DSD is a team of almost 700 dedicated public servants committed to the safety of Austin's people, buildings, environment, and special events. This department ensures the safety of Austin’s built environment through review, permitting, inspection, and code compliance processes so that all structures and land uses are in compliance with local, state, and national codes and regulations. 

DSD’s collective efforts encompass diverse responsibilities, including overseeing construction, demolitions, renovations, property maintenance, licensing, and special events within Austin, all while prioritizing safety and sustainability. Together, we are building a better and safer Austin. 

In January 2023, DSD welcomed back then-Austin Code Department Director José G. Roig as interim director. He was named the permanent DSD director in June 2023 by Interim City Manager Jesús Garza.   

Director Roig has worked in several roles here in DSD since starting with the City of Austin in 2007, including Building Official, Building Inspections Division Manager, Inspections Supervisor, and Commercial Inspector. These experiences have helped shape his vision for a cohesive, efficient, and responsive Development Services Department. 

Director Roig recognizes the importance of staying ahead of the curve on development, particularly given the pace at which Austin is growing. He continues to keep his finger on the pulse of building and code trends through his service as board member for the International Code Council. He is also active in the Building Officials Association of Texas, the Texas Fire Protection Association, the Code Enforcement Association of Texas, and the American Association of Code Enforcement.  

Last March, DSD welcomed colleagues from the Austin Code Department as the two departments became one. The newly consolidated department continues to support building safety and the well-being of the Austin community by ensuring compliance with a variety of building codes and other City requirements.   

While DSD previously focused on managing the development and construction process from subdivision and site plan to occupancy, the addition of Code Compliance staff expands the department’s role to include enforcement after construction is complete and structures are inhabited.  Code inspectors respond to Austin 3-1-1 complaints regarding potential violations of the city’s health, sanitation, building and property maintenance codes, zoning and land use ordinances. Common violations include tall weeds and grass, deteriorating buildings and unsanitary conditions. The unit also oversees licensing for businesses such as hotels, rooming and boarding houses, and short-term rentals. 

DSD is now involved in every stage of the City’s development journey — from planning how to use the initial plot of land—to construction — to ongoing maintenance. 

In April 2023, the City of Austin commissioned an independent assessment of the site plan review process. For context, a site plan is a detailed drawing of proposed improvements and construction on a lot. During a site plan review, City reviewers ensure the proposed plan meets all site development standards. The team conducting the assessment completed a series of surveys, workshops, and interviews with City staff and community members. After this, they mapped review processes, inventoried the technology used, and identified potential points of improvement for the employee and customer experience. 

City Council received a final report in August 2023. It detailed over 40 recommended initiatives to improve the efficiency and experience during the site plan review process. As FY 2023 ended, City staff began preparing for the intensive, cross-departmental effort to address these initiatives. Read through the end of this report to learn more or visit the Transforming Site Plan Review website.  

In addition to launching the Do I Need a Permit? wizard, the DSD website had significant enhancements in 2023. City staff worked diligently to create a streamlined, mobile-friendly interface focused on accessibility and clarity for the Austin community. Updates in April 2023 included adding quick links and featured highlights on legislative changes, process changes, and DSD initiatives. In June 2023, the Service Center (now known as Building and Trade Contractor Services) landing page underwent a significant refresh as part of a departmentwide effort to build new forms and webpages to guide applicants through the development process.  

With over 140 webpages, DSD continues improving its website with new information, resources, and tools. In the next year, DSD is working to update the site plan, subdivision, residential, and commercial webpages.  

Affordable housing options for Austin's low- and middle-income residents continue to be a priority for City leadership. DSD played an instrumental role in supporting the City’s affordable housing goals in FY 2023, implementing regulatory initiatives intended to increase the addition of “missing middle” housing options and streamlining the development process for new and ongoing affordable housing developments.  

