Enhancement details:
Given that plan review is required on almost all Commercial Mechanical installations, we have now defaulted the 'Assess Mechanical Plan Review Fee' Yes/No field to 'Yes' on all applications, whether coming in through ACA or created in the back office by staff.
Additionally, this toggle cannot be changed, or set back to a 'No' value for online applications as this field is not made available to the online applicant. If on exception plan review won't be required ultimately – in the back office, you will delete the automated 'Mechanical plan review' fee and result the 'Mechanical Review' workflow task as 'Not Required' to accurately document that no plan review was required or done.
Please keep in mind, an 'over the counter' review is still a plan review, still billable, and still needs to be documented as an approved plan review via the 'Mechanical Review' task. If your agency elects to forego payment on this type of completed plan review, then you could still delete the 'Mechanical plan review' automated fee but still record your review result through the review task. If you charge a different/custom fee for over the counter plan review, it would be manually assessed as applicable.
Purpose of enhancement:
Agencies had explained that because this toggle previously defaulted to 'No' when Commercial Mechanical Plan Review was most often required, it caused an added step to set it to 'Yes' to make sure the review fee added to permit applications. It was also shared that this was often a source of lost revenue for agencies given it could easily be missed or forgotten since defaulted to 'No' which wouldn't automate the review fee. It is a source of constant frustration to plan reviewers when contractors are submitting for plan review after the work is done because a permit was incidentally issued without plan review.