Featuring the City of Penticton’s Building and Permitting Manager, Ken Kunka
On June 21, 2023, the City of Penticton’s Building and Permitting Manager, Ken Kunka, joined our webinar, Easy Permitting in Penticton: Cloudpermit & Tempest Prospero Integration, to share his perspective and experience integrating Cloudpermit and Tempest Prospero. He was also joined by Cloudpermit’s Country Director for Canada, Aubrey LeBlanc, and Implementation Specialist, Shak Gobért. They shared their expertise, gave a software demo, and hosted a Q&A session.
Please check out our brief webinar summary and fill in your information to watch the entire webinar to see for yourself how the two systems work together for improved success.
Key Cloudpermit Benefits:
- Accept, review, and issue building permits
- Schedule building inspections
- Conduct remote inspections and inspections in the field
- Dispatch and manage multiple inspectors/inspections
- Use maps integrated with GIS to find locations and plan routes
- Change and modify workflows
- Enable online and over-the-counter payments
About Ken Kunka:
- Ken Kunka, AScT, RBO
- 13 years as a City Building & Permitting Manager
- 28 years as a Building Official
- 8 Municipal and Regional District Authorities
- Operated Design and consulting business
- BOABC education volunteer
- Pro – communication, systems, collaboration, and continuous improvements
Background on the City of Penticton:
- Fast growing community within the interior of British Columbia of over 35K residents
- 10 full-time Building and Enforcement staff – looking to grow
- Mix of residential, commercial, and industrial development
- Average 800 building/plumbing/HVAC permits
- Average 4200 inspections/year
- Started using Cloudpermit at the start of 2023
- Uses online building permitting for efficient land management and customer service
- Integrated Tempest Prospero and Cloudpermit for optimal community development
Why Move to the Cloud?
Kunka explained they had several reasons for moving to the cloud such as operating as an essential service in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing challenges with existing systems, and concerns about malware risks.
We were concerned about exposure to malware and viruses as we saw some other communities get hit with that. So, a lot of the emails, even though they’re going through a server, there’s a chance for that. So again, the cloud was the way to go for us.”
He shared that emails were also impacting collaboration.
We had a limited customer interface, mostly through emails, which limited the transparency and consistency between staff members and a multi-staff department,” shared Kunka.
Cloudpermit has helped him respond faster to builders since the discussions are in one place.
Permit and Data Management Juggling
In this webinar, Kunka shared how Penticton’s systems were set up and at times requires builders trying to confirm if their information was received or not.
After explaining how permits are submitted to Penticton via email, Kunka said:
Our inspector has to open it, review it, and then put it on their desktop, then drag it to Tempest, rename it, and make sure it goes in the right spot.”
Why Cloudpermit?
Cloudpermit was selected from an RFP as Penticton’s new software provider as it can enhance and tie into their existing systems like Tempest Prospero, has a full self-user interface 24/7, and can improve internal and external referrals.
I think it’s going to be a huge tool for our developers. They’re going to use it to manage their own projects, and can see what is in, on hold, requires payment, active, and requires inspections and documents.”
Kunka concluded that Cloudpermit will be a huge tool for Penticton’s customer service.
Watch the rest of the webinar by filling out the form on this page to learn how Cloudpermit and Tempest Prospero work together from Kunka’s perspective. There is also a software demo in the full webinar.
