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Electronic Permitting Software

jeffc

Bronze Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2009
Messages
142
Location
Washington
Many Cities and Counties are embracing electronic permitting. We are in preliminary stages and are curious if you could share information on what brand of permit tracking software you selected, does it fit your needs, would you recommend the permit tracking software to others and any other things we should consider? Thanks
 
We are currently in the late stages of onboarding TRAKiT permitting system software. We are excited about the final product, struggling with some testing issues right now.

Go-live dates are June 5-7th......hopefully everything gets worked out and fixed well before that.

We soft-started electronic plan review first of February in anticipation of the TRAKiT system. We are using Adobe Pro for the mark-up software, could not afford to go with Blue Beam at this time. It is actually going pretty good, we should be fully comfortable with it well before go-live dates.
 
We had Iworqs in my last AHJ, Was pretty good once learned and inputted all the inspection lists.

Bigger AHJ i'm in now still in the stone age of pen & paper :(:(. Maybe some day!
 
We have used an in-house developed system based upon Filemaker Pro platform since roughly 1996. We are very happy with the results, and the functionality. One move we are considering making this year is to implement fully mobile, paperless construction inspections. Would really like to hear from anyone that currently conducts full construction inspections digitally. Pros / cons? Equipment concerns? Time savings realized?
 
TRAKiT is completely digital, it looks like it will be a HUGE time savings. You receive the daily inspections electronically, you can push them out to another inspector if needed, you result live from the field, contractor can find out immediately, you email a correction notice.

It is going to be great when we go live in June.
 
When I was using Iworqs it was a great time saver. Used tablet in the field, could attach pics. Send email and contractor could log-in and see pics. The only real complaint was some of the insurance on re-roofs wanted paper corrections because the were afraid the digital ones could be fabricated.
 
Trackit is web based. You need a secure and reliable Internet access.
It is a pain in my a55.
 
MYGOV.US is really good and easy to use and Highly customizable. Been using it for 10 years. I went through three others and this is the best I've used.
 
Based on y'all's experience, how significantly do electronic permit systems actually speed up turnaround / approval times for plan review vs. hiring additional reviewers & inspectors to help spread the workload?
 
Based on y'all's experience, how significantly do electronic permit systems actually speed up turnaround / approval times for plan review vs. hiring additional reviewers & inspectors to help spread the workload?

If you have a person that can monitor it every day and turn around the easy stuff same day,it is great...Plus the contractors can apply at midnight in their underwear..Thank God there is no video function....Large projects I do not believe there is a speed benefit for us, but you and the customer do gain the ability to see where an approval might be hung up at a glance as far as which department has not approved it...
 
TRAKiT is completely digital, it looks like it will be a HUGE time savings. You receive the daily inspections electronically, you can push them out to another inspector if needed, you result live from the field, contractor can find out immediately, you email a correction notice.

It is going to be great when we go live in June.

I'm looking at this one, too, and just wondering if you made your 'go live' schedule and how you like it, Fatboy?
 
We did keep to the schedule. We went with Version 17 which launched just a week before go-live.

It has been a bumpy road, we are still waiting for Superion to fix eTRAKiT, it is completely off line.

Which would be the huge time savings, especially having been hit by two hailstorms in 4 weeks, three total in the last year, the roofs are killing us!

I'll let you know when it is fully operational. o_O
 
In Norfolk Virginia we chose a cloud based permitting and inspection software. BasicGov which is based on the salesforce platform. Other localities around us went with a different software. To me BasicGov has a more user friendly platform. All of our field inspectors use their ipads to conduct inspections. Yes I would recommend the software to any locality. http://www.basicgov.com/
 
I still think it will be a great program, once they get the bugs fixed in Version 17.XX

We are worlds away from when I wrote this post. Still have one of my guys working about 1/2 of the time on workinng out little fixes here and there, but is is fully operational. Contractors love it, inspectors love it. We are launching version 18.2 next week, it fixes even more bugs.
 
We are in the process of designing a software package that will be linked to the GIS system. We are anticipating that we will be able to track ALL permits including building inspections, public works, planning and tax records and any other record that is attached to that property with just one click. We hope to roll it out in a few weeks.
 
I am currently using SmartGov in one of the communities and so far I am happy with it but told there are others that are superior. I need to find out which ones they are talking about.
 
We are using MyGov and it is a disaster. We finally convinced those upstairs to let us design what we need. We currently are in the process of having it designed by a private company and from what we have seen so far, its going to be awesome. One click and we will have all the info we need for a piece of property.
 
Many Cities and Counties are embracing electronic permitting. We are in preliminary stages and are curious if you could share information on what brand of permit tracking software you selected, does it fit your needs, would you recommend the permit tracking software to others and any other things we should consider? Thanks
I have used several electronic permitting and inspection tracking software packages. MyGov wasn't bad but had glitches the software developer simply could not fix and said we had to live with it or work around it. I used to work for IBTS, they were using BluePrince at first and it was so bad they worked with a software developer to create Praesus. It was a lot better but still lacked some things so they have now developed their own software and hardware platform using FIT (Field Information Tablets, essentially rugged tablets). I also used MyPermitsNow and Inspection Anywhere which was developed by South Central Planning and Development Commission in Louisiana. It has been improved and evolved into MyGovernmentOnline and I am implementing it for my department. MyGovernmentOnline is active in ten states now and has some great features, it will run on most any platform. I'm running it on my desktop and on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A with S Pen tablet that I can take photos on the jobsite and mark them up on the tablet with the S Pen and upload to the file or send to the contractor or owner as an attachment to the inspection results. We are the first jurisdiction to adopt MyGovernmentOnline in Colorado so I am working with the developers to tailor it specifically for Colorado.
 
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