Survey to Report Savings from Application of

As you are only too well aware, building departments throughout the country are under increasing pressure to assure public safety in the built environment with diminishing financial and manpower resources. Adding to that pressure are the increased demands from elected officials and the construction community for more effective and efficient operations to support the additional requirements of homeland security and rapid processing of building permits, plan reviews, and inspections to keep communities competitive with their neighbors.

Faced with these pressures, a growing number of building departments have successfully applied information technology to one or more of their building code administration and enforcement processes. These processes include online permit processing, electronic plan submittals, plan tracking and reviews, licensing, and the scheduling and conducting of field inspections.

Established in 2001 to assist state and local governments in considering how best to apply information technology to their code administration programs, the Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age has generated a series of studies, information resources and other work products designed to assist building departments.

The Alliance has also identified barriers as to why more jurisdictions have not been able to apply information technology to their code programs. One barrier has been a lack of data on what savings in time and resources are being achieved. To address this need, Alliance partners, the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, under a grant awarded by the Institute for Building Technology and Safety, is distributing the attached survey to document savings being achieved by the use of IT.

Whether your jurisdiction has or has not applied IT to one or more process, we appreciate your taking the time to complete and return this survey to us by February 28, 2005. The survey asks basic questions about the costs associated with the production or acquisition of hardware and software and the resources those processes took before and after the application of IT. Even if you only have ballpark numbers for these costs and savings, that would be helpful.

Survey responses will be compiled in early March into a final report. That report will be released in late March and will be shared with all respondents and will be made available to jurisdictions as a background data resource to help ascertain whether or not to take similar steps. The report will be made available to Alliance partners including the National Association of Counties, U. S. Conference of Mayors, National Governors Association and the Council of State Governments.

Should you have any questions regarding the survey or its future use, please contact me at 703 481-2035 or by e-mail at rwible@ncsbcs.org. Additional information on NCSBCS and the Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age and its work products that can assist you in making decisions regarding information technology are found on the Alliance portion of the NCSBCS website at www.ncsbcs.org.

Thank you for your assistance.

Robert C. Wible
NCSBCS Executive Director & Secretariat to
Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age