Permits & licensing in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania's Uniform Construction Code comes with a twist: enforcement is municipal opt-in. Roughly 90 percent of the state's 2,562 municipalities administer the code themselves, through a municipal code office or a certified third-party agency under contract. The answer to "where do I file" changes street by street.
Where a municipality has opted out, the Department of Labor and Industry takes commercial code enforcement through its Bureau of Occupational and Industrial Safety, and residential work goes to a certified third-party agency hired by the owner or contractor. Labor and Industry also keeps elevators statewide and state-owned buildings regardless of what the municipality chose.
Philadelphia is the exception: city and county are consolidated, and the Department of Licenses and Inspections issues permits for the whole territory. Elsewhere a county-level building permit office is not the norm — counties enter the file through health departments, which carry on-lot sewage, wells, and, in Allegheny, plumbing.
- UCC enforcement is municipal opt-in. About 90 percent of the 2,562 municipalities administer the code; in the rest, commercial enforcement falls to Labor and Industry.
- Third-party agencies certified by Labor and Industry do plan review and inspections under contract to municipalities, and directly for owners in opt-out municipalities.
- Philadelphia runs its own Department of Licenses and Inspections through eCLIPSE, with city trade licenses on top of state law.
- Home-improvement contractors register with the Office of Attorney General under HICPA once they do $5,000 or more of work in a calendar year.
- The Allegheny County Health Department issues plumbing permits county-wide under Article XV, separate from whichever municipal office handles the building permit.
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