization (Flyvbjerg, 2006). To this end, qualitative expert interviews provided us with the ability to revisit questions when necessary, allowing us to achieve a level of detail not possible with quantitative surveys. This research consisted of four main phases: data collection, data preparation, qualitative data analysis and validation.

Data collection – The qualitative expert interviews were conducted with a semi-structured interview guideline based on the approach by Gläser and Laudel (2010) and according to the previous work of the authors. To verify the suggested methodology for mapping the building permit process, we conducted nine interviews with professionals from the Israeli industry that are involved in various stages of the process. Three of the interviewees are representatives of applicants, such as independent architects, construction developers and entrepreneurs. Six interviewees from the checking side, the interviewees are in high-ranking positions in the permitting departments of different municipalities. Each interviewee is from a different municipality in Israel, some from large and central cities in the country with a large volume of construction, and others from smaller cities. Additionally, professionals from the regulatory ministries were interviewed as well. The interviews took place from June 2022 until October 2022. All interviews took place online. Always, two interviewers (one speaks Hebrew) and one interviewee attended the interview. The interviewees were not prepared for the questions in advance. The interviews were recorded and automatically transcribed. The interviews were generally conducted in English. Overall, 10 h of audio recordings were collected. In terms of data saturation, which refers to the point at which new data collection and analysis cease to yield new or different insights (e.g. (Braun and Clarke, 2021)), the authors agreed on the point at which they have collected enough data to fully understand and explore the level of building permit processes under study.

Data preparation – In addition, we transcribed and cleared the transcripts. In some cases, interviewees explained specific content in Hebrew. Such parts were translated into English. One interview was mainly conducted in Hebrew which was also translated into English.

Qualitative data analysis – For the qualitative content analysis, the approach proposed by Gläser and Laudel (2010) was used and implemented in the software MaxQDA. While analyzing the transcripts in the software a coding system was created. Relevant text segments were assigned to respective codings. The coding system focused on two main parts: process steps and challenges. Within the main codings, sub-codings (or even further codings on lower levels) were created. For the process step part, each sub-process (or even lower level) had its own coding (e.g. content review, or participation of involved agencies). The list of codings can be found in Appendix .

Validation – To verify our results, we organized a focus group workshop with Israeli experts in the field of building permits. The workshop took place on March 2023 and lasted about two hours. It was a hybrid event meaning that participants joined in-person and online. The 10 participants were local architects, engineers, employees from municipalities, and representatives of ministries. No participant was involved in the interviews before. We prepared our results in the form of presentation slides. The authors split the workshop in different blocks (one for building permit process in Israel, one for identified challenges, etc.). In each block, the results were presented with support of graphs prepared by the authors followed by a discussion part before moving on to the next block. Uncertainties encountered while mapping the process were pointed out by the authors (e.g. statistical form). Furthermore, the participants added little missing information (e.g. advance fee, or public announcement).

The building permit process in Israel

In this section, the Israeli building permit process is described and visualized in detail based on the collected and analyzed data. Figure 2 illustrates an overview of the Israeli building permit process including its involved stakeholders. The stakeholders are municipality, neighbors (people affected by a building project), Agencies of Public Interest (AoPI) (other bodies of authorities and agencies to be involved and to give recommendations, e.g. environmental authority), applicant (person who submits the building application, usually building owners or engineers/architects in behalf of the building owner), and building control office (in Israel responsible for technical reviews for specific types of buildings). The municipality can further differentiate in specific roles such as plan reviewer (person who examine the building applications), supervisor (person who oversees a group of plan reviewers), front office (work area where only administrative actions take place), and committee (group of people appointed for a final decision of building applications). The process consists of three phases: pre-phase, “main phase” and post-phase. Note that the given map only presents one track of permitting, one that does not contain deviations and that consists of an application for a new residential building, up until 29m which falls within the scope of responsibility of the building control office.

In the pre-phase, the applicant prepares an initial preliminary design and submits a request for an information file. The front office checks the request and involves AoPI to compile the information file. The information file includes all information on regulations and laws relevant to the site. With this information file, the applicant starts the design of the building, and can apply for a permit.

Once the applicant finishes the design, the applicant starts the main phase by submitting the building request to the municipality. Within the municipality, first the front office checks formal conditions of the request and makes a public announcement which gives neighbors the opportunity to raise concerns about the planned building. If the application meets all formal requirements, the municipality supervisor assigns the building application to a plan reviewer in charge of it. The plan reviewer checks the documents and plans according to zoning, design, and policy requirements. If the requirements are not met, the applicant is required to modify the design, which happens in practice on an iterative basis. Once the requirements are met, the application goes to a committee, which decides on the permit. With an issued approval from the committee, and a list of conditions for approval provided by the committee, the applicant needs to commission a building control office for content review of engineering regulations (for residential buildings as explained in section 2.1). The building control officer is responsible for reviewing the design in terms of engineering and compliance to regulations defined by other AoPI (such as the fire department, Homefront command, etc.) The building control officer reports the results to the municipality. After collecting all documents, the municipality calculates fees and taxes. After the payment by the applicant, the letter of notification is issued by the municipality.

The post-phase summarizes the process steps after the notification letter of the building permit is issued. Before the construction starts, a starting approval or “digging permit” is required. Therefore, the applicant needs to collect statements from other AoPI and submit them together with an application to the municipality. If all statements and documents are correct and without concerns, the building’s construction can begin. During construction, the building control office inspects the construction site. When the construction is finished, the applicant requests an occupancy permit from the municipality. If the building passes its final inspection and all the required approvals are provided, the municipality issues an occupancy permit, and the building can start its operation phase.

