Municipalities move to electronic submissions
The past two years has pushed most municipalities to move to electronic online submissions. From our perspective it has been mostly positive for both applicants and reviewers. Positives include a reduction in the use of paper, no more lost submissions, better record keeping, and higher productivity for most types of reviews.
Negatives include challenges for those in the business who have not embraced technology, fewer opportunities for face to face meetings (although some may add this to the list of positives), slower response times for some processes.
As the applicant on behalf of our clients, we embrace the new normal. We can accomplish more work in less time for our clients. Although wait times may not have decreased significantly we are able to offer a better product at a lower cost to the client. Under the old system of paper submission we were required to go to the city in person, paper plans in hand, and wait for update 90 minutes to submit a project for review. Additionally, we would be limited to three submissions per meeting.
Today we can submit as many projects per day for review as we like and without the 90 minute billable to the client wait time for a submission meeting. One may think we would be disappointed to lose all that potential billable time but CleanTag is never disappointed when the end result is a better product at a lower cost to our client base. We have always been committed to simplifying the complex and the switch municipalities are making to a completely electronic process, is helping us to fulfill our mission.