The city had already licensed a permitting platform, but the installation was bare bones and completely unconfigured, and the vendor was too small to offer an established business process to configure it against. The people who would use it, veteran building inspectors, had no interest in giving up the paper forms they'd trusted for two decades. The real project was never installing software. It was building, from nothing, the process the software was supposed to run.
Case Study
A permitting system already existed. What it needed was a process.
A small city government had already licensed new permitting software, but building inspectors were still working from paper forms they'd used for twenty years. We built the workflows, training, and governance to move permitting online, entirely remotely, during the pandemic.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Government
Organization size:
~50-200 employees
Services:
Change Management
Digital Transformation
Enterprise System Implementation
Digital Transformation
Enterprise System Implementation
The Challenge
The vendor could sell the software. It couldn't tell them how to use it.
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No established process to configure against
The software vendor was a small organization without a standard implementation playbook, so there was no template to configure the system against. By the time a permit reached final review, fifteen people were completing the same core process in twelve different ways, and reconciling that had to happen from scratch.
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An experienced team resistant to leaving paper behind
Many of the inspectors had spent twenty years running permit checks on paper, a process that was slow and inconsistent downstream but familiar and reliable to the people using it. Moving them to an electronic system wasn't primarily a training problem, it was a trust problem, and it had to be addressed before any new workflow would stick.
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A fully remote engagement with no in-person discovery
The entire engagement ran remotely during the pandemic, with no ability to observe inspectors in the field or speak with contractors directly. Discovery relied on scanned paper forms and secondhand accounts from permitting staff, adding friction to an already unfamiliar process for a technology-averse team.
Our Approach
Building the process the software was missing, then configuring the system around it.
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1
Mapped how contractors and inspectors needed the system to work
Without access to direct contractor interviews, the team built journey maps and personas by working through permitting staff, translating what each side needed into concrete requirements for approval windows and workflow.
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2
Built the business process from the ground up
With no established process to configure against, the team used a structured framework to turn fifteen inconsistent versions of the permitting workflow into one defined process, documented in business process and workflow diagrams.
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3
Configured the system and defined the approval workflow
Working from the new process design, the team configured the permit portal and backend approval system, setting the rules for how applications, inspections, and sign-offs would move between roles.
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4
Trained every stakeholder and documented the new process
The team ran remote workshops for city managers, permit submitters, and inspectors, then delivered a training handbook and runbook that gave new inspectors a standing reference for running a permit from start to finish.
Value Delivered
Twenty years of habit replaced with a reliable way of working.
Replaced twelve versions of one process with one
Fifteen permitting staff were standardized around a single defined workflow, closing an inconsistency that had built up over years of individual practice.
Corrected address errors before they reached the system of record
Digital submission required address verification at the point of entry, eliminating the handwriting-to-transcription step that had been the primary source of permit errors.
Left inspectors with a runbook they could train from
A documented handbook and standard operating procedure meant new inspectors could learn the process on their own, without anyone from the engagement still involved.
Successfully deployed a system the city had already paid for
The city had licensed the software long before the engagement began. The work turned a bare, unconfigured instance into a system the city could actually run permitting through
Results that reflect the work behind them.
1
Training guide and operational runbook delivered to enable independent onboarding for new inspectors
20
Years of legacy habits and paper processes replaced with a single digitized system of record
6 month
Fully remote engagement completed from initial discovery through system go-live
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