Delaware, Ohio, Streamlines with Cityworks Server PLL

The City of Delaware, Ohio, has measured significant time savings and operational improvements from implementing Cityworks Server PLL (Permits, Licensing, and Land) by Azteca Systems, Inc., the leading provider of GIS-centric management solutions, to manage permitting and code enforcement. Because the City’s Public Utilities achieved great results using Cityworks Server AMS for traditional asset and work management, Delaware chose to extend Cityworks as their enterprise application and incorporate the GIS-centric planning solution.As one of the first sites to deploy Cityworks Server PLL, the City of Delaware is pleased with the many improvements to their work processes. The Planning & Community Development Department uses Cityworks PLL to manage all building permits, inspections, code enforcement cases, development applications, and approvals, as well as engineering construction processes. Taking advantage of the flexible and customizable nature of Cityworks, unique templates were configured by the City to support specific permits and case types, including tasks, inspections, fees, conditions, and pertinent custom data fields. City staff has embraced the program, and the department has experienced overall efficiency gains along with enhanced communication. For example, Cityworks Server PLL provides an automated system to calculate permitting fees, making this process more organized, timely, and efficient.“It is literally like moving from the dark ages to the enlightenment in trying to describe the difference between pre-Cityworks PLL and post-Cityworks PLL,” states Dave Efland, Director of Planning & Community Development at Delaware. “Before Cityworks, our pay-in report sent to finance each day took an hour or more to generate and reconcile and was somewhat disorganized. Now this report takes literally only a few minutes and is correct every time. Monthly reports that took the better part of a day to complete, using many data sources, now take just minutes from a single source. Finding case history and other relevant actions on a property that required hours of searching paper files and was nearly impossible, is now not only possible, but quick and easy to perform from the desktop.”

The Public Utilities Department has also seen substantial improvements and timesaving measures utilizing Cityworks Server AMS for asset and work management. Notable benefits they are experiencing include streamlining work, enhanced documentation, increased efficiency, and the ability to orchestrate and manage preventive maintenance. In addition, Cityworks has been very beneficial to the City Finance Director as departments are now able to provide actual dollar numbers on assets and work performed tracked in Cityworks. When setting annual budgets, they see real numbers instead of estimates, which is very valuable in budget planning.

“Cityworks provides Delaware with a system where we can input data and analyze it in a meaningful way to help improve processes,” summarizes Efland. “Cityworks has provided efficiency gains in many areas, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will continue to do so down the road and that we will find more and more ways to utilize the program.”

Read the full story on Delaware’s PLL implementation in the Spring 2011 edition of InPrint at https://www.cityworks.com/media/inprint/InPrintSpring11.pdf or view the Delaware Cityworks Video Spotlight at https://www.cityworks.com/media/spotlight.aspx.

About Delaware
The City of Delaware, located about 30 miles north of downtown Columbus, Ohio’s state capital, is the seat of Delaware County. As an independent community, Delaware retains its small-town qualities while benefiting from northward growth from the Columbus region. Delaware County has been the state’s fastest growing county for more than a decade and is among the top-20 fastest growing, wealthiest, and most educated areas in the nation.