A building permit is a municipal record. It says a city accepted a filing for a kind of work, on a date, usually naming someone as the contractor of record. That is useful. It is also a narrower fact than most hiring advice pretends.
Arizona law treats the license as a separate question. A.R.S. § 32-1151 makes it unlawful to act as a contractor without a license in good standing, unless an exemption applies. The same section says that securing a government permit is prima facie evidence that a contract exists. It does not say the permit is a license, a passing grade, or proof the named firm holds the class. The two records have to be read together.
What the permit actually records
A typical issued permit carries a type (or a city-specific label), an issue or filed date, and a name in a contractor or builder field. In a city that publishes those fields, you can see that *someone* was named on *this* kind of work *here*. That is evidence of local activity, not of skill.
The name on the row is the name the city published. It may be the firm that did the labor, a general contractor who pulled the permit for a sub, an owner, an applicant, or a permit service. Those roles are not interchangeable, and the public file often does not say which one you are looking at.
What it does not record
A permit does not grade the job. It does not say the owner was happy, the work passed every inspection, or the price was fair. It does not prove the named firm holds the right Arizona ROC class for that trade. It does not prove the qualifying party was on site. It is not a request for bids, and it is not a homeowner asking to be called.
Reviews answer a different question. An Arizona ROC license answers a different question still. Using one in place of the others is how a raw permit leaderboard ends up ranking utilities and "OWNER" as the busiest contractors in a city.
The check that actually answers the hiring question
The hiring question is whether a firm is allowed to do this work and has actually done it here. That takes both files.
- Confirm an active, unexpired Arizona ROC license in the class that covers the job, on the official ROC Contractor Search.
- Confirm the firm has permits whose type matches that work in the city you care about, not a pile of unrelated paper.
- Prefer a license-number match over a name match, because names collide and permit services reuse them.
So So Deep's ranked pages do that join and stop there. A firm reaches a Scottsdale trade ranking only if it holds the matching class and has at least one job-relevant permit in Scottsdale's records. A general builder with more permits overall does not win an electrical question.
What to do with the number
Use the count as volume of a specific kind of permitted work, dated by the city's own records. On our pages that date is stated separately from the ROC snapshot, because the two clocks age independently. As of this writing, Scottsdale's public feed has no permit later than 2026-07-02, and the Scottsdale hub says so rather than implying the file is current.
If you only have a name and a city, start at the official ROC search, then look at the matching trade page. Do not treat a large raw total as a recommendation.
Where this guide does not help
Work that never required a permit, including a lot of repairs and service calls. Cities we do not ingest, or feeds that never name a contractor of record. Workmanship, price, and whether anyone will show up on Tuesday.