Field reporting from the front lines of permitting.
Editorial, product notes, and case studies from the Commun-ET team, written for the operators, planners, and executives running the next wave of urban development.
Latest Intelligence
How Long Does a Commercial Building Permit Really Take in 2026?
A jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction breakdown of real plan-review timelines for commercial building permits, what drives the variance, and how operators are compressing it.
The Complete Guide to Multi-Jurisdiction Permitting
How to design, staff, and instrument a permitting program that runs across every active market without losing the schedule or the institutional memory.
AI Permit Automation in 2026: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Hype
An honest accounting of where AI is actually moving the needle in commercial permitting, where it is failing, and how to evaluate vendor claims without getting burned.
The External PM Playbook for Multi-Site Rollouts
A field-tested operating model for running 20+ site programs across multiple jurisdictions without burning out your internal team or the schedule.
The Utility Coordination Field Guide for 2026
A practical operating guide for resolving subsurface, joint-trench, and energization risk before it shows up in your construction schedule.
Public Engagement That Wins Permit Approvals
A modern operating model for community engagement that gets projects approved, builds durable trust, and protects the rest of the program from a single hostile hearing.
The Hidden Tax of Permitting Delay
Every week of permit purgatory costs national operators six figures. Here's the math, and the playbook to recover it.
Inside the Agent Control Center
How twelve specialized AI agents collaborate across a single permit lifecycle, and why orchestration beats automation.
What Detroit's Reform Means for Multi-Unit Operators
A new ordinance changes plan-review economics. We break down the impact on QSR rollouts and fiber buildouts.
Wonder DMV: Compressing a Three-Jurisdiction Rollout
How Wonder's novel restaurant format moved through Baltimore, Montgomery County, and Prince George's County permitting on a single-quarter opening cadence.
Utility Coordination Is Eating Construction Schedules
Subsurface conflicts now drive more delays than weather. The fix is geospatial intelligence, applied early.
Commun-ET Expands PermitPilot to 300 Jurisdictions
Coverage now spans every major US metro, with same-day intelligence on plan-review queues.
How to Read a DOB Queue: A Pillar Guide for Operators
Plan-review queues look like a black box from the outside. They aren't. Here is how to read a Department of Buildings queue well enough to predict your own approval date — and what to do when the queue is working against you.
Utility Coordination 101: A Pillar Primer
What utility coordination actually is, why it eats more construction schedule than any other discipline, and the operating model that contains the risk before it hits your trench.
Zoning vs Building Permit: What's the Difference, and Which Do You Need First?
Zoning approval and building permits are two separate gates with two separate reviewers, two separate risk profiles, and two separate ways to blow up your schedule. Here is how to sequence them.
Run the playbook on your next site.
Two field-tested PDFs we use on every engagement. One email, both downloads — no marketing list.
Multi-Site Permit Readiness Checklist
Six-section intake gate the principal runs on every new site before it enters the submittal queue.
Submittal Package Template
Per-AHJ packet shell: cover sheet, drawing index, response-to-comments grid, conditions tracker, close-out checklist.
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Field reporting, product notes, and case studies, delivered when we publish.