What we measure. For every permit a city issued in the window, we count calendar days from the date the application was submitted (Cambridge, Somerville and Worcester) or opened (Hartford) to the date the permit was issued. Weekends and holidays count. A same-day permit is 0 days. The median is the middle permit, and p25, p75 and p90 are the permits a quarter, three quarters and nine tenths of the way along the queue.
Permit classes. Each city names its permit types differently, so we map them to shared classes: new construction, additions & alterations, roof/siding & minor work, demolition, foundations, street excavation, electrical, plumbing & gas, mechanical, solar and certificates of occupancy. “All building permits” rolls up the structural building classes and leaves out trades, demolition, solar and street work. The mapping lives in the open pipeline and the raw type is in every CSV.
What’s left out. No names, addresses, parcels, descriptions or permit numbers are published, only the permit type, the class, the two dates and the day count. The data refreshes weekly from each portal. Nothing here is legal or permitting advice. Ask the building department for current review times.
- Days = calendar days from the application (submission) date to the issue date, for permits issued Sep 2024 through Aug 2026 (24 full months). The current partial month is left out.
- Only permits that were actually issued are timed. Withdrawn, denied and still-pending applications are not in the medians, so real-world waits for hard jobs are longer than shown.
- Records with an issue date before the application date, or more than 1,095 days after it (usually renewals or re-opened records), are dropped: Cambridge 39; Somerville 58; Worcester 0; Hartford 385.
- City × permit-class groups with fewer than 30 issued permits are not shown (3 suppressed). Monthly sparkline points need at least 10 permits.
- Clocks differ by city: some start when an application is submitted online, others when staff open the record, and every city counts time spent waiting on the applicant (missing documents, fees, revisions). Compare shapes, not single days.
- Boston publishes issue dates but not application dates, so Boston appears as a measure of how busy the counter is (permits issued per month), not of speed.
- Cambridge's Permit Finder merges every ViewPoint permit type into one feed; the start date is the applicant's submission date. Street excavation permits are Department of Public Works street openings, not building foundations.
- Somerville's Citizenserve feed replaced the older Permits dataset (which stopped in May 2023). Its building permits carry a residential/commercial subtype; 'Other' subtypes count toward all building permits only.
- Worcester's layer covers building permits only (trade permits are separate). Permits filed in the city's newer system arrive without a work type ('N/A'); they count toward all building permits only.
- Hartford's start date is the date the record was opened in Accela, which can be later than the first submission for resubmitted plans.
- Not legal or permitting advice. Check the local building department for current requirements and review times.
Groups with fewer than 30 records are suppressed so no single project or firm can be singled out.
