Contractor Permit Running

The real cost of running your own permits

A permit is a small administrative task the first time. At volume, it is a job function. A roofing or HVAC company running a few dozen permits a month in Sarasota is doing real clerical work: assembling packages, uploading documents, watching two different portals, decoding correction requests, calling in inspections, and following up on the ones that failed. Most shops hand that work to whoever is nearest the desk: the owner after hours, the office manager between everything else, the lead tech on rain days.

The cost shows up three ways. Jobs start late because a permit bounced on a missing document and sat unnoticed for a week. Skilled people burn hours on portal work that produces nothing billable. And files never get closed, because once the job is done and paid, nobody goes back to call the final, which turns into a title-company phone call and an unhappy past customer years later. We take that whole function off your desk, one flat fee per permit.

What the service looks like at volume

You send us jobs the way you already track them: address, scope, and the documents your license requires. From there, per permit, we do the following.

We confirm the jurisdiction. Your jobs land on both sides of the city-county line, and the two offices want different things. A package built for the county's Accela review does not sail through the City of Sarasota's Building and Permitting division, and vice versa. We keep both checklists current so your submittals fit the office they are going to.

We build the package complete. License and insurance certificates, product approvals, energy forms, site plans where required, the Notice of Commencement recorded when the contract price requires one. Incomplete first submittals are the number one source of permit delay, and eliminating them is most of the value.

We watch the queue every business day. Not when we remember, not when you call to ask. When a reviewer touches your file, we know that day. When a correction request lands, we translate it, pull what is needed from your office, and resubmit. You get a short plain-English status on anything that changed, and silence on everything that did not, because you do not need a daily report that says still in review.

We schedule inspections around your crew, not the other way around. When one fails, we get the inspector's notes, turn them into an action item your foreman can read, and reschedule as soon as the correction is done.

We close every file. The permit is not done when the customer pays. It is done when the final passes and the record says closed. Closed files are the difference between a clean book of past jobs and a slow drip of open permits surfacing in your customers' home sales with your company name on them.

Where we fit in your workflow

We work as an extension of your office, under your direction, for permits pulled on your license. Practically: your qualifier signs what only the license holder can sign, and we handle everything around it. Most clients start by handing us a slice of their volume, the annoying jurisdiction or the backlog of unclosed files, and expand from there once the rhythm is obvious. There is no retainer and no minimum; the pricing is per permit, flat, quoted against scope, so a busy month and a quiet month both make sense. The structure is on our pricing page.

Two things we deliberately are not. We are not a licensing shortcut: we run permits under your license, for your work, and we do not touch arrangements that smell like license lending. And we are not a plan-review consultant or engineer: when a review needs sealed documents or a design response, that goes to your design professional, and we manage the handoff rather than pretend to be one.

The backlog cleanup

Most contractors who call us have a drawer problem: a stack of old permits in open or expired status from jobs finished years ago. Every one is a future phone call from a title company, and in the meantime they sit on your record with the county or city. We clean these up in batches: research each file, sort them by what closure requires, knock out the ones that just need a final, and work the expired ones through reactivation. Shops are consistently surprised how many close with nothing more than an inspection that takes twenty minutes. If you want to know how deep your drawer goes, a permit history run across your past job addresses will tell you, and the free assessment is the place to start.

Why one desk for two jurisdictions matters

Sarasota County and the City of Sarasota are different operations with different portals, forms, checklists, and review habits. A permit runner who only knows one of them is half a service in this market. We file in both every week, which means your office stops maintaining two sets of institutional knowledge and your new hires stop learning government portals instead of your trade. If your work sometimes lands outside our two jurisdictions, we will say so plainly rather than dabble: focus is the product. See where we work.

When you do not need us

If you run two permits a month, your office manager enjoys the portal, and your files are all closed, keep doing what you are doing. The service pays for itself when volume, backlog, or growth makes permits a bottleneck: when job starts slip on paperwork, when your best admin spends mornings in Accela, or when you win work in the jurisdiction you know less well. Send us a normal month's permit list through the free assessment and we will quote it flat, per permit, in writing. If the numbers do not make sense for your shop, you will see that immediately, and you keep the checklist conversation either way. Or just contact us with a question; contractors get the same same-business-day reply as everyone else.

What's included

Per-permit flat pricing that scales with your volume Application packages built complete against each office's checklist Submittals through County Accela and the City of Sarasota portal Every active permit checked daily; you get exceptions, not homework Correction requests translated, gathered, and resubmitted fast Notices of Commencement recorded on the projects that need them Inspections scheduled around your crew and every file driven to closed