Since 2020, the City of San Diego has run one of the most active municipal virtual inspection programs in the country, letting homeowners and contractors complete required building inspections over live video instead of waiting on-site for an inspector.

Run by the city's Development Services Department (DSD), the program has grown from a pandemic-era stopgap into a permanent, high-volume part of how San Diego permits residential construction.

How the Program Works

San Diego's virtual inspections run on Microsoft Teams. A contractor or homeowner schedules an inspection online through the same portal used for standard in-person inspections, then joins a scheduled video call at the job site while a City inspector reviews the completed work remotely on the other end.

The mechanics are simple:

  • Customers need a smartphone, tablet, or computer with internet access and the Microsoft Teams app installed.

  • Someone 18 or older must be on-site during the call to walk the inspector through the work.

  • Appointments run weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and each session takes about 20 minutes.

  • The service is free when scheduled during normal business hours; after-hours virtual inspections carry the same added fees as after-hours in-person visits.

Inspections that can't be completed adequately over video — due to poor connectivity, site conditions, or the nature of the work — are simply rescheduled in person, so the program is additive rather than a replacement for on-site review.

What Gets Inspected Remotely

Virtual inspections are limited to single-family homes, duplexes, and townhomes — not apartment buildings or commercial projects.

Within that residential scope, the qualifying project types are fairly broad, covering routine mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work as well as several structural and exterior items:

  • HVAC equipment: air handlers, furnaces, heat pumps, mini-splits, chillers, boilers, and condensing units

  • Electrical work: panels and circuits up to 400 amps, temporary power, and EV charging stations

  • Plumbing and gas: water heaters, softeners, backflow preventers, gas leak repairs, and drain or waste pipe work

  • Solar: rooftop and ground-mounted photovoltaic system installations

  • Structural and exterior: re-roofs, foundation retrofits, minor framing/shear work, drywall, siding, window and door replacements, and shower pan/tub installs

  • Minor correction reinspections, where a prior inspection flagged small fixes

This list has expanded steadily since launch, reflecting DSD's confidence that video is a reliable substitute for on-site review across most routine residential trade work.

What Officials Are Saying

City leaders have been vocal about the program's payoff, both for residents and for internal operations. Kelly Charles, DSD's Deputy Director and Chief Building Official, described the surge in demand this way:

"We are seeing exponential growth in the number of requests for virtual inspections for projects at residences. The increase in inspections reflects the growing demand to install new solar systems and upgrade water heaters and heating and cooling systems, among other home improvements. These virtual inspections are convenient for customers and more efficient for City employees. The City can squeeze in more inspections per day performing the inspections online as we no longer need to commute to multiple sites daily."

Then-Development Services Director Elyse W. Lowe, who oversaw the #DigitalDSD initiative that produced the program, called it a model for how digital tools can serve both residents and the City's operational goals:

"I am thrilled that the virtual inspections program our team developed as part of our conversion to #DigitalDSD has been such a tremendous success. Digital innovations, such as our inspection by virtual meetings with cameras, help us serve more customers, reduce emissions from driving and speed up the process. It's a win-win for both our customers and the City."

In a later op-ed reflecting on DSD's broader digital transformation, Lowe also tied the department's modernization push to the City's housing goals, noting that San Diego issued permits for 9,691 new homes in 2023 — an increase of roughly 82% over the prior year and the highest total since at least 2005 — while pointing to virtual appointments and the Virtual Rapid Review permit process as key drivers of faster service.

The Numbers Behind the Program

DSD's own data shows just how much this has scaled. As of an August reporting period, the department was performing nearly 5,400 residential inspections a month combined (virtual and in-person), and virtual inspections alone hit a monthly record of 849 — more than double the prior high of 400 set just a month earlier.

The efficiency gains are the real story:

Metric

Impact

Inspections per inspector per day

Up more than 40% compared to in-person only

Average virtual inspection length

About 20 minutes

Daily virtual inspections per inspector

Roughly 20

Customer wait time before program

Up to 4 hours blocked out per visit

Driving avoided (one peak month)

Over 3,000 miles

Kelly Charles, the City's Chief Building Official, attributed much of the surge to home solar installs, water heater swaps, and HVAC upgrades — categories that map directly onto the qualifying project list above.

Former DSD Director Elyse Lowe framed the program as a "win-win," citing both faster service for residents and reduced vehicle emissions from inspectors no longer driving between sites, which ties into the City's 2022 Climate Action Plan goal of net-zero emissions by 2035.

Part of a Broader Digital Overhaul

Virtual inspections are one piece of DSD's larger "#DigitalDSD" initiative, which also includes an online permitting system, virtual over-the-counter meetings with plan reviewers, a Zoning and Parcel Information Portal, and digitization of more than eight million paper records.

More recently, the City has pushed "Virtual Rapid Review" permit appointments, with DSD reporting that more than half of permits are now issued the same day — a marked jump from pre-digital timelines.

DSD's inspection load is significant in scale: the department is on track to approve more than 70,000 development projects annually citywide, and virtual inspection is now a standard scheduling option alongside standard, special, and enhanced (after-hours) inspections rather than an experimental side program.

What It Means for Contractors and Homeowners

For a contractor scheduling a water heater swap or a homeowner finishing a solar install, the practical upside is a guaranteed appointment window instead of an open-ended wait for an inspector to show up.

Requirements are minimal — a phone and a Teams connection — and there's no cost premium for choosing video over an in-person visit during business hours.

The tradeoff is scope: only single-family, duplex, and townhouse projects qualify, and only for the specific inspection types on DSD's list, so larger renovations, new commercial builds, and multi-family projects still require someone to be present on-site with an inspector.

Contractors should also expect that camera angle and lighting quality can determine whether an inspection passes on the first try, since the inspector's entire assessment depends on what the phone or tablet camera shows.

San Diego's experience is a useful data point for anyone building in the inspection-tech space: a municipal program with no dedicated app, running on general-purpose video conferencing software, has still managed 40%+ throughput gains and near-record monthly volumes — evidence that the bottleneck in inspections isn't remote video itself, but scheduling friction, project scoping, and how easy it is for the field-side participant to join the call.

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