The Canadian Cloudpermit Community Shares Key Benefits of Using Cloudpermit

Cloudpermit is a cloud-based e-permitting software that digitalizes the entire building permit process and allows it to exist in one digital space. It was made for Canadian municipal building departments with Canadian municipal departments.  

Cloudpermit is used by over 250 municipalities around the world, and in Canada, it has partnerships with the Ontario Building Officials Association (OBOA) and the Building Officials Association of British Columbia (BOABC).  

It helps municipal building departments issue permits 50% faster, conduct mobile inspections with all inspection data part of the permit file, improve customer experience, and reduce front counter visits by 80%.  

The Cloudpermit community has benefited from switching from paper-based systems to e-permitting.

Key benefits our growing Canadian Cloudpermit community has shared with us:

• Adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic
• All-in-one building permit process
• Fast implementation
• Streamline building permit process
• Reduce office visits
• Information portability
• Track permit status

Learn more from some of our Canadian Cloudpermit community below (we’d love for you to join our Canadian and global community, too).  

Adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

“Going to a digital format was on our radar; it was something we wanted to go to. (But) most definitely COVID-19 brought that timeline up quickly. It definitely brought the importance of a system like this to be able to maintain service levels in the event of a shutdown.”

– Dave Methot, Chief Building Official for the Township of Wainfleet from Niagara This Week, August 28, 2020

“We were trying to transition to remote work by scanning documents and using email to send them back and forth. This was much less efficient than keeping all our documents in Cloudpermit where we can access them in real time from anywhere. It is important to me that we are always improving our customer service.”  

– Dave Methot, Chief Building Official for the Township of Wainfleet

“It [Cloudpermit] has given us an important way to help our residents, and it has been especially critical during the pandemic when the building industry was allowed to move ahead, but the municipal office had to be closed.”

– Jonathon Graham, Chief Administrative Officer for the Municipality of North Middlesex

“Our team has been incredibly flexible and responsive to the new challenge. With Cloudpermit, we can access our permits from anywhere, so our staff easily transitioned to working from home.

Digitizing our processes was an important next step for us anyways, but the timing of the implementation has allowed us to adjust very smoothly during this pandemic. The helpful Cloudpermit team was able to install, update and support the system remotely with no downtime. In the first two weeks of the COVID-19 shut-down, we issued 40 permits online! It was an especially busy time for us, but we were prepared.”

– Debbie Anderson, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of Grey Highlands  

“Cloudpermit allows our inspectors to do a lot more of their work remotely.”  

– Karl Schipprack, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of West Grey

“We’ve been looking at some type of software in order to bring the building department online for a while and when the COVID hit it pretty much pushed us into that predicament right away – we needed to be able to take in permits electronically.

We needed to be able to issue permits electronically, we needed to be able to book inspections electronically.

A lot of staff time is being spent on going through all of the emails and trying to make sure nothing gets missed. So we needed really a piece that would help us with that at the beginning.

There’s a lot of large and very expensive software out there, but only large municipalities with thousands of permits can afford it.

So the good thing with this specific software [Cloudpermit] is it’s cloud-based, the provider is maintaining the system, able to update the system, we don’t.”

– Gerald Moore, Chief Building Official for the Township of Puslinch from The Wellington Advisor,June 26, 2020  

‍All-in-one building permit process

“E-permitting has put all of our documents in one place. The tracking is phenomenal. There are no more lost documents and all the files are current.”

– Debbie Anderson, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of Grey Highlands  

“We are very pleased with the time we have already saved since implementing Cloudpermit. It has really been an invaluable software that has helped us to eliminate our manual processes for applicants, builders and municipal staff.”

– Arnie Marsman, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of Middlesex Centre

“The introduction of Cloudpermit allows for enhanced collaboration between departments, more transparent communication with applicants and a stronger partnership with the building community. These changes will go a long way toward making Wainfleet a desirable place to build.

This is an example of Wainfleet leading the way with a fully automated system, and we’re pretty proud of that.”

– Kevin Gibson, Wainfleet Mayor from Niagara This Week, August 28, 2020   

“They are known to be a world innovator, especially in the area of cloud-based solutions, and for being very good at what they do. Cloudpermit approached the Canadian market in a smart way. They understand the full system and the required changes to processes.”

– Aubrey LeBlanc, Chief Administrative Officer for the Ontario Building Officials Association from Journal of Commerce by ConstructConnect, September 10, 2020  

“It’s [end-to-end data sharing] a main driver for the e-permitting initiative. Every municipality has its own accountability, but we all have to meet provincial guidelines under the building code regarding how quickly we issue building permits. At a collective level, a number of enterprises and entities care about the big picture too. For example, MPAC, Terranet and CMHC care a lot about the consistency of data.”

– Aubrey LeBlanc, Chief Administrative Officer for the Ontario Building Officials Association from Journal of Commerce by ConstructConnect, September 10, 2020 

‍Fast implementation

“Cloudpermit and Middlesex County IT team were really in sync and proactive. They got the system up and running very fast [3 days].”

– Jonathon Graham, Chief Administrative Officer for the Municipality of North Middlesex

“I am amazed by how easy the system is to use and how fast we were able to get up and running [4 weeks]. The Cloudpermit team was very responsive and helpful. I would enthusiastically recommend them to any municipality.”

– Travis Toms, Chief Building Official for the Township of North Kawartha

“When Cloudpermit was implementing it, there was no downtime. They were very helpful and professional. We’ve now added our finance, planning, public utilities and fire departments to the system. It’s a time-saver for all parties involved.”

– Debbie Anderson, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of Grey Highlands

‍Streamline building permit process

“The building officials’ work impacts the consumers and citizens. We chose Cloudpermit as our digital partner to develop initiative focusing towards the digitization of BOABC’s core functions and to establish more business opportunities.”

– Manjit S. Sohi, Chief Administrative Officer for the Building Officials Assocation of British Columbia  

“The OBOA has always been committed to supporting our members as they strive to improve building permit services for homeowners, builders and developers, while also streamlining the processes within their municipal departments

This collaboration with Cloudpermit enables us to provide our members with an avenue to e-permitting and contributes to the overarching mandate by the Provincial government to move towards electronic service delivery of provincial and municipal services.”

– Grant Brouwer, President of the Ontario Building Officials Association

‍Reduce office visits

“With our substantial land mass, it can be an hour round trip for people who live in the area. We also have a lot of out-of-town contractors who have to drop by the office. Cloudpermit makes it much easier for them. Of course, they can also apply outside of business hours.”

– Dave Methot, Chief Building Official for the Township of Wainfleet  

“We have one contractor in the area who submits a new application nearly every week. It took him much longer when we did not have e-permitting. He no longer has to visit the office, so he is very pleased with the new system.”  

– Karl Schipprack, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of West Grey

‍Information portability

“Builders care about the portability of their information,” continued Leblanc. “If they are filing an application with Municipality A and they are building to the same design next door in Municipality B, the ability to have the information bounced over from one to the other has a lot of appeal.”

– Aubrey LeBlanc, Chief Administrative Officer for the Ontario Building Officials Association from Journal of Commerce by ConstructConnect, September 10, 2020 https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/technology/2020/09/inside-innovation-building-officials-in-ontario-and-b-c-lead-drive-to-e-permitting

‍Track permit status

“All the files are attached to the record and everyone can track a permit’s status in real time. It is so much more efficient and transparent. We have also decided to scan our active permits from before the implementation into the system. They still have their original permit numbers and we can easily append new documents to the files like site plans or conservation authority approvals.”

– Debbie Anderson, Chief Building Official for the Municipality of Grey Highlands