The "Building" product contains the following features to enhance your user experience in the building workflow:
Pre-Consultation
The purpose of pre-consultation is to allow the applicant to review their building proposal with municipal building authorities and other key stakeholders, as applicable, when the building proposal is preliminary.
This allows for the early detection of problems, constraints, and opportunities in the construction project. Pre-consultation is typically optional for building applicants. Local governments, on the other hand, may require it for specific building application types.
The pre-consultation procedure is as follows in Cloudpermit:
- Applicants use Cloudpermit to request a pre-consultation.
- One or more meetings between the parties are usually held during the pre-consultation. Municipal building authorities create these meeting invitations and agendas and send them to the appropriate parties in the Cloudpermit "Pre-Consultation" workspace.
- Following the pre-consultation, the municipal building authority prepares a draft application for the applicants in the "Application" workspace. In addition, a pre-consultation report is made available to all stakeholders in the "Pre-Consultation" workspace.
Application Review
Municipal authorities evaluate each building application and its plans after they are submitted.
- The application review may contain circulation rounds for third-party organizations, like fire or gas departments, arranged through the "Circulation" workspace.
- If the application requires additional reviews, such as architectural plans or zoning reviews, municipal authorities request them in the "Reviews" workspace and assign them to available reviewers.
- The trusted reviewer evaluates the building application's forms and attachments and enters the review outcome into Cloudpermit.
- A change request will be used to request changes to forms and attachments in the application. Applicants will be notified of them in their "Tasks and Requests" section of the dashboard.
Circulation
Municipal authorities solicit comments and approvals for the application from internal and external third-party organizations and agencies, such as fire, water, and sewerage departments. i.e., the application is in circulation.
The authority fills out the circulation request and submits it to the selected third-party organization in the application workspace's "Circulation" section, where the circulation outcome will be saved and published for all stakeholders in the application.
Inspections
A building inspection is a thorough examination by a qualified contractor or inspector. It usually includes the foundation, plumbing, electrical, roof, heating, and air conditioning systems.
Cloudpermit enables municipalities to determine which inspections are required for each application type. These inspections are displayed in the application workspace's "Inspections" section.
The inspection process is as follows in Cloudpermit:
- Applicants request inspections through the "Inspections" feature of their application, selecting the date and time of the inspection.
- The inspection request will be routed to the municipality's appropriate inspector, who will perform the inspection on-site at the scheduled date and time.
- Inspectors can access all permit information, property contact information, approved drawings, reports, and previous inspection data during on-site visits using Cloudpermit. They can take and upload photos, create reports for construction deficiencies and remarks, and prepare orders using various preconfigured templates.
- Inspectors record the visit result and publish it as a PDF in Cloudpermit after the on-site inspection visit. These results are instantly available to applicants, municipal building authorities, and other application stakeholders on any connected mobile device.
Fees Management
The "Fees Management" feature allows payments in person or online via third-party integrations in the application's "Fees and Payments" section. Cloudpermit generates and emails a PDF invoice and receipt to applicants.
The integrated online payment solution provides the following benefits:
- Online payment significantly reduces on-premises cash payments because applicants can safely make payments online 24/7 and benefit from greater transparency.
- The permit delivery to the application happens online immediately after acknowledgment of the permit payment.
Report Management
This feature allows municipalities to export customizable data for permits, payments, inspections, and review data. It also provides for automatic assessment reporting for specific regions.
Reporting data such as processing time, review, and inspection reports helps municipal authorities improve their building processes.