ALLIANCE MISSION STATEMENT:
Enhance the nation’s public safety, disaster resilience, and economic competitiveness by making state and local land use and building regulatory processes more effective and efficient through streamlining and information technology.
Founded in 2001, the Alliance is a public–private sector partnership supported by the FIATECH Streamlining Project and the State and Local government support activities of Robert Wible & Associates to reduce the amount of time it takes to move buildings through the regulatory system by as much as 60%.
WELCOME TO THE ALLIANCE STREAMLINING WEBSITE AND THE STREAMLINING IMPERATIVE
Over the past ten years, a growing number of jurisdictions, supported by forward thinking officials, the construction industry and building owners, have streamlined building and land use regulatory systems and where appropriate applied information technology to improve their effectiveness and efficiency; increasing energy conservation, economic competitiveness and disaster resiliency of their communities.
This is not about regulatory abandonment!
This is about spending both government and private sector dollars wisely. It is about increasing the efficiency of modern construction codes, rules and regulations and reducing the amount of time it takes to move a new building or building renovation through the regulatory process by as much as 60% annually saving both the private and public sectors tens of billions of dollars.
In the late 1990's and thru 2007, building owners, the construction industry and government officials saw streamlining and application of IT to their regulatory processes as a "good idea," with some 10% of the nation's 40,000 jurisdictions applying IT to some portion of their regulatory system. The current deep recession, however, has made such savings "imperative."
Communities have reduced their staffs, and they desperately need the jobs, and the revenues from taxes and fees that new construction and building renovations can generate. Likewise the private sector, with the reduced availability of construction loans and need to generate revenues as quickly as possible from the buildings they construct or renovate, needs to eliminate as much as possible time spent trying to move a building through cumbersome and inefficient regulatory systems.
THE STREAMLINING IMPERATIVE
Consider the following streamlining savings:
e-Permit Processing now used in over 500 jurisdictions across the nation ranging in population from Los Angeles (3,695,000) to Cobleskill, NY (5,300) reduce staff and building owner/architect times to process permits by between 30 – 40%.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems in Shelby Co., TN; Orlando, FL and Washington Co., OR reduce the time to schedule and conduct inspections from 2-3 days to less than 24 hours.
Mobile field inspection technology being used in cities including Phoenix, AZ; San Dimas, CA increase the number of inspections performed per day by 25% and reduce contractor down time waiting for inspections and their results by 20%.
e-Plan Review now being conducted in: Atlanta, GA; Bend, OR; Maricopa Co., AZ; Osceola Co., FL and a dozen other jurisdictions reduce the amount of time it takes to review plans by 40%, eliminate lost plans, and reduce by 80% the number of trips to these jurisdictions by out of state owners/architects.
Lastly, streamlined processes are getting buildings up and open faster, putting both people to work and revenues into the jurisdiction’s coffers sooner; for example a 200 room hotel open just 3 months earlier using streamlined processes with an 80% occupancy = $144,000 in added tax revenues to a jurisdiction just from the 10% occupancy tax on $100/night rooms.
While many communities are talking about having "shovel ready" projects for receipt of Federal and state economic stimulus funding in 2009, is the jurisdiction where you work as a building or land use official, an elected official or where your next construction project is going to be built "Regulatory Ready?"
PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE
This website provides elected and appointed government officials, building owners, the construction community, civic groups, academicians, the information technology community and general public with background on the need for and tools that they can download to help reduce the regulatory cost of construction between 40% and 60% while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of land use and construction regulatory programs.
The tools included in this site have been successfully used by communities listed in the Guides and White Papers that are available for downloading to help them both increase their economic competitiveness and strengthen the ability of their communities to prepare for, respond to and recover from natural and man-made disaster.
The resources provided here can be used to:
Assess if your community has regulatory barriers that impede both safe and affordable construction and assess the effectiveness and efficiency of your community’s building and land use regulatory programs to facilitate economic competitiveness and disaster resiliency (Guide_to_Building_Regulatory_Processes.pdf).
Provide elected officials with a "Streamlining Toolkit" that summarizes the benefits of streamlining and application of diverse information technologies to land use and building regulatory processes including: e-permitting, e-plan review, mobile field inspection technologies, interactive voice response systems, developing an action plan for disaster resiliency.
Look at the benefits of streamlining and applying information technology to your land use and building plan submittal, review, tracking and storage processes.
Identify and assemble stakeholders to undertake a successful streamlining of your community's codes administration and enforcement program (Guide_to_Building_Regulatory_Processes.pdf).
