Obtaining a building permit in Philadelphia

In American Government, we were given a task to pick a bureaucracy and make a flow chart on the steps of that bureaucracy. The partner I picked was Beth and we decided on doing the steps to obtaining a building permit in Philadelphia. 

We picked this topic without knowing what we were getting ourselves into and didn't know even one step of obtaining a building permit in Philadelphia. The first thing we did was head to google and googled, "building permit in Philadelphia" and came across this site, 100k house, that told us the steps of obtaining a building permit and what each paper/form that needed to be filled out, meant. Then we headed to Philadelphia L&I site to obtain the application and started to fill it out the best way we knew how to.

The paperwork that we had to fill out was very confusing. The paper work needed to be filled out by other people and you have had to contact these people before starting the application. Then you also had to fill out papers like, Zoning permit application, structural design criteria, energy conservation, and more. Most of these paperwork had to be filled out by a hired engineer/architect firm and a lot of contacting.

I don't think I would change anything because even though these steps are so complicated and has a lot of steps, it's made for safety. The city has to be on par with what you are doing because one wrong step/move, someone who wasn't involved, will get hurt.

Flowchart link: http://www.lucidchart.com/documents/edit/4d08c727-33f0-41dc-ab32-7f0f0afcbe04