Other findings – shortcomings in the Israeli permitting process

The interviewees were not directly asked about the challenges in the process, instead they were asked to describe the permitting process in detail. Nevertheless, several challenges were described, and repeated several times by different interviewees. These challenges were also analyzed during the qualitative content analysis. In most cases, the interviewees explained the problems through examples, which were then examined and clustered into 10 groups as described in (Table 1).

Figure 3 presents an overview of how often a challenge was mentioned by applicants or by plan checkers. It is interesting to point out the issue of “subjectivity” which was mentioned 10 times, nine of which by applicants, but only once by an interviewee from a municipality. Similarly, “Inconsistency” was mentioned five times by applicants and only once by an interviewee from a municipality. The aspect of “professionalism” was also mentioned 10 times, in an analogous manner by applicants and municipalities. As shown in Figure 3, most of the issues are agreed upon between the applicants and the authorities.

The identified challenges were discussed during the expert workshop as well. During the discussion, all challenges were agreed upon except two, which in the eyes of the experts are simply a “given state” and not a challenge per se. This is concerning the fact that there are multiple stakeholders in the process, and the fact that applicants keep asking for deviations which was defined in the workshop as a “cultural aspect” that will not change. The rest of the issues were agreed upon.

Based on the interviews and the workshop, we could conclude that there are two major challenges that govern the existing permitting process; one is the high complexity of regulations and the resolution to which checkers are obligated to check in the permitting process, and the other is the human factor which encapsulates “subjectivity” and “professionalism”.

Shortcomings and opportunities

Challenges cannot be assigned to specific process steps as they are all related to the entire process. It is a matter of balancing the subjectivity of human interpretations, which entails time-consuming processes (with many iterative discussions with the relevant authorities), and the objectivity of machines, which are fast but limited in their capabilities (no deviations or discretion is possible, etc.). The faster the process, the more limited the leeway for deviations. The same is true for ambiguities; the more precise the law, the less leeway there is for deviations in the first place. In general, we can see that the identified challenges that were mentioned by many of the interviewees are interrelated. As illustrated in Figure 4 (a), ambiguity provides opportunity for flexibility, but then the subjectivity increases. Ambiguity and subjectivity both limit possible automation which results in timely processes (denoted in red). Lowering ambiguity and flexibility will also reduce subjectivity and fasten the process (denoted in blue).

Similarly, as illustrated in Figure 4 (b), when many regulations from various regulatory bodies must be considered, there is a high chance for inconsistencies within the regulations. The experts are expected to be knowledgeable in various domains and keep track of the most recent regulations, which makes it difficult to meet the expected level of professionalism. And again, the more requirements need to be met, the longer the process (denoted in red in the figure).

Process mapping turned out to be valuable not only to provide an in-depth understanding of the permitting process but also to identify the key challenges in the process as they come up from the people engaged in the process on a daily basis.

It seems that both applicants and representatives of the authorities agree that the existing process is problematic and are keen to make changes. The framework for modeling the permitting process demonstrated to be a tool for gaining valuable insights, both from the implemented qualitative methodology and from the produced maps. In this case, it is evident that the vast number of regulations that are coming in from different AoPIs causes many of the difficulties. In addition to being raised by the interviewees, we can also see this from the BPMN map which is decentralized and illustrates many handovers. One of the initiatives that have not been implemented yet in Israel is defining a unified building code (State comptroller, 2021) and we can see from this research that this kind of change is likely to have a significant impact, in comparison to the changes implemented so far. The proposed framework for modeling the permitting process was validated, proved to be applicable to different countries, and valuable for identifying underlying issues that otherwise are difficult to uncover.

Limitations and directions for future research

The proposed mapping is based on 9 interviews from 9 different organizations which shows the limitation of the approach. However, the population is comparable to other examples where the framework was used. The limited number of participants also limits the opinions on the challenges we have identified. The opinions are subjective. It cannot be ruled out that additional challenges may be identified by additional interviewees. However, we are confident that we reached the point of data saturation with our sample size in relation to the chosen qualitative approach.

In addition, the participants both in the interviews and in the workshop are mostly representatives of authorities and applicants. Other stakeholders in the process (such as policy makers), were not interviewed. As each stakeholder is driven by their own objective, they might have a distinct perspective on the process and the problems. The point of view of the policy makers still needs to be investigated. Such work can also follow the qualitative research approach. However, the interview guidelines will need to change since some policy makers may be involved in specific points in the process.

The framework was created to provide the scientific community in this field a unified way to replicate and understand their own building permit processes. Future work will show the flexibility and the limitations of the framework which might include cultural or regulatory contexts. In addition, we see potential to enhance the building permit process studies in the direction of sociopolitical and economics. For example, a significant contribution could be the dynamic between the different stakeholders but would foresee the involvement of experts from the field of behavioral analysis.

The most prominent direction of future work is deriving the best practices from the obtained process maps. This requires a detailed investigation of the properties of each process, to develop a system for scoring them individually and to compare between them. This is currently the subject of ongoing work.

While applicants primarily highlighted concerns of “subjectivity” and “inconsistency,” these aspects were less emphasized by municipality representatives. Further investigating this divergence could offer valuable understanding of potential biases within the system and the viewpoints of various stakeholders.