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building dept software

S

Sterling Scovil

Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2014
Messages
11
Location
Burlington, Vermont
Hello gang ! What are you all using for software in your offices for plans review, permit tracking, inspections tracking, etc. looking for honest responses, pro and cons, etc. thanks. any one have experience with Plan Analyst, i used it years ago ('86 when they were first deveoping)? what about Iworqs? If you were setting up a dept. what would you use or recommend? thank you in adavance
 
Used plan analyst for reviews..was not impressed....for permit tracking look at the ViemPermit stuff from ViewPoint in MA...I have heard good things about it from depts down here and my limited use of it was very good...stay away from Munis if you can...That's about all I have...
 
We use MUNIS from Tyler since 2010 mainly because finance picked it. It has gotten better over the years.
 
Our software is custom and very pricey IMO. Also, as software gets older it becomes less and less compatible with new computers and servers. Something to consider before dropping a bucket of money on the next best thing.
 
Just stared using GeoTMS, very happy with their set up and support. about 12K to set up annual fee is sliding fee scale 3 to 9% of fees collected depend on volume. I can do notes in it for plan review it will doe permits on line and many municipal functions

http://www.geotms.com/

We had a looked a several programs, the cheaper one we had went bankrupted
 
McShan said:
MyGov is great. Easy to use and customize. Best of all it is inexpensive
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I'll second the MyGov vote. They had to customize a little to get it to work for us here in Canada, but didn't bat an eye. Support is really great.

Also, it is a SAAS product, so you just login via a web browser interface. You are always using the most recent version and none of your system resources get tied up. Recently our server died. While other departments sat around and did nothing, we logged in to MyGov and carried on as usual.
 
For plan review we use Project Dox from Avolve Software. I really like their product. Been using it for almost 5 years now.
 
We had GEOtms for just under 3 years and got rid of that last year. Purchased Access 2013 for all machines in the office and took the MPTS package from the state as a base package, and completely modified it, wrote lots of new code and built a software package that works the way we work...no additional costs to maintain and done. New features get added as time allows or as we need something new.
 
I've reviewed the following programs over the last 18 months;

Civic Systems

MUNIS, by Tyler Technology

WebQA/GovQA

TRAKiT, by CRW

LAMA, by Davenport

BluePrince

and Harris MSI

We currently have BDS from Franklin Information Systems, and are looking to upgrade.

One of my current complaints, is the separate databases used by Community Development (Building-Planning-Engineering), Finance, GIS, and WebQA citizen portal are all redundant and inaccessible to each other. The tech guys call these "silos" as each department builds their own data set, and no other department has access to it.

For example; when a new resident moves into a home, a Transfer Tax Stamp is sold, and Finance updates their database accordingly. This new information is not transferred to CD or GIS, without additional input. If Code Enforcement personal need to locate an owner, they need to go to Finance for the most current info.

With the recruitment of a new Finance Director in the past year, he and I have been working together to find one software solution we can both use. Unfortunately, the programs that have great financial ability do not necessarily have great permitting and inspection modules and vice versa.

In researching the products above, several also have a citizen access portal (aka, CRM). This could potentially allow for the online scheduling of inspections, permit application, bill payment, etc. This would turn our current CRM into a redundant software which could be eliminated. So now we start looking at an enterprise-wide solution.

A simple permit and inspection software has turned into a giant octopus.

So what does it all mean?

For our particular use, the front runners are Harris MSI, Civic System, and WebQA.

-Harris and Civic have excellent Finance integration, WebQA does not.

-WebQA is web-based, which can be problematic if/when the internet goes down.

-Harris, Civic, and WebQA have additional modules for remote/tablet access for field inspectors.

Pricing is comparable between Harris and Civic, WebQA is cheaper.

I'm still waiting to look at one additional product Finance has recommended, BS&A software. It looks promising from their website.

Regarding the MUNIS system that Jake is using, (post #7) it is very slick, very nice enterprise solution. Also substantially more expensive than the competitors.

With price as no object MUNIS or TRAKiT are top picks.

Otherwise, Harris and Civic are frontrunners. I still don't have enough information to comment on BS&A.

mj
 
mtlogcabin said:
Public works uses it in their department (asset management side) and we are in the process of bringing the permit portion along to go live hopefully in July
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That why I was asking, just found out today that Public Works is going there, and that permitting/development review was maybe an option. Just wondering if anyone has implemented it on those uses.
 
There is a lot of work that goes into setting it up. We chose to do the work in house in leiu of paying them. They use "Crytal Reports" to generate reports which is a strange way of doing reports. We just have to wait and see if it will do what we need.
 
steveray said:
"MPTS package from the state".......?
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MPTS is an Microsoft Access based package that was originally built by the town of Grafton MA under a grant, the state will allow any municipality that wants it to download it for free. When I got my hands on it, I found it to be very basic but functional as a way to track permits. What we did in house was to take the core of the package and build on it. We now have a package that is capable of tracking all permits and associated inspections and occupancies. In addition we are able to track all of our periodic inspections, complaints, vacant properties, etc. All of the "modules" interact in some way shape or form to make for a comprehensive application. We also have a report builder that gets modified as the need arises for something new It was actually nice to be able to sit down and look at our procedures and figure out how to streamline a process, or automate something to make things go faster. I do feel most of the packages available out there tend to be rigid in the way things need to be done and if something can be done "in house" I encourage it. I must disclose that I went to school for Computer Science and was given tons of room to "play" with what I was building. The results however, is we can generate a permit card and complete record for a project in under 30 seconds.
 
Here are a few more packages;

Municity from general code - tracks applications, inspections, certificates, violations, very flexible. The only real con is the reporting part for creating the forms can be very difficult to work with. I figured out the basics over time.

Pointsoftwares Permit Link - can track any form based application a municipality has, web based. Con is nothing delivered on time and not customizable unless you go through them

WAGSYS - web based software package, customizable, developer is former building inspector
 
Incode by Tyler: permit generation, permit tracking, inspections & tasks, reports. They have a code enforce program available and other programs that work with court, water billing and accounting. Several cities in the area are using their software.
 
I have used Municity for several years now and very pleased with it. It is a bit of a challenge to learn the ins and outs of it in the beginning but I suppose thats true of any new software but once you get the hang of it, it truly is a great program and pretty easy to customize. Customer support is very good as well. I would say its probably mid range in cost.
 
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