How the City of Airdrie's Building Inspection Team Traded Paper for iPads
Before the City of Airdrie, Alta.’s building inspectors made the leap from paper to mobile devices in 2017, its 18-person team – made up of 10 inspectors and eight administrative staff – had printed about 50,000 building inspection reports (two per inspection conducted) and generated about 22,000 letters including commercial permits, permit service reports, permit expiration notices, and permanent occupancy letters.
Today, only the permit service reports are printed. Everything else is emailed.
According to City of Airdrie applications analyst Melissa Chouinard, the city (population 65,000) is still on track to conduct around 25,000 building inspections and generate another 22,000 letters this year, but rather than being committed to paper and mailed out or filed away, most of the documents will be saved on the CityView municipal software platform, where any worker with a valid account can access them.
“Paper works,” Chouinard said during a presentation at the 2018 MISA Prairies conference in Red Deer, Alta. on May 8, 2018. “Lots of people still use it. But we wanted to be better than that.”
Melissa Chouinard goes on to speak about the time saved, the four steps from paper to iPad, what the transformation has meant for the City, and the lessons learned.
Ready to find out how iPads saved the City of Airdrie's building inspection team 430 hours in the first quarter of 2018 alone?
This article was originally published Municipal Interface in June 2018.