Mar 8, 2017
Expedited: Austin fast-tracks permitting process
AUSTIN – Austin City Council approved the Expedited Building Plan Review program and set fees for how much companies would need to pay. After paying the additional fees, residential, mixed-use and small commercial...
AUSTIN – Austin City Council approved the Expedited Building Plan Review program and set fees for how much companies would need to pay.
After paying the additional fees, residential, mixed-use and small commercial projects can join the expedited permitting program with no extra hurdles. 
However major commercial projects—at least 75,000 sf or $7.5 million in value, with no residential uses—must submit to oversight by a third party, such as the Workers Defense Project through its Better Builder Program.
Projects including the Apple Inc. campus in Northwest Austin and Trammell Crow Co’.s redevelopment of the Green Water Treatment plant have used a version of the Better Builder Program, according to its website.
The Better Builder Program asks companies to pay a "living wage," and provide OSHA safety training and workers compensation insurance, among other things.
Projects do not have to use the Better Builder Program; the ordinance says similar programs work fine as long as they contain "comparable worker protection standards." Austin’s Development Services Department has an online breakdown of the rules.
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