How PermitTorch works

Four steps between a city permit portal and your morning lead list. No black box at any of them.

1. 1

   We monitor public records

   Cities publish building permits and inspection results constantly — but across dozens of portals, formats, and update schedules. PermitTorch pulls from every active source in your market on a daily cycle, keeps a health check on each one, and shows you exactly when the data was last updated. If a source goes stale, we say so instead of pretending it is current.

2. 2

   We identify the fire work

   Most permits are noise for a fire contractor: plumbing, roofing, fences. PermitTorch classifies each record against fire-specific rules — sprinkler scope, alarm scope, suppression systems, kitchen hood systems, fire inspections, and code violations — so your feed contains only work you could actually bid.

3. 3

   We score every opportunity

   Every lead gets a deterministic 0–100 score assembled from named signals — new commercial construction, detected fire scope, how recently it was filed, project value, square footage, and whether a fire contractor is already listed. No black box: each point traces to a signal you can read, so you can trust the ranking or overrule it.

4. 4

   You get actionable leads

   Open your dashboard or your morning digest and work top-down: address, permit number, filing date, estimated value, and a one-line reason this lead matters. Save the ones you are chasing, mark them contacted, export to CSV, and click through to the official government record any time.