City Saves Energy with Electronic Building Plans

Salt Lake City’s Building Services Division has moved to completely electronic building plans in favor of energy savings.  Based on 2,500 building plans reviewed per year, Salt Lake City and its customers will save approximately 360,000 miles driven, 512,000 pounds of paper and prevent 2,300 pounds of hydrocarbons from being released into the atmosphere annually.  Additionally, with all plans now available online for viewing by staff, there have been substantial savings in time and resources tracking down archived files, which were previously located in an offsite storage facility.

Although electronic plan review submissions were only made mandatory a few months ago, the City has been using the electronic plan program for four full years.  It’s estimated that on a voluntary basis, about 35% of reviews have been paperless over the past four years.  This has saved 504,000 miles driven, 716,000 pounds of paper and prevented 3,220 pounds of hydrocarbons from being released into the atmosphere.  Way to go, Building Services!

Credit: Orion Goff, CBO, Building Official, Director, Building Services and Civil Enforcement, Salt Lake City Corporation