Mississauga ePlan - Catching up with technology

NRU
Oct. 7, 2015
By Geordie Gordon

A new online service in Mississauga is aiming to streamline the application process for building permit and site plan applications. The service, ePlan, would eliminate the need for in-person hardcopy submissions for those applications.

Mississauga business and customer service manager Jack Hinton explains that while the migration of city services online may not be anything new, the city’s ability to respond in kind is improving.

“What the service entails is an online delivery channel were people would create an account, log in, ... request an application and pay their fees. That in itself isn’t revolutionary. What is kind of innovative and new is the part where they would be uploading their digitally-sourced drawings as part of this application and [the city] would be doing its review in that same media, so there’s no paper. It’s a huge improvement from a customer service perspective, because they don’t have to come in here, that’s one, second, they can do it anytime, anywhere. It’s totally on their terms,” he told NRU.

Daniels Corporation development manager Carmela Liggio agrees that the service is an improvement from a customer service perspective.

“[Daniels’] head office is located outside of the City of Mississauga, [so] the ePlans system is a great option that allows applications and fees to be easily filed without having to come into the Civic Centre. This translates into efficiencies for the applicant. The benefits also extend to our consultants who can easily track the application, view the examiner’s comments and marked plans, and file revisions instantaneously,” she said in an email to NRU.

Hinton was quick to stress that the new service is not intended to necessarily speed up the approval process, but rather to enhance the ability of staff to respond to more applications in a given timeframe.

“As with most municipalities, we’re limited in our revenues and our ability to add additional staff when we have peak times. What we have tried to do ... [is] take advantage of technology to build capacity in staff , so that we can basically do the same or more with the existing staff complement. The tagline for ePlan is ‘not changing what we do, but how we do it’,” he said.

Hinton sees ePlan as a way for the city to play catch up with the industry when it comes to technology.

”That’s the way the world works now; we’re just catching up to this. The design industry and architecture and engineering have been in this media since the advent of CAD, and we actually have them dumb it down for us by printing it. And the challenge with printing it is it’s outdated as soon as it’s printed ... those drawings are a living document, they’re always changing,” he said.

The service is currently in a soft launch phase and is scheduled for council consideration October 21, with a full roll-out of the service anticipated early next year.