Permitting

What is permitting?

Permitting is when the company submits and gets approved a full building and electrical permit pack to an AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction), usually a town hall. Every AHJ is different. Some are very fast, and others may take up to a couple weeks to approve the pack.

What is the purpose of permitting?

The purpose is to request permission from an AHJ to do construction on a home and to determine that the construction will meet local, structural and electrical regulations. This permission is required to move forward with the process.  

Who initiates permitting?

The Sales Consultant submits a Final Consultation. 

What is required for permitting?

All qualified lead, final consultation, survey, design, and HOA Submission Process (if applicable) requirements must be met, as well as a full understanding of the local regulations by the design team and permit team.

What makes permitting complete?

Once an AHJ stamps a permit pack for approval, a permit coordinator will pick up the stamped permit pack and deliver or ship it to the local installation partner warehouse in-person or online if applicable, and as soon as it is confirmed that it was received it is complete. 

What is the company’s expense of permitting?

Thousands of dollars of time, energy and resources of the sales team, survey scheduling team, survey team, preliminary design team, contract and proposal team, the customer’s time and your time in the consultation, permit pack design team, permit coordinating team and management.

End Result: Stamped and delivered permit pack.

Permitting - Install Scheduling

Know Your Territory

As a salesperson the key to a smooth permitting process is knowing about the area you are working in. Every town has a different permitting process. Some towns have a same-day online process while others can have a process that takes multiple weeks and is very complicated to get approval. If you have never had an install in a town you want to canvass in it is best to ask your manager if X Company has installs in that town already, find out how long it takes to get a permit back in that town and also determine if any other forms might be required to have a permit approved in that town. By being aware of the territory you are working in you will be able to avoid delays that will shake the homeowner’s confidence in working with X Company. 

When the Permit is Approved

Usually the permit is the part of the process that we wait on to be able to schedule the installation. Assuming that the homeowner’s financing is complete, as soon as the permit is approved you will be notified on the software. At this point you will want to call the homeowner to congratulate them on receiving permission from the town and offer the homeowner the next available installation date. 

“Hey Bill, How are you? Excellent. I’m doing great. So just like I told you the last time we spoke, I wanted to call you today to let you know that we just received your approved building permit back from the town. Congratulations! This means we have everything we need to move forward. The next step is to get you on our installation schedule. Last time we talked we scheduled you tentatively for the 25th of the month, but we’d love to get you installed even sooner since the permits went faster than expected. I was thinking we could pencil you in for the 19th, would that work for you?”

If the Permit is not Approved

Occasionally we will submit a permit and it may take some time before we finally hear back from the permitting office just to find out that the permit was not approved. In most cases, this is an easy fix. Our design and permitting team will simply make the requested revisions and resubmit the corrected permit. In most cases even with a revision we should be able to get the permit approved in a reasonable timeframe however it is important to update the homeowner if we begin to get close to the timeframe you initially told them. The last thing you want at this stage is for the customer to cancel because they feel left out of the loop if permitting is taking longer than initially

expected. The more accurate you can be in setting expectations the better the customer will feel about working with you and X Company. 

When a Permit is Disapproved because of Construction / Unpermitted Structures on the Property

This is uncommon, and usually we become aware of the possibility of this happening early on in the Qualified Lead and Survey steps, however it still can occur that due to Construction or Unpermitted Structures on the Property, that we will not get approval to move forward until the homeowner sorts it out. These can vary on a case-by-case basis. Ask your team manager for guidance and stay in good communication with the homeowner about what is happening and what they need to do.