Classic Builders director Peter Cooney said the council "needs to pull their finger out and commit to that like any business".
"You have to scale up or scale down and this is one time they need to scale up to keep everything in perspective."
Money needed to be used "to keep their systems up-to-date and modernise it to the era we are in", he said. Consent delays and missing deadlines had huge impacts.
"You imagine not getting a resource consent for a $30 or $40 million project, if it's delayed for months."
Master Builders Association Tauranga president Johnny Calley said it was a huge issue for the industry and a big challenge.
Delays cost builders and homeowners money, he said. He hoped the council would be more proactive and listen.
Carrus general manager Scott Adams said The Lakes subdivision was fully consented apart from variations and he welcomed the online services, which "are well overdue".
Venture Developments director Mark Fraser-Jones said it was "fantastic," that the council had decided to inject extra resources to process consents faster.
"The growth of Tauranga is important across every sector as the flow-on effects from the construction of new dwellings serve to benefit the whole community."
Tauranga mayor Stuart Crosby acknowledged the council struggled to deliver consents within 20 days in 2015. However, there had been some poor plans submitted.
It took responsibility for not processing some on time, he said, but it was not going to apologise for being robust on compliance because the activity "is a big risk to the council and ratepayers when things go wrong like leaky homes".
Tauranga City Council acting environmental services general manager Natalie Rutland said it had an online consent application portal that started last September and five group builders were submitting to it.
A strategic project was approved in 2015 to upgrade the council's regulatory, land and customer systems.
It would start in February and run for about 14 months.
"Project outcomes include the introduction of digital capabilities to enable the council to deliver mobile-friendly online services. Customers will then be able to choose to transact with the council - without constraint of time or location.
"The scope of the project encompasses online building consents and resource consents."
It anticipated by 2017 the majority of building and consent services would be online, she said.
Salaries and resources were funded by user fees and charges, she said, and was conservatively predicted to be $4.8m for 2015/16.
