A Public - Private Partnership to Enhance the Nation's Public Safety and Economic Competitiveness.

Welcome to the Alliance Streamlining Website!

Annually state and local governments and the construction industry waste over $15 billion dollars in staff time processing by hand, building permit applications rather than processing those applications over the internet making this service available - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

The Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age, also now known as the FIATECH Streamlining the Building and Land Use Regulatory Processes Project, was formed in the summer of 2001 by associations representing state and local governments, and the construction industry to identify and share best practices that streamlining the nation’s building regulatory process and enable communities to improve their effectiveness and efficiency by making greater use of information technology. Some of the Alliance’s founding members include: National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, American Institute of Architects, Building Owners and Managers Association, and the National Association of Home Builders. (List of Alliance members)

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. (News Release announcing the new Alliance – FIATECH relationship).

Purpose of this Website

This website provides elected and appointed government officials, the construction community, civic groups, information technology firms, academicians and the general public with background on streamlining and tools to help reduce the regulatory cost of construction by between 40% and 60% while increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of code enforcement.

The tools included on this site have been successfully used by the communities listed in this site, helping them both increase the economic competitiveness of their community and also strengthening the ability of their community to prepare for respond to and recover from natural and man-made disasters.

The resources provided on this site can be used to:

Assess if your community has regulatory barriers that impede both safe and affordable construction. (Guide_to_Building_Regulatory_Processes.pdf)

Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of your community’s building codes administration and enforcement programs to facilitate economic competitiveness and ability to better prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters. (Guide_to_Building_Regulatory_Processes.pdf)

Identify and assemble stakeholders to undertake a successful streamlining of your community’s codes administration and enforcement programs. (Guide_to_Building_Regulatory_Processes.pdf)

Inform you of upcoming streamlining conferences and workshops conducted by the Alliance and its partners and providing you with registration materials. (Link to Conference General Information)

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 )

Provide contacts in communities that will share their streamlining and information technology best practices and expertise.

Of immediate interest to you on 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 (HUD);  U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), White House of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP)  Building Regulatory Process Subcommittee;  American Institute of Architects (AIA); Institute for Building Technology and Safety (IBTS) and Hansen Information Technologies.
 
In addition the new Streamlining Toolkit included on our website has been funded by: AIA, the National Association of Counties, U.S. Conference of Mayors, Building Owners and Managers Association International, National Association of Home Builders and Target Corporation.

The Alliance’s February 15-16, 2007 National Streamlining Conference (see National Streamlining Conference Report) also approved the development of: model plans review documents for replicable buildings; a guide for elected officials on how to negotiate with large corporations moving into their jurisdiction; and an Elected Officials Guide to Electronic Plan Submittal, Review and Tracking. These tools are now under development and will be released by the Alliance in the late fall of 2007.

The members of the Alliance hope you find the streamlining materials on this website and the new materials that are now 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 that you can provide us regarding your streamlining experience and how effective you found our streamlining materials to be in your community or state. Your feedback will help us improve the quality of our materials. Your suggestions for other streamlining tools also will be greatly appreciated.

As Secretary to the Alliance and Manager of the FIATECH Project to Streamline Building and Land Use Regulatory Processes, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions concerning the Alliance, work products and materials  found on this site, or if you believe that we can be of assistance to your state or community.  I can be reached by email at rcwible@comcast.net or by phone at   703-568-2323 or by fax at 703-620-0015.

Sincerely,

Robert C. Wible,
Alliance Secretary / FIATECH Project Director and President, Robert Wible & Associates

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.