Concord building permits

Tips & gotchas

• A FIVE-DAY COUNTER WITH A ONE-HOUR HOLE, WHICH IS ITS OWN SHAPE IN THIS CORPUS: "Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m." Compare Palmdale, which shuts its counters for TWO hours across a FOUR-day week, and Escondido, which runs 8 to 5 five days with no published closure at all. Concord keeps the whole week and gives up an hour of each day.
• THE INSPECTORS ARE REACHABLE FOR TWO HOURS A DAY AND ON A DIFFERENT NUMBER: "Inspectors are available by phone the following hours: Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 4 p.m." on 925-671-3330, against the Permit Center's 925-671-3107. Both windows sit OUTSIDE the counter's own hours - 7 a.m. is an hour before the counter opens, and the counter shuts at 4 p.m. - so one trip rarely reaches both.
• EVERY INSPECTION REQUEST ROLLS TO THE NEXT BUSINESS DAY, AND CONCORD WORKS THE EXAMPLE SO THE WEEKEND CANNOT BE MISREAD: "a request submitted up to 11:59 p.m. on Thursday will be scheduled for Friday. A request submitted any time Friday through 11:59 p.m. Sunday will be scheduled for Monday. Holidays are treated the same as a weekend day." Most cities in this corpus publish a cut-off time; Concord publishes the arithmetic.
• NOBODY ON SITE MEANS A RE-INSPECTION FEE, AND A HOMEOWNER IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR THE CONTRACTOR: "For contractor installed work, contractors must be on site for inspections, not just the home owners. If no one is present at time of inspection, a re-inspection fee will be charged." That fee is $192 per hour on the current schedule, and a missed inspection is a further $192.
• THE FEE SCHEDULE PUBLISHES A FEE BASIS COLUMN, WHICH ALMOST NO OTHER JURISDICTION HERE DOES - each row is marked fixed fee, hourly rate, per square foot, per unit or valuation-based. Across the schedule the basis values run Fixed Fee 115, Valuation-Based 10, Per Square Foot 9, Hourly Rate 6, Per Hour 5, Per Unit 4. Read that carefully before concluding Concord prices from valuation: the valuation-based rows are overwhelmingly SURCHARGES AND PROGRAM FEES - the state Building Standards fee, two SMIP seismic fees, a child-care program fee, construction-and-demolition recycling, a stormwater service fee and the administrative component - while the permit fees themselves are largely fixed amounts per work item plus hourly plan check and inspection. A city can be valuation-based in what rides alongside the permit and fixed-fee in the permit itself.
• THE DECLARED VALUATION IS NOT NECESSARILY THE VALUATION. The schedule footnote provides that where fees are valuation-based the rate applies to the value of the permitted work, that the Building Official may apply minimum valuations taken from the International Code Council Building Valuation Data or from the Building Official's own published valuations for different project types, and that the final total valuation is set by the Building Official under the city's adoption of the California Building Code. Under-declaring the value of the work does not by itself lower the fee.
• PLAN REVIEW BUYS ONE BACKCHECK, NOT AN OUTCOME: the schedule footnote states the plan review fee includes one round of comments plus one backcheck, and that further review after that is charged at the plan review hourly rate of $230. This is a SCOPE where other cities publish a DURATION, and the two are not interchangeable - Escondido publishes approximately 30 calendar days per review cycle and says nothing about how many cycles are included; Concord says how many rounds are included and nothing about how long they take.
• SOLAR IS CARVED OUT OF TWO FEES BY NAME: the administrative fee and the General Plan / Zoning Ordinance reimbursement fee both state that they apply to all permit and permit revision applications except Solar Energy System building permits.
• THE FIRE AND WILDLAND-URBAN INTERFACE AMENDMENTS ARE THE FIRE DISTRICT'S, NOT THE CITY'S. Concord lists "Contra Costa County Fire Protection District Amendments" among its currently effective codes. Reading only the city's municipal code would understate what has been amended, because the amending authority for fire is a separate special district.
• THE CITY POSTS DATED ONE-OFF COUNTER CLOSURES AT THE TOP OF THE BUILDING DIVISION PAGE, separately from the holiday list - the page read for this record carried "The Permit Center will be closed on the following date: Wednesday, September 23rd - 11:00AM to 2:00PM - Citywide Event". That specific date is a snapshot taken on 2026-09-19 and is not a standing closure; the durable fact is that short notices of this kind appear there and are worth checking before travelling.
• FEE ESTIMATES FROM THE CITY'S OWN TOOLS ARE PARTIAL AND THE CITY SAYS SO: of its calculators and its Project Pal tool it states, "Please note these are estimates and include Building Division fees only. Other fees may apply." Given that the schedule itself carries state surcharges, recycling deposits and stormwater fees alongside the building fees, the gap between a Building Division estimate and the counter total is not a rounding difference.