Answers · Chicago building permits
What is an Express Permit Program permit?
PERMIT – EXPRESS PERMIT PROGRAM is the City of Chicago permit type electrical work now files under in dataset ydr8-5enu. The City retired PERMIT - ELECTRIC WIRING in July 2026. The replacement label is spelled with an en dash (U+2013); a query using a plain hyphen matches zero rows.
Neither trap raises an error. A filter keyed to the retired type returns zero records for all time, as though electrical permits had never existed, and a filter with the wrong dash returns the same nothing while looking perfectly reasonable in the editor.
The size of the gap: the week of 2026-07-22 carried 165 electrical-scope express permits, measured 2026-07-29. A pipeline still asking for ELECTRIC WIRING would have delivered none of them and reported no failure.
How this is measured
- Dataset
- ydr8-5enu
- Publisher
- City of Chicago
- Filter
- permit_type equal to the Express Permit Program string, and a work description mentioning electrical work. The 165-permit count is that filter over the ISO week beginning 2026-07-20.
- Measured
- 2026-07-29
The query
$where=permit_type = 'PERMIT – EXPRESS PERMIT PROGRAM' AND upper(work_description) LIKE '%ELECTRIC%'
Caveat. Not every Express Permit Program permit is electrical work. The type covers the City's express filing route; the work description is what identifies the trade.
Permit Signal
The electrical trade filter behind Permit Signal keys on this type and the work described in the record. The first delivery is three real records, free, with the government source link on every row.