DSD also continued to adapt its review processes to help facilitate development of new housing options for residents experiencing homelessness. The Public Projects team now manages reviews for Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) projects. These projects help residents experiencing homelessness transition to permanent housing. By using its collaborative process, this team can complete development reviews and permitting about twice as fast as typical site plan reviews. This means critical projects, like the 150-unit Cairn Point development in northeast Austin, can provide housing where it is needed most more quickly.   

By year’s end, DSD reviewers were working on projects that have the potential to provide more than 3,500 new affordable units in Austin. With faster processes and a commitment to continued improvement, DSD will continue supporting citywide goals and efforts for housing and affordability.    

Winter Storm Mara struck the region in late January 2023, wreaking havoc on Austin's tree canopy, damaging structures, and testing the City's infrastructure. DSD immediately took action to provide information and services that helped residents begin to recover and restore their properties quickly and safely. This included attending winter storm recovery events, providing resources, and answering questions from the Austin community.  

In the weeks following the storm, inspectors completed hundreds of around-the-clock emergency inspections, with the majority focused on ensuring electrical repairs in homes met code requirements so power could be restored.  

The Austin Center for Events (ACE) mission is to ensure that events are safe for attendees and workers. ACE representatives meet with event organizers throughout the event permitting process, well before their event date, to address potential safety issues and ensure event organizers feel supported. Over the course of FY 2023, ACE safely permitted 577 events.  

An important part of ensuring Austin’s events are safe are the City’s Public Assembly Code Enforcement (PACE) teams. These teams consist of representatives from several City departments, including the Code Compliance team at DSD. They can quickly and efficiently respond to address safety, code compliance and permitting violations at special events. PACE is especially important at events that have a large footprint and thousands of people in attendance, like Austin City Limits music festival and those that occur during Spring Festival Season. For example, PACE responded to a combined 260 incidents during the 2022 Austin City Limits music festival and the 2023 Spring Festival season. The breadth of knowledge on this team helps address a variety of safety issues related to temporary structures at an event, fire hazards, or problems with noise, alcohol, or security. The PACE team is ready to manage the safety of special event attendees in real time. 

The Nightlife and Entertainment Services team continued to lead the Safer Sixth Street Initiative, first crafted by the City Council in 2021. The initiative takes a comprehensive approach to nightlife district planning, management, and safety through training, organizing public spaces and diversity of uses.  As part of that partnership with bar operators, the Safer Sixth team launched the Nightlife Establishment Training program in FY 2023. During the year the interdepartmental coalition offered two Active Shooter Response and Stop the Bleed trainings and one session on naloxone/overdose awareness. These trainings are intended to increase the number of individuals available to quickly respond to incidents that occur in the entertainment district. The Safer Sixth team plans to continue and expand these offerings in FY 2024, with a particular focus on the drink-spiking awareness campaign begun this year. 

The foundation of DSD’s mission is to ensure that buildings are constructed safely. A fatal construction accident in March 2023 started a critical conversation about how DSD can educate construction crews and encourage construction site safety outside of our regulation of building safety. 

Safety reminders are always a part of pre-construction meetings and routine inspections. DSD building inspectors emphasize specific risks at high-rise construction sites, where high winds can create uniquely dangerous conditions if equipment and materials are not adequately secured. English and Spanish flyers were developed with simple but important reminders that can be hung on safety boards at construction sites. When weather forecasts predict high winds or other hazardous weather conditions in the Austin area, the department sends notifications to active building permit holders to increase awareness. 

DSD reinforces those messages yearly in May as part of its Building Safety Month campaign. These safety reminders will continue to be an important part of DSD’s role as a leader in building safety at home, at work, and throughout the community. 

In July 2023, the Austin City Council adopted new Safe Fencing Regulations. These regulations, which were developed with the feedback of the Austin community, were in response to the danger fences with spikes and gaps present to children, pets, and wildlife. The ordinance established new Code requirements, prohibiting certain fence designs that increase the risk of injury. 

