Kennewick building permit search: Self Service portal, statuses and records

Which permits this covers

The City of Kennewick Building Safety Division permits building, mechanical, plumbing, sign and fire-system work inside city limits. Two gaps matter for a homeowner:

• Electrical work is permitted by the Washington Department of Labor & Industries, not the City, so a panel upgrade or rewiring will not be in the City's records.
• Richland, Pasco, West Richland and unincorporated Benton County run their own permit offices.

We could not open the portal's search screen to read its fields, so the steps below follow the City's own pages.

How to look up the permits on a Kennewick address

1. Open the Self Service portal and use its search for permits on the property.
2. Open each permit. Mechanical and plumbing permits are filed separately from the building permit, so one job can show several.
3. Read the status. Complete means the City finalized it; Expired means it lapsed without a final.
4. For a new house or addition, also check the Certificate of Occupancy search linked from the City's records page.
5. If the permit is not there, file a records request (below). For electrical work, ask L&I.

What the statuses mean

These are the statuses in the City's permit layer and how our pages count them:

Of the permits issued October 2024 to September 2025, 74.9% were complete, 3.3% still open and 21.9% expired by our 19 October 2026 snapshot. Expiry is common on small jobs here: 40.0% of remodel and repair permits and 35.7% of re-roof permits from that year expired. An expired permit on finished work usually means the final inspection never happened, so ask the contractor to call it in.

When the record is not online

The City's Public Records Requests page takes requests through its portal at kennewick.justfoia.com, by email to PrRequest@ci.kennewick.wa.us or by phone at (509) 585-4578, under the Washington Public Records Act, RCW 42.56. Fees are set in the City's 2026–2027 Public Records Policy and Fee Schedule linked from that page (read 24 October 2026).

What our Kennewick pages add

The portal answers "what was permitted at this address". Our Kennewick page answers "what gets built here, and how fast the City signs it off":

67% of the 4,636 permits issued October 2024 to September 2026 were on homes. The permit statistics page has the year, month and season breakdown, how long a permit takes has the middle-half ranges, and browse permits lists the rows without owner names or street addresses. To check a contractor's registration, use How to check a contractor's license in Washington.

What this does not tell you

The City's public layer names no contractor, carries no job value and has no street address or ZIP code, so we show no firm rankings, no costs and no ZIP pages. Electrical work is missing because the state permits it.