City Converting to Paperless Plan Review System

The City of Greenville will begin converting to a “paperless” plan submittal, review, tracking and storage system this week.

Effective Wednesday, all residential and commercial building plans; site plans; construction documents and all other construction drawings must be submitted electronically by uploading them to the City’s online permit center. The new requirement only applies to new submittals that take place on or after November 1 – it does not apply to existing projects.

According to Buddy Skinner, the City’s building codes administrator, the change will allow for a more timely and efficient review of plans by all City departments and will eliminate the need for applicants to submit multiple sets of site and building plans. In addition to eliminating the cost of printing multiple sets of drawings and the inconvenience of delivering them to City Hall for applicants, the new system allows the City to streamline its plan review, reduce its environmental impact and address a lack of physical storage space. Going forward, staff members in all City reviewing departments will be able to collaboratively review, comment on and approve one set of plans using Bluebeam Revu, an electronic plan review software.

To prepare for the transition, City staff developed electronic document submittal standards and wrote a new program to scan documents for viruses. Staff also performed tests, such as uploading four 100 MB files simultaneously and using different browsers to submit information, to help ensure that the system will work in a variety of situations.

“We realize that this is a significant change in the way we do business and that there will be an adjustment period, but we hope our customers are as excited about this new system as we are,” said Skinner. “Our staff members are available to assist customers in converting their documents to electronic versions if needed and we will do everything we can to ensure a smooth transition for everyone.”