Most new fences on residential properties will need to follow these new guidelines, which are outlined on the Fencing Regulations webpage. These new regulations are designed to ensure fences around Austin homes and businesses are safer for everyone.  

The goal with any code compliance case is to achieve voluntary compliance, meaning the issue is resolved upon notice from the City, without enforcement action or penalties. The Code Compliance teams work with property owners and representatives to explain violations, offer potential solutions, and provide reasonable timeframes to address dangerous and unsanitary conditions for people, pets, and the environment.   

In FY 2023, 86% of code violation cases for single and multi-family residences were resolved following the initial notice from the City. This voluntary compliance rate is a direct result of the relationship-building and education led by Code Compliance Inspectors on a daily basis.   

If a code violation does not get resolved in a timely manner, Code Compliance inspectors escalate enforcement through quasi-judicial processes. These include Administrative Hearings, the Building and Standards Commission, Municipal Court, and District Court. In 93% of cases that were escalated in FY 2023, property owners were determined to be responsible for resolving the code violation(s) and were required to pay penalties and fees associated with enforcement. This high rate reflects the comprehensive cases built by Code Compliance Inspectors and reviewed by Administrative Hearing staff. 

Recent efforts to streamline inspections, simplify scheduling, and build staff expertise positioned the Building Inspections teams for increased success in FY 2023.  

This year's primary training goal was to empower inspectors in the field. This effort included added training and incentives to earn new certifications. With nearly 80% of inspectors in their jobs for less than three years, professional development efforts focused on adding skills for new inspectors and leveraging existing knowledge for tenured staff.  

As team coordination improved, inspections became an extension of the plan review process. Building inspectors worked closely with customers and building plan review teams to interpret drawings and close the gaps between building plans and the structures they inspect. This collaboration helped customers complete inspections for complex projects more efficiently.  

In March 2023, the Code Compliance team launched a citywide education campaign about annual licensing requirements for private waste haulers. Private waste haulers collect, remove, or transport rubbish, tires, construction scraps, and organic compost such as tree limbs or yard debris for a fee. Licensing ensures that vehicles and accessories used for operations are appropriate for the load(s) carried and that operators are adequately insured. 

In total, DSD expanded the number of waste hauler licenses issued from 86 at the beginning of FY 2023 to 146 – an approximately 70% increase. Encouraging continued licensing improvements will help ensure that private waste haulers operate more safely in Austin. 

DSD Code Connect is a service that expanded from the Austin Code Department to all of DSD after the March 2023 department consolidation. The team facilities DSD's development and code compliance-related service requests and phone, email, and web inquiries from residents. The team ensures that inquiries are documented and routed to the appropriate team for follow-up. In FY 2023, DSD Code Connect logged 5,544 total interactions.   

The DSD Code Connect team covered development-related inquiries starting the second half of FY 2023. Records reflect 9,159 development-specific inquiries, including 4,821 DSD follow-up service requests, 2,027 inquiries about environmental inspections and enforcement, and 2,311 contacts related to outdoor commercial venue music. This team provides timely and knowledgeable support, and these resources will continue to evolve with the department’s needs. 

One of DSD’s most significant and measurable customer service improvements in FY 2023 was a reduction in turnaround times for Intake and Service Center processes. In May 2023, the Intake teams reduced the time applications are in the queue to one business day. The former Service Center, now known as Building and Trade Contractor Services, also reduced the time requests are in the queue, completing most processes within two business days, compared to as many as six days the previous year. 

A series of behind-the-scenes process improvements, better coordination with partner departments, and a focus on staff training and development all contributed to improved performance overall.  In the coming year, the Customer Experience teams will continue to improve services to make the development process easier and clearer for the diverse Austin community. 

This year presented many changes for the City, and DSD prioritized engaging directly with community stakeholders on the issues that would affect them most. Whether it was the relaunch of bi-annual stakeholder meetings, engagements on code changes, joining neighborhood meetings or tabling at community events, DSD’s engagement team had a full and diverse calendar. In total, the DSD team attended 308 community events, representing countless hours of investment into education and outreach.   

