Transforming Complex Processes: An Integrated Building Permit Hub
BC Ministry of Housing
Case Study
Design & Discovery
Web + Mobile Development
Strategy & Support
The Need
The Need
"We cannot afford unnecessary delays that prevent new homes from breaking ground."
The BC Ministry of Housing needed a team well-versed in agile development and a strong affinity to evaluate technical solutions in situations where multiple stakeholders (local jurisdictions, submitters, system manager) have differing needs. Understanding the complexity / inconsistencies to the Building Permit process across multiple jurisdictions led to a product that provided a high degree of constrained customization. A framework for adding differning types of integration & capabilities was built after reviewing current and future servies that could be plugged in to streamline building permitting.
Q.
How do we tackle the complexity of hundreds of different local implementations of builiding permits?
A.
By identifying a revision process through technology & workflow that allows local jurisdictions to review / compare / customize intake applications.
The vision for the platform is to enhance the speed and efficiency of development permit approvals through minimizing submission errors, especially for those with less professional experience, allow jursidictions to come to more standardized requirements.The platform has also been designed with the flexibility to seamlessly incorporate additional integrations with other related provincial services, aligning with a broader, more interconnected approach. These toolsets and integration pieces will be valuable for local jurisdictions to plug into.
The Build
Allowing jurisdictions to configure, receive and review applications on intake
Part of the complexity of building permit-related challenges stems from the province setting a number of building code requirements, while local jurisdictions need to interpret and apply them based on their unique climate and city zones. The building permit hub needed to take this into account and solved this by allowing different requirement blocks utilized across jurisdictions to be scheduled for publish (to match when laws come into effect), and for jurisdictions to have customizability on top of those building blocks for their local needs.
A lot time is lost on incomplete applications and the intake funnel from the building permit hub would create a more consistsent experience across jurisdicitons and an area for pre-intake review. The ability for intake reviewiers to clarify requirments in an inutitive fashion could lead to a much faster pre-intake rejection and reducing of intake mistakes to streamline the permit process.
The Build
A strong set of integration capabilities APIs
The building permit hub features a pipeline to add automated checks to be triggered onto the application. This provides some immediate automation, but as more technical integration services and data become available, they can be added to the platform.
Many local jurisdictions already have their own digital tools for managing applications past the intake, and the building permit hub provides multiple ways via APIs that those systems can receive intake applications. This allows local jurisdictions to continue with their processes and infrastructure while getting the benefits of the higher quality intake of applications.
The Relationship
The Relationship
Providing technical possibilities to the Ministry of Housing
Providing technical possibilities to the Ministry of Housing
The B.C. government is working with partners across all levels of government and First Nations to standardize and streamline the building permit process and unlock the construction of more homes, faster. This required the technical team to help the Ministry think holistically about which ideas are feasible and what the time framesbe achievable for different feature sets. By working effectively with the Product Managers and Directors involved in the project to evaluate different paths, a solid platform core was delivered on time to meet the goals of the project.
Delivering workable software with changing requirements
Feedback from regular service design workshops were introduced the product roadmap. The Latero team worked with the changing priorities based on balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders, to deliver working software with each sprint. From a design perspective a balance was struck on delivering a useful working product and ensuring areas of integration were open for future roadmap as more input was received from stakeholders.
By providing effective and collaborative guidance we were able to ensure delivery for this important improvement for citizens.
The Transformation
Through the Building Permit Hub platform, it provides one key component in improving permitting efficiency across different layers of government.
Individual jurisdictions now have the capability to set up their jurisdiction and accept applications. There are layers of auto-compliance built in and more to be added to ensure that applications are more complete when they arrive for processing at local jurisdictions. Jurisdictions are now slowly onboarding themselves and the feedback from local jurisdictions and industry professionals has been positive.
For smaller jurisdictions that do not have an extensive digital intake process, this will provide a new avenue for them to get higher quality applications.
The Transformation
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