Modernizing Cambridge: A Digital Transformation Journey in Planning and Building Permit Processes

Perry Group’s Digital Planning and Permitting practice has been working with a large number of municipalities to help them rethink and design modern, digital Planning and Permitting processes and practices, supported and enabled by technology.

We recently published some of our learning from those experiences on our website in an article entitled Lessons from Digitizing Planning and Permitting Services. 

In our recent project with the City of Cambridge, Perry Group Consulting worked with the City to help them enhance their Planning and Building permit processes. Funded by the province's SDAF program (Streamline Development Approval Fund), this work aimed to streamline Cambridge's Planning application procedures, Building permit processes, and related activities. With the housing crisis looming, municipalities like Cambridge are under significant pressure to accelerate their development processes, and SDAF funding was a step toward addressing this challenge.

Cambridge, who had long been utilizing the Amanda system for Planning applications, Building permits, and other Permitting and Bylaw processes, like other municipalities in a similar position, had a very long list of enhancements they wished to implement across the Planning and Building departments. 

Perry Group was brought in to help review and finalize the list of potential projects and prioritize them strategically to ensure that the City got the biggest bang for their buck - with a focus on streamlining, simplifying and automating activities that consumed City staff time and that contributed to delays for customers. Our team was also asked to help oversee the implementation of the prioritized enhancements.

We brought together leaders and staff from Planning, Building and IT, to understand their challenges, their ambitions, and the hot spots that they wanted to focus on. With this information, we collaborated to build a prioritization method to focus attention on eliminating the biggest timesucks in each of the process areas. This helped the team collectively see what potential initiatives were under consideration, and to organize and prioritize their project list to focus on the highest impact areas. 

With this work we  established a prioritized backlog of enhancements and features that the team could tackle in sequence. The priorities were adjusted midway to include new legislation and reporting needs from the Province. The agile approach allowed us to be flexible and adjust the work plan according to the needs. 

We divided the features into two streams, one for Building and the other for Planning, considering the specific technical and business requirements of each department. With two external partners assisting in the implementation process assigned to each of the streams, Perry Group led process design work, and coordinated the design and implementation of the new features and enhancements across all stakeholders. 

Our approach was flexible, nimble and agile. Through regular touchpoints, we gradually executed on the features, starting with the highest priorities and working our way through the backlog. Over the course of about a year, we made substantial progress, successfully completing 20 enhancements from the initially-identified list.

Among the significant improvements, applicants and developers can now apply for Planning applications online, check their status, and conveniently track progress. The Building permit application process has been simplified, and Building inspectors now conduct inspections using a mobile app, eliminating manual data collection and re-entry. 

The work wasn't just limited to digitizing existing processes. Using the backlog process, we were able to work with stakeholders to react quickly to the rapidly-changing landscape, reprioritizing the backlog to address new requirements that arose during the implementation, including new reporting standards mandated by the province.

There were several takeaways from this work. One is the importance of clear prioritization. Often, municipalities struggle with a barrage of requests without a structured way to prioritize them. By working with stakeholders to facilitate the development of an agreed method of prioritization, and then using the backlog to transparently prioritize and re-prioritize, we ensured that Cambridge's limited resources were allocated most efficiently and effectively. 

Moreover, the collaborative approach - with Cambridge's business leads, internal IT staff, third-party partners, and the Perry Group team working closely together as one unit - was instrumental in the success of the work. 

As we wrapped up our engagement with Cambridge, we left them with a significantly advanced situation from 12 months earlier, streamlined processes, and the methods and tools to continue to tackle future digital challenges confidently.

For more information about how we help municipalities position themselves for a successful digital future, feel free to get in touch with us here.