The Neighborhood Assistance Center (NAC) also conducted extensive outreach to the 539 neighborhood groups that are a part of the Community Registry, a self-registered database of neighborhood and community groups who sign up for development-related notifications. Outreach efforts focused on ensuring Community Registry content is up to date and education on the services provided by the NAC. These activities support more effective communication with Austin’s neighborhood groups and broader awareness of DSD’s neighborhood-centric services. 

DSD received four national awards for the work of its communications team in 2023. These awards highlight the team’s high-quality communication and support the department’s outreach to the community.  

Savvy Awards 

Building Connections won a first-place award in its category for e-newsletters from the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA). Austin Code’s FY 2022 Annual Report was also recognized by 3CMA with an Award of Excellence. 3CMA’s Savvy Awards competition honors excellence in local government communications and is judged by local government professionals and individuals from professional, consulting, and academic communities across the country. In 2023 there were more than 875 entries in 38 categories.  

MarCom Awards 

The department received a 2023 International Gold MarCom Award for the Austin Code’s FY 2022 Annual Report. Additionally, the department secured an honorable mention for a web video on Building Code Inspection Basics. MarCom Awards are administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP) and recognize and honor excellence in marketing and communications while recognizing the creativity and hard work of industry professionals. The winners were chosen from more than 6,500 entries from corporate and educational marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, public relations firms, design shops, production companies and freelancers throughout the United States, Canada, and several other countries. 

During the 88th Texas Legislature in 2023, state lawmakers adopted over 750 new laws. Several of those laws directly impact the development process, creating third-party review and inspections, new permitting regulations, changes to the subdivision process, and parkland dedication. Throughout 2024, DSD will continue to adapt its processes as staff and applicants work through the impact of these changes.  

The City of Austin is also focusing on updating development regulations to support the City’s goals surrounding safe, sustainable, and affordable development. The City Council recently passed phase 1 of the “Home Options for Middle-Income Empowerment” (HOME) Initiative. These amendments to the Land Development Code (LDC) unlock more opportunities for different housing types and increase housing supply within the Single-Family zoned areas of Austin. In Spring 2024, the City Council will consider code amendments that support development around Project Connect and address housing capacity and affordability citywide. DSD, Austin Fire, and Austin Energy are also working to adopt updates to Technical Codes in 2024, which will include the latest local, national, and international regulations to the International Building, Residential Property Maintenance, Energy Conservation, Fire, Swimming Pool and Spa, and Uniform Mechanical and Plumbing Codes. To ensure these code updates meet the community’s needs, your feedback and engagement is a critical part of the process. Sign up for DSD’s email list to learn more and participate.  

Technology improvements are necessary to continue adapting to the needs of the Austin community. In FY 2024 two important technology upgrades are being made that will support the department and the development process. The first is upgrading the ProjectDox software currently used for electronic plan review by a small number of DSD divisions. Most of the teams at DSD will begin using an upgraded version of the software, which will provide an improved customer experience and allow for more efficient document sharing and communication.  The second change is Communication and Technology Management’s (CTM) launch of a new software for the Austin Build+Connect (AB+C) Portal. This upgrade will add a more modern look and feel and provide the reliability and support needed to meet portal users' needs. This is the first in a larger, multi-year citywide project to replace the AMANDA permitting software.

After the success of the Archistar pilot in 2023, DSD will continue to explore AI tools and opportunities to support a more efficient development process. Currently, DSD is exploring opportunities for a new chatbot, which will be able to comprehensively search hundreds of webpages and produce accurate answers for community members in seconds. DSD is also evaluating the use of AI for the completeness check process and formal site plan review process. These tools could be implemented to improve efficiency and allow staff to focus on areas that require in-depth subject matter expertise. By exploring new technologies, DSD is opening the door to new opportunities to enhance both the staff and applicant experience through the development process.