Priority Green Expedited Saved Applicants Time During the Pandemic

Priority Green Expedited offers faster building permit review and processing for new construction projects. We do this by prioritizing your application for initial and corrected plan review. Additionally, we give you a contact person to help you solve problems during the review process, provide permit status updates, and answer questions.

To qualify for Priority Green Expedited, you need to obtain an independent green building certification such as Built Green, LEED, Phius, or Living Building Challenge. If your project is subject to the Green Building Standard, then your project will be built to meet most Priority Green requirements — so why not get two project benefits and sign up for Priority Green Expedited? In exchange, you will get a building product that addresses our climate crisis head on by using clean electric energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, conserving resources, and creating healthy spaces.

We recently evaluated data for the last two years to find out if Priority Green Expedited met the program goals during these unprecedented and difficult times. Our evaluation found that we issued Priority Green projects over 4 months faster than non-Priority Green projects. Between May 2020 and April 2022, Priority Green projects were issued 9.6 months on average, versus 13.8 months for other projects. The time measured includes both SDCI review time and applicant time. The evaluation looked at new construction for all building types with complex reviews (Full C). Many factors contribute to reducing permitting times such as SDCI review time, quality of plans and documents, number of correction cycles, and how quickly consultants respond. Priority Green Expedited has clearly contributed to the significant time savings in that the amount of time saved has been consistent for many years.

We also evaluated initial plan review data and found that we significantly cut initial review times for Priority Green Expedited projects. We completed 89% of the residential code reviews and 49% of the building code projects in half the time as compared to the non-priority green projects. Most Priority Green Expedited projects received completed reviews about 2 months faster than comparable records, in about 11 weeks compared to 18 weeks for the non-priority green projects.

If you want to participate in Priority Green please visit our website and watch our video on how to complete the Priority Green Application. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Green Team at sciprioritygreen@seattle.gov.