The Permit Is Approved: A Love Story

It's 2pm on a Friday.

The approval comes through. After weeks — sometimes months — of submissions, revisions, resubmissions, referrals to agencies that don't respond, and one letter that asked for information already provided in the original package, the permit is approved.

For about forty-five seconds, everything is fine.

Then the phone rings. The crew mobilised last week on the assumption it was coming. Materials were ordered. The site trailer is already there. And now it's Friday afternoon and the inspector won't be available until Tuesday at the earliest.

Permitting in this country is not a process. It's a waiting room with no chairs.

The construction industry absorbs billions in carrying costs, delayed starts and idle crews every year — not because of poor planning, but because the approvals infrastructure hasn't kept pace with the demand it's meant to serve.

This isn't a complaint about the people inside the system. Many of them are doing their best with under-resourced departments and outdated legislation. It's a complaint about the system itself — one that was designed for a different era and hasn't been seriously reformed since.

We are building less, slower and at higher cost than we need to. The permit backlog is part of that story — and it's time the industry said so out loud.