Communities are constantly evolving and must update to meet new challenges. Proper oversight is essential to help foster safety, health, and longevity for cities as they are developing and redeveloping. From new builds to water infrastructure upgrades, the permitting, licensing, application, and inspection process plays a central role in supporting sustainable community development.
Cities, local governments and utility organizations are responsible for receiving, reviewing and issuing a wide variety of documents, including permits, applications and licenses. Keeping up with all the activities associated with permitting and facilitating community engagement can feel overwhelming, especially if workflows are overly complex, communication silos exist, or demand outpaces available resources.
To combat these potential challenges, communities such as the City of Rexburg, Idaho; Bonneville County, Idaho; and Great Neck Water Pollution Control District (GNWPCD), New York; have adopted Trimble Unity Permit and the Public Access portal to help streamline their permitting, application and inspection workflows.
Streamlining citizen requests via digital public access portals
Behind every project is an idea. An intent to improve drives projects from basement remodels to street excavation. Many people believe that the permitting process begins when an application or plan is submitted, but it actually begins much earlier. The purpose of permitting should be to help ideas become reality—to help a family build their dream home or to help a business grow and enrich a community. Residents and contractors need a convenient and transparent way to obtain the resources they need to realize those ideas. Efficient communication throughout the lifespan of a project is essential.
The City of Rexburg is one of many communities that have adopted Public Access to create an online portal (apply.rexburg.org) that allows residents, contractors and businesses to submit applications, schedule inspections, communicate with the city, and track the status of their projects.
One of the main drivers behind the implementation of the Public Access portal was the city’s desire to distance itself from a paper-based workflow and streamline its permitting, application and plan review processes. As Bret Stoddard, the building official for the City of Rexburg puts it, “We wanted to set up the best experience for our residents and contractors. We wanted it to be interactive and user-friendly. Our goal was to lessen our staff time, lessen confusion and streamline our workflows.”
The city completely changed the way they do plan reviews, receiving plans through the Public Access portal and utilizing DigEplan’s electronic plan review software to make edits and comments.
Permits, applications and plans are now immediately funneled and organized into Trimble Unity Permit when they are submitted, which kicks off the permitting process. Customers are kept in the loop every step of the way through automated emails, as well as through updates to their public portal account.
Permits, applications and plans are immediately funneled from the public portal and organized into Trimble Unity Permit.
Automating land use, zoning and permit application workflows
Public Access serves as the key that turns the ignition on the permitting, application and inspection process. Trimble Unity Permit is the engine that propels projects forward. It is a GIS-centric solution designed specifically to help organizations simplify, organize and track permitting and planning workflows from start to finish.
What types of permits can local governments manage in Trimble Unity?
Since implementing Trimble Cityworks PLL, now rebranded to Trimble Unity Permit, in September 2020 Bonneville County has completed over 600 permits through a straightforward process. This has allowed the county to receive, review and issue permits and applications ranging from construction and building permits to those related to flood plain, street excavation, certificate of occupancy and more. Cases are organized and prioritized by permit number and come equipped with customized fields that display information pertinent to the specific type of permit, application or inspection. Examples of custom fields include address, square footage, zone type, flood plain, water and sewer provider, and lot number.
When a resident or contractor submits an application, permit or plan through the public portal, it automatically populates in preset queues or inboxes in Trimble Unity Permit. This ensures that the specific type of permit or application reaches the right department and workflow.
The City of Rexburg, a college town that has seen considerable growth in the last couple of years, is using Trimble Unity Permit to chart a new way forward. They are leveraging the software to complete 38 types of permits, applications and inspections. They process, review and approve permits relating to land use (rezoning, changing comp plans, city annexations, etc.), construction (infrastructure, civil site plans, etc.), plumbing, hydrant use, street excavation and more.
Their extensive use of Trimble Unity Permit has greatly simplified their workflow and has allowed them to organize and track application, permitting and inspection data in one digital location.
Interactive dashboards show permitting and inspection work activities.
For Bonneville County, the robustness and customizability of Trimble Unity Permit was a driving factor in the replacement of their existing system. “Our legacy system was not doing what we needed it to. It would sometimes take up to 30 minutes to review one permit in the old system, and in Trimble Cityworks, now rebranded to Trimble Unity Permit, it only takes us 10 minutes,” says Gwyn Rhondeau, administrative assistant at Bonneville County. This allows the staff at Bonneville County to be more efficient and frees up considerable time for them to complete other important tasks.
Another Trimble Unity Permit feature that Bonneville County has found to be useful is the ability to generate custom reports. They are able to leverage their historical data and gain a better understanding of what is going on in their community by creating custom reports that detail everything from financial data on permits to what types of permits have been issued in a certain time window.
In the world of permitting, data is crucial and historical data is just one type that can be analyzed. With over nine years of Trimble Cityworks PLL, now rebranded to Trimble Unity Permit use under their belt, the city of Rexburg now has an expansive repository of historical location-based permitting data that can easily be referenced. “One good thing that we noticed is that the way that we do things today—going forward everything will be searchable and digital. When people submit things now, it will never be on paper. The sooner [permitting agencies] go digital, the easier it is to populate historic data and keep track of future data,” shares Stoddard.
GNWPCD has also benefited from its use of Trimble Unity Permit. With the help of POWER Engineers, they implemented Trimble Cityworks PLL, now rebranded Trimble Unity Permit in February 2021 to digitize, centralize, and streamline their permitting workflows and foster contactless communication and financial workflows between the city, contractors and applicants.
Their current permitting, application and financial workflows are more organized, and they have been able to leverage their data. “Using a system built for permitting is more user-friendly, provides greater functionality, and there are more opportunities for meaningful analysis,” says Michael Robbins, GIS specialist for GNWPCD.
Working off of the main panel in Trimble Unity Permit, GNWPCD has an organized view of cases and can fill out customized fields as well as issue permits. The ability to view project summaries and to view and print applications—as well as run Crystal Reports—in the same place has been extremely useful for the district. These features help them keep better records and ensure that cases are being completed. Thanks to Trimble Unity Permit’s comments section, cross-departmental and public-facing communication is more efficient.
GNWPCD has also been using the case data panel within Trimble Unity Permit to track engineering reviews on projects. Engineers are required to fill out hours and provide detailed comments on the specific cases they are working on. The ability to track engineers’ hours and work activities helps inform the fee collection process and keeps every department involved up to date on various projects.
Accelerating field inspections and municipal fee collection
Trimble Unity Permit has also helped Bonneville County, City of Rexburg and GNWPCD simplify and streamline workflows relating to inspections and fee collection.
Inspections are an integral part of the permitting process and help maintain the health, safety and sustainability of communities. Whether it is an insulation inspection on a spec home or an inspection of machinery in a wastewater plant, Trimble Unity Permit provides crews with real-time access to pertinent data, documents and forms. For example, crews in Bonneville County use Trimble Unity’s Respond to pull up data associated with the inspection they are performing as well as to complete inspections.
An inspector for the City of Rexburg, performing an inspection on a new residential housing development.
All three communities have utilized Trimble Unity Permit to create custom inspection templates that are filled out when performing an inspection. This allows inspectors to make comments that can be viewed by office staff as well as contractors and residents.
Fee collection and financial data can be difficult to stay on top of during the various phases of the permitting process. That is why organizations like GNWPCD have implemented Trimble Unity Permit and the Public Access portal to help manage and track financial data on projects. GNWPCD has employed a “deposit for cost” system of fee collection. Instead of collecting a flat fee, the district collects a deposit based on an amount determined by project engineers and factors like project scope. This deposit is used to cover activities like site planning, plan review and inspections. Any remaining funds from the initial deposit are reimbursed after the project is completed.
Trimble Unity Permit helped streamline this process by allowing GNWPCD to set up custom fees based upon the specific engineer that is working on the project as well as the hours that they are working. Fees have been configured in Trimble Unity Permit to reflect rate changes and annual raises. City staff and engineers are able to view deposit information on each individual project and can request additional funds if a project cannot be completed within the current budget. Property owners and contractors can easily make deposits on the GNWPCD’s open-access portal. Trimble Unity has also simplified the district’s refund process. Engineers have access to detailed financial reports and are able to process refunds more quickly.
The role of true GIS-centricity in sustainable infrastructure planning
In Trimble Unity Permit, GIS serves as a foundation that weaves through every step of the permitting, application and inspection process. Use of GIS is deeply integrated into the City of Rexburg and Bonneville County’s workflows. Both these communities have the ability to track location-based data on historic, current and future permits, licenses, applications and inspections by utilizing event layers. “One of the neat things we can do with GIS is use the ‘search cases’ feature when viewing Trimble Cityworks, now rebranded to Trimble Unity Permit’s maps. This allows us to pull up the historical data of everything that has been done in a specified area,” explains Young.
A secretary for Bonneville County viewing work activities on an interactive map.
The permitting and application process also has a tendency to trigger GIS activities, especially when activities involving asset upgrades or new construction occur, Trimble Unity Permit allows communities to easily update public assets, add new streets, and perform addressing.
Trimble Unity Permit serves as a catalyst for many communities to simplify workflows and is helping to support growth and planning, health and safety and long-term sustainability. It offers holistic solutions that keep pace with the growth and evolution of municipalities—ensuring that residents, contractors and businesses have the tools necessary to enrich their cities through safe development. After all, the true purpose of community development, permitting and licensing is to help communities grow by transforming ideas into reality.
