Latest update
As of 9/18/2021 at 3:30 pm: All network issues have been resolved. Payment for new plan review applications is now available.
For applicants that had submitted their applications but did not receive an invitation to upload plans into ProjectDox, your projects will be restarted. You will receive your email notification once this has been completed. It may take a few days to restart all affected projects.
Previous updates
As of 9/17/2021 at 5 pm: For this update, we wanted to dispel rumors about performance issues:
Rumor: The City was hacked and that’s the problem.
The City was not hacked or compromised in any way, nor was the ProjectDox application hacked or compromised. It has been determined that the issues were caused by internal network configurations.
Rumor: All of the current work product in ProjectDox is lost and every project will have to be resubmitted.
No data was lost as a result of the network issues. Projects that failed to initiate will be restarted and you will receive your email notifications once services are restored.
Rumor: The problems can’t be fixed without shutting the entire system down for 2-3 months.
The entire system is not shut down. Services have been restored internally. Staff is able to review plans that were previously submitted and already in the system. Services for customers were temporarily suspended and we anticipate services to be restored next week.
Rumor: Anything that is updated today will be deleted.
No data will be lost or deleted as a result of system restoration.
As of 9/17/2021 at noon: We continue to make progress with resolving network issues. A workaround has been implemented so plan reviewers can continue reviewing projects already in the system. Comments will be manually copied to iPermits for viewing at https://www.pdinet.pd.houstontx.gov/cohilms/webs/Plan_LookUp.asp. It may take until the end of the business day to manually input the comments.
We will continue to suspend new plan review projects from being created in ProjectDox. Customers will be able to start an application but will not be able to pay the plan review fee online or in person. The suspension of payment does not affect single-trade permits or other application types which do not require plan review.
As of 9/16/2021 at 5 pm: In an effort to aid the resolution of ProjectDox issues, we will temporarily suspend the creation of new plan review projects effective September 16, 2021, at 5 pm. Customers will be able to start an application in iPermits but will be unable to complete payment of the plan review fee until early next week. Additionally, IT will perform system maintenance on ProjectDox throughout the evening. The system may be periodically unavailable.
As of 9/16/2021 at noon: While the ProjectDox website is back up, system functionality is still not performing as needed. We ask that customers do not use the system at this time. IT is continuing to work on resolving the performance issues.