Inform you of upcoming streamlining conferences and workshops conducted by FIATECH, the Alliance and its partners' and provide you with registration information for those programs (www.FIATECH.org)
Provide documentation of cost/benefit/savings analysis of successful streamlining initiatives that have applied information technology to construction regulatory and administrative processes (Link to ROI_Report_May05.pdf)
Provide model information technology procurement requirements (Model Procurement Requirements from July 2006 Report)
Develop statewide or regional interoperable network of mobile field inspectors to conduct safety/damage assessment reports (California Project to Speed Safety/Damage Assessments thru Mobile Field Inspection Technology PPT)
Provide access to services available from Robert Wible & Associates to assist State and local governments in assessing their existing processes, designing and putting in place streamlining programs and technologies.
Of immediate interest to users of this site are those items listed on the left hand side of this homepage. A number of these materials have been produced with funding from Alliance members in both the public and private sectors including:
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; U.S. Department of Homeland Security; U.S. Department of Energy; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) Building Regulatory Process Subcommittee; FIATECH; American Institute of Architects; Associated General Contractors; Building Owners and Managers Association, International; International Code Council; Avolve Software; Accela Corporation; Infor; Marriott Corporation; Selectron; Target Corporation; National Governors Association; U.S. Conference of Mayors; and the National Association of Counties
The Streamlining Project at FIATECH, the Alliance Partners and Robert Wible & Associates hope you find the streamlining materials on this website and new materials that are currently under development (See "How to Get Involved in Streamlining") to be useful in your state or local community. We are especially interested in any feedback you can provide us concerning how effective you found these materials and this website. Your feedback will help us improve the quality of our materials and this site.
As the founder of the Alliance, Project Manager of the FIATECH Streamlining Project and Principal of Robert Wible & Associates, please feel free to contact me concerning this site, its products and materials. I can be reached at: (703) 568-2323 or by email at either: wible@fiatech.org or rcwible@comcast.net.
Sincerely,
Robert C. Wible,
FIATECH Streamlining Project Manager and President, Robert Wible & Associates
ORIGINS OF THE ALLIANCE FOR BUILDING REGULATORY REFORM IN THE DIGITAL AGE
The Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age, now working as the FIATECH Streamlining Project, was formed in the summer of 2001 by associations representing state and local governments and the building industry to identify and share best practices that streamline the nation’s building regulatory processes to enable communities to improve their effectiveness and efficiency by making greater use of information technology. Some of the Alliance’s founding members included: National Governors Association; National Association of Counties; U.S. Conference of Mayors; National Institute of Standards and Technology; National Association of State Chief Information Officers; American Institute of Architects; Building Owners and Managers Association, International; and the National Association of Home Builders.
To strengthen a cooperative working relationship between government and the private sector, in June 2007, the Alliance became affiliated with FIATECH, a not for profit association that serves as a consortium for the capital facilities industry. FIATECH identifies and accelerates the development, demonstration and deployment of fully integrated and automated technologies to improve the quality and life cycle of buildings. For additional information on FIATECH and the FIATECH Streamlining Project visit the FIATECH website at: www.FIATECH.org
ALLIANCE REVISED VISION AND MISSION STATEMENTS
Vision Statement: In Five Years Time
– Losses of property and life from manmade natural disasters will be reduced through an increase in the number of jurisdictions adopting and enforcing building codes with disaster mitigation provisions.
– the nation will annually save over $30 billion in unnecessary construction costs
– disaster recovery time will be reduced through the use of streamlined permitting, plans review and inspection processes
– public safety, infrastructure, technological innovation, and disaster resilience will be increased through regulatory streamlining which identifies and eliminates areas of overlap, duplication, conflict and inefficiency in the building and land use regulatory processes.
Streamlining is the MORE effective and efficient enforcement of statutes, rules, regulations, processes, and procedures adopted by all levels of government. Streamlining is NOT regulatory abandonment.
Mission Statement for Initiative
By 2012, working together the public and private sector partners of this national streamlining initiative will:
Strengthen national disaster resilience and economic competitiveness of the United States by identifying best practices and facilitating their implementation to streamline the building and land use regulatory processes to deliver services that make construction safer, more predictable, timely, and less costly through the identification and elimination of areas of regulatory overlap, duplication and the use of integrated technologies, processes and procedures.
Streamlining will:
– Annually save the public and private sectors over $30 billion in unnecessary construction costs do to regulatory duplication, time delays and other inefficiencies by reducing between 40%-60% the amount of time it takes to move construction projects through the regulatory system.
– Create greater enforcement uniformity enabling state and local governments to make effective use of information technology and link and use 3 & 4 D building design (as built) and other data generated by the building design and construction community.
– Create greater code and enforcement uniformity enabling state and local governments to work together on a regional basis to better plan, train, mitigate, respond to and recover from man-made and natural disasters.
– Identify and eliminate or reduce prior to disasters those Federal, state and local statutes, rules, regulations, processes and procedures that impede reconstruction, saving minimum of 3-6 months of recovery time.
