Chicago: Developing Updates

Burnham’s goal, as always, is to continue communicating with city officials online, via email and by phone and provide you with updates on any city implementation that may take place in the coming weeks. We will continue to monitor the Chicago Department of Buildings (DOB) for daily updates and will send out new processes as they’re announced.

As of 03.23.2020:

• Effective Immediately and continuing for the next 90 calendars days, hospitals, health care facilities, pharmacies, and similar health care-related services related to COVID-19 screening, prevention, and treatment may utilize the below items to support health care-related functions without the need for a permit from the Department of Buildings:
  • trailers, shipping containers, tents, modular units, pre-fabricated units, and other temporary structures;
  • electrical, plumbing, mechanical, air, ventilation, and generator systems and equipment to support said temporary structures;
  • fencing, barrier, queuing, crowd management, and security systems to support said temporary structures

As of 03.20.2020:

• Governor Pritzker issues Stay-A-Home order for all non-essential services until Tuesday, April 7.
• Construction work is essential to maintaining safe infrastructure and will be allowed to proceed as scheduled and approved.
• Chicago City Hall is now closed to the public until further notice, however, procedures are being implemented for online submissions to allow permit submissions and reviews to continue.
• Thanks to the DOB's flexibility and online capabilities, Burnham is NOT encountering delays in processing and issuing permits at this time.
• The City has implemented an alternative procedure for remote processing and electronic payment of easy permit applications. See link below:
  Interim Procedure for Online Submission of Easy Permits
• Please note: routine scheduled maintenance to the E-Plan permitting system
  begins at 5:00 p.m., Friday, March 20. Customers will NOT have access to the ProjectDox system, upload or download documents, or review markups. Access
  will be restored no later than 7:00 a.m., Monday, March 23.
• The Department of Planning and Development staff will continue to work remotely.  
  

We appreciate the continuing efforts of our Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, the City of Chicago, Department of Buildings (DOB), Department of Planning, and Department of Transportation (CDOT) in helping us all remain safe and operational during these uncertain times. 

We will come out of this stronger than ever, together.

As of 3.19.2020

• The Department of Buildings (DOB) offices will remain open, with limited access to the public. During this time, we will continue to be in constant communication with city officials as they themselves begin to work remotely. Burnham will continue to work around the clock to take care of your projects.
• Given the DOB's flexibility and online services, Burnham has not encountered delays in issuing permits and are seeing consistent permit timelines at this time. 

We appreciate the hard work of the Department of Buildings(DOB), Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Planning Buildings during this time. Please contact Burnham with any questions regarding your project. We will be here to answer any questions you may have.

We will come out of this stronger than ever, together.