Methodology

What is a closure rate?

When a contractor pulls a building permit in Little Rock, an inspector needs to verify the work was completed correctly before the permit can be closed. A closure rate measures the percentage of an applicant’s permits that have been properly closed:

The 365-day eligibility rule

A contractor who pulled a permit last month hasn’t had time to complete the work yet. To avoid penalizing recent activity, we only count permits issued more than 365 days ago when calculating closure rates.

Permits issued within the last year still appear in the data but are dimmed in the table and not factored into the rate.

Data source

Permits come from the City of Little Rock Planning & Development department, published as Socrata dataset t7hr-285m on the City of Little Rock Open Data portal. The dataset covers permits from 2019 to present and is refreshed weekly. As of early 2026 the dataset contains approximately 166K rows (~62K unique permits after deduplication by fee line item).

Included permit types

We include four permit type codes representing inspectable construction work:

Excluded permit types: Antenna (ANT), Siding (SDG), Glazing (GLA), and Return to Work (RTW) — these have very low closure rates (<50%) or represent non-construction activities.

Status mapping

Void, Stop Work, and Deleted statuses are excluded as non-actionable records.

Applicant identification

Address and geographic data

Addresses come from the Property Address field. ZIP codes and latitude/longitude coordinates (from a the_geom POINT field) are available for 97–99% of permits. Planning districts (25 named districts) provide neighborhood-level grouping.

Valuation data

Little Rock publishes a Declared Value of Project field representing the declared project valuation. This data is included in the permit table where available (many permits report $0).

Leaderboard criteria

The leaderboard applies two additional filters:

• Minimum 20 rated permits — avoids surfacing statistically insignificant data.
• Active in the last 3 years — prevents the list from being populated by defunct companies.

The leaderboard can be filtered by permit type (e.g., Building, Electrical, Plumbing, Mechanical). When filtered, both thresholds apply only to permits of the selected type.

Median comparison

On applicant detail pages, each closure rate is compared to the median closure rate across all leaderboard-eligible applicants in the same category. This gives context — a 50% closure rate means something different in a category where the median is 40% versus one where it’s 80%.

Medians are calculated from the same pool of applicants who meet the 20-permit minimum threshold.

Data source

Data comes from the Building Permits Socrata dataset published by City of Little Rock Planning & Development. The dataset covers ~166K rows (~62K unique permits after deduplication) from 2019 to present and is refreshed weekly.

Limitations

This site shows permit closure data. It does not evaluate the quality of anyone’s work. There are legitimate reasons a permit may remain open:

• Client non-cooperation — the property owner may fail to schedule the final inspection or grant access.
• Administrative backlog — work may be inspected and approved but not yet updated in the system.
• Project delays — financing, design changes, supply chain issues, or other factors outside the applicant’s control.
• Multi-phase projects — large commercial projects may legitimately take years to complete.
• Permit holder vs. contractor — the applicant may be a GC, architect, or owner — not necessarily the person scheduling the inspection.

If you believe there are inaccuracies in the underlying permit data, contact the City of Little Rock Planning & Development at .