The Code Department Squeeze: Workforce, Demand and the Case for Local Optimization

Building departments across the country are being asked to do more, do it faster and do it with fewer resources.  

Permit applicants and elected officials expect quicker, more predictable decisions. A growing number of states are putting statutory force behind those expectations through review-timeline mandates, known as permit “shot clocks.” At the same time, the workforce these departments rely on is entering retirement age, the technology that supports it is overdue for replacement and budgets that fund these agencies rarely keep pace with these demands. 

These demands are converging rapidly and are already impacting many communities. Local optimization helps jurisdictions respond by aligning workload, geography, staffing capacity and customer expectations with the most effective combination of shared services, technology, workforce strategies and funding resources.  

This does not require every community to keep every service in-house, nor does it demand wholesale consolidation; it means making deliberate strategic choices. What follows looks at the four pressures impacting building departments and practical responses available for each. 

An Aging Workforce 

The workforce challenge in the building safety industry has been visible for years. A 2014 survey conducted by the National Institute of Building Sciences on behalf of ICC found that 85 percent of respondents were over the age of 45, and more than 80 percent expected to retire within 15 years. ICC’s 2025 State of the Building Safety Industry Report: Envisioning the Future points in the same direction, with Baby Boomers and Gen X comprising 78.8% of respondents (36.9% and 41.9%, respectively).  

Smaller communities feel retirement challenges most acutely, where a one- or two-person department covers a wide span of responsibilities under compensation constraints and part-time work schedules. 

Two solutions are gaining traction. The first is building the workforce pipeline: apprenticeships, cross-training across disciplines and recruitment that treats building safety as a defined career path. To attract the next generation of talent, organizations must recognize other workplace priorities, including work-life balance, continuing education and schedule flexibility, as well as competitive compensation.  

The second is sharing scarce expertise and resources: regional partnerships that allow building departments to play specialized roles and absorb vacancies without each jurisdiction carrying every function in-house. 

Demand for Faster Permitting 

Pressure on timelines starts with the people who use the service. Applicants, builders, design professionals and property owners expect permitting to be transparent, predictable and responsive, with clear communication about requirements, status and turnaround times.  

Statutory deadlines are layered on top of those expectations. Housing affordability has pushed permitting to the top of the policy agenda, and several states have responded with permitting “shot clocks.” 

The Push to Modernize Technology 

Customers increasingly expect the same digital experience from a building department that they get everywhere else: public-facing portals that allow online intake, digital plan review, records management, accurate and consistent status reporting and financial transactions. It is also expected that these experiences meet the high-level technology standards that we are accustomed to in private sector business applications.  

Where modernization fits the local workflow, the gains are substantial. The choice of software matters as much as the decision to modernize when a platform is not consistent with permit and inspection volume, workload complexity or staffing model. A department can spend dearly and still not see the service gains that were expected. 

A fit-for-purpose evaluation before procurement of any modernization of technology and an implementation plan that budgets for training and change management matters as much as the platform itself. Smaller departments can also reach modernization through shared or regionally hosted systems rather than each standing up its own technology application. This type of cooperative partnership of regional optimization lowers costs, fosters consistency and improves results.  

Los Angeles offers one example of how jurisdictions are applying technology to expand service capacity. The Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety implemented a Virtual Inspection Program that uses real-time video streaming for eligible inspection types, with the goal of reducing wait times, improving efficiency and giving customers a more convenient alternative to some in-person inspections. 

Remote Virtual Inspections (RVI) extend inspection capacity, particularly across rural or geographically dispersed areas. Setting clear service-level expectations and communicating them to applicants is another strategy that can help turn a reactive queue into a managed pipeline.

Funding That Does Not Keep Pace 

Underneath all of this sits the budget. Building departments are expected to deliver faster, more reliable service while operating inside structures that limit reinvestment in staffing, technology and process improvement—which makes the expected responsiveness harder to sustain. 

A more durable approach manages the building department like a private sector business with clear performance expectations, without altering their public-safety mission. In practice that means aligning fees with service delivery more transparently, balancing revenue and expenses directly to delivery capacity, and protecting the department’s ability to reinvest in staff, training and systems rather than treating those as residual budget items.  

Consolidation can also help departments address funding shortfalls. By spreading staffing, technology and administrative costs across a larger service area, shared-service or regional models can better balance revenue and expense, reduce duplication and create more consistent capacity for reinvestment in products, services, staffing and process improvement. Some jurisdictions go even further by pairing that operational scale with enterprise-style funding that channels permit revenue directly into operations.  

San Diego’s Development Services Department is a well-documented example of a department structured for cost recovery and reinvestment. Enterprise funding is not a universal fit, particularly for low-volume rural jurisdictions that may never generate sufficient fee revenue on their own. For growing communities and regional partnerships, however, funding structure is an important part of the broader operations conversation.  

Increasingly, communities are treating the building department as operational infrastructure for housing production and economic development as opposed to solely serving a regulatory function. Department resourcing should reflect that change in mindset. 

One Tool That Spans All Four Challenges  

Shared-services agreements and regional partnerships address several pressures at once, letting neighboring jurisdictions scale functions while keeping local inspection presence and customer service.  

The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department, established through an intergovernmental agreement between El Paso County and Colorado Springs, serves numerous cities and towns across El Paso and Teller Counties. It administers building code enforcement across eight areas of responsibility, manages contractor qualification and registration and is structured to be financially self-supporting.  

This model strengthens workforce depth, surge capacity and pools funding sources to provide a consistent level of service the community needs to support the construction and development industries in the region. 

Where ICC Fits 

Which function to keep in-house, identifying partners and partnership models, technology upgrades and funding strategies are where many departments could benefit from an expert, outside perspective.  

The International Code Council (ICC) supports workforce research as well as operational, organizational and building department best practices implementation. ICC’s experience draws on positive solutions adopted in all types of jurisdictions.  

For jurisdictions considering changes, ICC’s consulting services can provide advisory support to assist in assessing challenges in service delivery and matching solutions to local conditions, giving communities proven approaches. 

Rising to the Challenges  

The squeeze on building departments is not one problem but several converging issues: workforce attrition, rising expectations, the complexity of digitization and funding for modernization.  

What separates departments that adapt well is both the acknowledgement of these challenges and taking the steps necessary to meet them. That requires department leadership to choose the right mix of governance, staffing, funding and technology to maintain timely review and inspection processes, ensure public safety and preserve service quality. 

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