The permit process, for contractors

What actually gets handed back at the counter

Rejections are boring and repetitive, which is good news — the same short list causes most of them.

• The plot plan. Missing, out of date, or not showing what the reviewer needs to see. On anything that touches siting, this is the single most common hold.
• Workers' comp affidavit incomplete, or naming an entity that doesn't match the applicant.
• Licence and registration numbers missing from the application or the contract.
• Construction control paperwork absent where the project needed a registered design professional. Construction Control is governed by 780 CMR 107.6 and M.G.L. c.143 §54A, which bars a building official from accepting plans without an architect's or engineer's seal unless the project is exempt.
• Another department hasn't signed off — Board of Health, Conservation, historical commission — and the building department can't issue until they do.
• The zoning question was never answered. The reviewer isn't going to work it out for you.

The permit is your obligation

780 CMR 105.1 makes it unlawful to construct, reconstruct, alter, repair, remove or demolish — or change use or occupancy — without first filing and obtaining the permit. Starting before issuance is itself the violation, separate from whatever the work turns out to be.

On asking the homeowner to pull it. 780 CMR 110.R5 exempts a homeowner from CSL licensing on their own one- or two-family home, but the rule is explicit: if the homeowner hires people for the work, the homeowner acts as supervisor. Towns make them sign an affidavit saying exactly that.

That's a trap for both of you. For them, one of the state's Guaranty Fund eligibility conditions is that the contractor, not the homeowner, secured the building permit — so pulling it themselves presumptively closes off their remedy. For you, it reads to any building official, and to any lawyer who looks at it later, as a contractor who couldn't or wouldn't pull the permit. It's a bad fact to have in a file.

You also can't pull the electrical, plumbing or gas permits. Under 248 CMR 3.05 those are issued to properly licensed individuals only.

Licensing housekeeping that quietly bites

M.G.L. c.142A §17 says a violation of any provision of the chapter is an unfair or deceptive act under c.93A, and c.93A §9 sets damages for a willful or knowing violation at not less than two and up to three times actual damages plus the homeowner's attorney's fees. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not telling you what a court would do with your contract. I'm telling you the missing clause takes ten seconds to add.

The inspection sequence, and calling one at the wrong moment

780 CMR R110.3 sets the order, and R110.6 is the rule that costs money: work shall not proceed beyond an inspection stage until that inspection is approved.

You already know the fix. The part worth saying out loud is what the inspector shows up expecting to find: signed roughs, the inspection card and the approved set on site, and the manufacturer's installation instructions for anything he's going to ask about. A rough that's "basically done" isn't signed, and that's the one that sends the frame back.

Re-inspection fees are set by your town, not the state — pull the fee schedule rather than assuming a number. The fee has never been the expensive part. The crew day is.

When a stop work order lands

There are two completely different orders from two different agencies, and they get confused constantly.

A building official's stop work order (780 CMR 114/115) halts the work on that job. It's lifted by fixing what caused it and getting the building official to release it. Continuing work under one is its own violation.

A workers' compensation stop work order under M.G.L. c.152 §25C comes from the Department of Industrial Accidents, and it is the more dangerous of the two — it carries a daily penalty and, in practice, DIA won't let you work until it's cleared. It's cleared by producing coverage and satisfying DIA, not by talking to the building department.

The first 24 hours: find out which one you have and which agency issued it, stop the work that's actually covered, and get the specific defect in writing. Then fix the cause rather than arguing the order — the argument, if you want one, is the appeal, and it runs on its own clock.

Appeals, and the deadline you can burn

This split matters and it's easy to get wrong: appeals of a building official's code decision and appeals of a zoning decision go to different bodies on different deadlines.

• A code decision by the building official goes to the Building Code Appeals Board under M.G.L. c.143 §100.
• A zoning decision goes to the Zoning Board of Appeals and then to court under M.G.L. c.40A §§8, 15 and 17.

Filing at the wrong board does not pause the right clock. If a decision matters to your job, work out which kind of decision it was first, then confirm the deadline with the board itself. This is the one place on this page where I'd tell you to call an attorney rather than rely on anything I've written.

After-the-fact permits

You'll get called for these — usually by someone who bought a house, occasionally by a homeowner whose previous contractor vanished.

Expect: documenting what was built, and the concealed-work question. Whether the building official wants walls opened or will accept a registered design professional's letter is a judgment call made locally, and it's worth asking before you price the job rather than after. Many towns charge a penalty or double fee on after-the-fact applications; that's local practice, so check that town's schedule.

The building official retains authority to require correction or removal of non-compliant work. If the work can't be brought into compliance, that's the conversation to have with the owner early, in writing, before you're the one holding it.

Where jobs stall outside the building department

• Zoning — discovered during review, usually too late. Get it answered first.
• Conservation — anything near mapped wetland. The buffer is 100 feet, and mapped lines are a screening tool, not a determination.
• Board of Health / Title 5 — on a septic property, bedroom count governs, and it counts the whole property. This regularly decides whether a project is possible at all.
• Historical commission — demolition delay reaches partial demolition in many towns, and the penalty is typically a multi-year permit freeze on the parcel, not a fine. On a pre-1978 building, lead and asbestos obligations are running independently of your permit.
• Boston is not like the rest of the state. It operates under its own enabling act and its own zoning code with its own board of appeal, and Inspectional Services runs permitting differently from a suburban building department. If you don't work there often, budget time to learn the process rather than assuming your usual sequence transfers.

What this costs you in time

The honest version, for planning:

None of that is the building code's fault, and none of it is fixed by working faster. It's fixed by finding out earlier.