LANCASTER, CA – With relatively little fanfare, the city of Lancaster, Calif. announced last month that it would become one of the first municipalities in the U.S. to use a next generation permitting platform, marking “a breakthrough in local government modernization and a nationwide shift toward AI-powered regulatory efficiency.”

“Lancaster has always been a city that sees possibility where others see roadblocks,” said R. Rex Parriss, mayor of Lancaster via press release. “By leveraging Labrynth’s AI-powered platform, we’re not just keeping up with the future—we’re shaping it.”

The deployment will begin with permitting optimization, leveraging AI and agentic workflows to pre-screen submissions, validate them against requirements, and flag missing components. Is it the harbinger of efficiencies to come or a new headache? Third Thursday asked the experts.

“Projects have been beleaguered with bureaucratic red tape for years, particularly in the regulatory and permitting realm. It can often take weeks, months, or even years to clear regulatory and permitting obstacles—often for no apparent reason other than the agency or municipality’s resource limitations. Too often applications are returned after days or weeks with requests for corrections or missing information that could have been identified quickly and easily from the start had the resources been present to simply review the application when submitted (rather than days or weeks later).

“The technology described (assuming it works as advertised), would cut through much of that red tape. It also purports to provide better guidance to applicants to ensure that the application is correct and complete when submitted. This too promises to alleviate delays and bottlenecks in processing. I look forward to seeing the technology in action and if it works as promised, potential expansion into other regions and agencies.”
— Wendy Venoit, member, Cozen O’Connor, Boston

“Permits are a valuable necessity in our modern-day world, but our current process for obtaining these permits is broken. It has become an arbitrary process that is non-transparent, inefficient, and mired by a prohibitive volume of red tape which commonly adds years of needless delay and millions of unnecessary dollars to every construction project. As a practicing engineer who has seen these adverse impacts at projects of many shapes and sizes, I wholeheartedly endorse any product that can improve our haphazard permitting process.

“Here, the use of artificial intelligence appears to be a promising step toward addressing this problem, through the Labrynth platform and its forthcoming Red Tape Index. Labrynth seems to offer a powerful promise to optimize the permitting process by systematically identifying missing components, offering objective guidance to applicants, and streamlining the entire pathway for submissions. Sign me up.” — Wayne Kalayjian, PE, SE, CFE, author of Saving Michelangelo’s Dome and managing director, Secretariat Advisors, LLP, El Segundo, Calif.

“The City of Lancaster’s decision to integrate AI with the permitting process could be a viable solution for a number of municipalities that are facing the ever-increasing challenges of having to process the growing number of applications for building permits in the face of ongoing budget cuts and layoffs. By automating this somewhat ministerial government function, cities can use their ever-shrinking resources and limited time to tackle projects and tasks that command human oversight or input.”
— Heather F. Shore, Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice LLC, Kansas City, Mo.

“This is certainly a big deal. Hopefully, by leveraging the power of AI, the City of Lancaster can speed up the permitting process and streamline it in way that facilitates the approval of projects. I guess we need to wait and see how the new platform works, but I can see tremendous advantages from employing AI into the review and response process for permit applications. On the flip side, I can also envision that should there be a glitch in the program, getting a live person to respond may prove to be a challenge and somewhat frustrating. Only time will tell whether this program will be successful or not, but I am excited to see AI being implemented in this fashion.” — Ralf R. Rodriguez, member, Cozen O’Connor, Miami