Community Development Software

The Vendor is required to provide a community development software system for development review, permit issuance, fee collection, inspections, and historical record keeping or other similar software using a software as a service (SaaS) or hosted models.
- The City faces similar challenges to other cities of its size and views this community development project as not only a strategy for modernizing its legacy technology systems, but also to streamline business processes, implement best practices, and provide staff with a tool to better manage ongoing challenges in an ever evolving environment.
- Key items expected to improve with a new system include, but are not limited to:
•    Customer access portal functionality to provide customers the ability to submit applications, check status, or schedule inspections.
•    Enhanced system integrations to improve business processes, adding efficiency to both internal and external stakeholders.
•    Improved payment processing with multiple options, system integrations with the financial system, and full customer transparency.
- The City’s goals are that the platform and/or vendor will meet the following:
•    Integrated platform with public portal - Provide a modern, easy-to-use system that integrates Planning, Permitting, Plan Review, Inspection, Contractor Licensing, and fee collection with a public portal.
•    Security features Follow contemporary security practices appropriate for a government system.
•    Document Management - Provide effective, easy-to-use document management with the ability to implement mandatory retention practices.
•    Compliance - The vendor and platform will follow modern, secure, and accessible digital business practices including PCI-DSS, WCAG, SOC, and TLS 1.2+
•    Performance - The platform will be available 99.9% of the time, 24/7, and vendor will provide issue resolution at an agreed schedule.
•    Transition and Migration - The vendor shall provide training, existing trakit data migration, and testing / implementation assistance.
•    Planning module - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated municipal planning module designed with users in mind.
•    Plan Applications - Plan Applications module to allow complex customized workflows built to embody the City's processes with minimal frustration, maximum transparency for applicants.
•    Meeting Management - