POPS: The future of development in Portland
Description
Vocal Characteristics
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EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
When Portland ER's have a development project, whether it's a kitchen remodel or a multi $1,000,000 high rise, they come to the Development Services Center in downtown Portland. It's the city's one stop shop for anyone who wants to build or make changes to structures. Each BDS Review group has expertise in jurisdiction over local, state and international building coats. Staff at partner bureaus such as water, transportation, environmental services and fire administer their own codes to right here in our building at BTS, we aim to provide efficient service and are always looking for ways to improve, which is why we have the Portland Online permitting system, or pops. Pops is making significant improvements to the systems used for development review in Portland. It will change the way that we do business, but it's not going to be like flipping a switch. With so many business processes, changing everything at once would be a disruption to our customers. Instead, it's all about making incremental improvements with pops there six improved functions that will be implemented, including electronic plan review, Web based customer portal and inspection scheduling and mobile APS for inspectors and customers. One of the largest projects led by Pops, is upgrading software used in the current tracks permitting system, which is a system we've used to track and manage permits since 1999. To understand how pops will affect customers, let's look at what the city does now permit technicians use a checklist to determine that the customers permit application packages complete. Once all the information is in place. The permit technician in puts it into tracks. Each permit application package has four sets of plans, with some projects. Plans need to be reviewed by more than 20 review groups. This can slow things down by having to route plans to four reviewers at a time until all of them have completed their reviews or the Concourse C expansion project. When we went to submit that project to the process manager, we had hundreds of pounds of material rolls of plans, boxes of specifications. So it took a hand truck and two or three helpers to lug it. All of this summer, Pops is rolling out electronic plan submission and review for a small group of our largest projects. We plan to expand to more projects in the near future. Elektronik Plan review allows all potential reviewers to look at plans. At the same time, they can count specific things like water fixtures and trees, and keep a digital tally to make sure everything is where it's needed on a plan right from their screen. They can also see the comments and markups of other reviewers, which will help avoid conflicts. We don't print blueprints and hard copy drawings anymore. Except for the city of Portland. You know there's a way to find out what your check sheet is. What are the issues you need to resolve and resolve it all from your from your desk? That's a fantastic improvement. Based on these first reviews, customers often have to come back into the development services center and make corrections on their paper plants. When the plants past all plan review groups, we issue a permit, which gives the customer permission to start doing construction work. While some types of permits are issued from our existing online portal, most types of construction permits need to have their fees paid and the approved plans picked up in person at the Development Services Center. Next year, Pops will be rolling out the first phase of the expanded customer portal. In this first phase, we will launch the ability for customers to pay, permitting development review fees, have expanded search capabilities and access to documents online. Time is money for all of us out in the field being able to speed up that process so that we can just stay on our our offices or under construction sites to take care of the things we need to do rather than coming down here is a great tool. Transparency for the public will also increase, allowing greater access to information about development in their neighborhood. During construction, customers need to request inspections along the way to make a permit final. Right now, customers call our phone system to schedule each required inspection. Inspectors start their day at 6:30 a.m. They print out a list of their inspections and input them into Google maps to organize their route. It could take an hour or more to set up their inspections for the day. Thanks to pops, a new automated scheduling system will optimize the routes that inspectors will take. These changes will help minimize time in the office at the beginning, in the end of each day, maximizing capacity to get inspections done in the field. Inspectors take notes and photos of different project sites throughout the day. Each inspector has their own system of managing paperwork for each of the inspection sites. At the end of the day, they type up all their notes into tracks and download photos from their camera to put into the report. This could take a couple hours to do, which is time they're not spending doing actual inspections. Pops will also roll out improvements so inspectors can do their work with a single APP. Inspectors will be able to access tracks on their phones and tablets, and when they're on site, inspectors can take notes on their phone. They could even take photos and videos that get uploaded directly into the new track system within the next year. Pops, who offer contractors an app to help them schedule on track inspections. They'll also get notifications for inspection results and concede those results write from their phones. I think that when people are informed, their less of these questions livin neither like what's happening with my plans or who's got amore, who needs to look at them or maybe it's my designer or architect or contractor who hasn't done their work instead of them thinking that it's the city that hasn't done their work. So I think it's gonna bring like a new level of information sharing and transparency that will that will kind of keep everybody happy. Pops is part of the city of Portland's efforts to put our customers at the center of everything we do. What do you want to build today?