So here are my two cents. On the customer side of the equation, have someone else, anyone else, look over your work before submittal against a simple check list. Did you address all of the little things that will get out bounced out. Are the notes, the right jurisdiction, setbacks shown, details show, is the narrative clear, etc. Anyone, will be able to pick up on these details we ourselves tend to miss on our plans since we are too close to the work. Also, don't expect the jurisdiction to be your quality control. That is not what they are there for, so expecting the jurisdiction to catch your mistakes is poor practice and causes major delays. These things will greatly help.
On the jurisdiction side of the review, empower your reviewers to do as many corrections "as noted" as possible. This will help eliminate subsequent reviews for minor comments that can be addressed with a simple note. If the work is a quality issue, or there are major glaring issues, bounce the permit as soon as possible back to the applicant as opposed to doing a full review if you can. Put the onus on the contractor to provide quality work.
Also, from the jurisdiction side, include the property owners in every single piece of communication you can. This eliminates "the city" is delaying you when the problems are almost always on the contractor side for mistakes being made. This has an indirect benefit of the contractor learning how to get you proper submittals, because the last thing they want is for the city to point out their inability to submit a permit that is instantly approvable.
When I instituted these changes, we saw an immediate benefit to the improvement of turn around times.
Hope this helps!
