Give Applicants, Developers, and Staff Remote Permit Access and Flexibility with Cloudpermit

Paper-based or on-premises systems have limitations for applicants looking to apply when it is most convenient for them. Applicants often need to go to their local government office to submit a building permit application or pay for a building permit after sending over their application via email.

The District of Sparwood in British Columbia wanted to give its applicants and builders an easier and more accessible building permit experience, so the Planning and Development Department signed a partnership with Cloudpermit. Now, its 4,200 residents can benefit from a fully online building permit experience.

A big motivation to adopt Cloudpermit was to allow applicants to apply for permits without physically showing up in the office or needing to mail their application,” shared Patrick Sorfleet, Sparwood’s Director of Planning and Development. “We also have a lot of residents that work shifts in town and Cloudpermit will allow them to submit permit applications and book inspections when our office is closed.”

Users can access and use Cloudpermit 24/7/365 so physical location or office hours are irrelevant. Remote and flexible use benefits all involved parties, including developers.

Our many builders and developers have teams that are not local and work out of different locations in BC and Alberta,” said Sparwood’s Planning Technician, Santana Patten. “Now, they can all work together online so they can all be part of any needed authorization.”

Building department staff also have more control over their day when development processes are online.

Our Building Official is part-time and works remotely save for one day a week,” explained Patten. “Cloudpermit allows for more efficient permit processing and allows our Building Official to more easily schedule and prepare for inspections, and efficiently deal with permit review and changes that may have been submitted between his shifts.”

By having building permit processes online, applicants have a clearer understanding of what makes a permit complete with mandatory input fields to ensure a complete application is always submitted. So, Sparwood’s residents have remote and flexible access to their permits and can follow their permits from the comfort of home with automatic permit and inspection status updates via email.

Sorfleet and Patten both shared the same sentiment: With a small learning curve, they expect Cloudpermit will give their community a more convenient and transparent building permit experience.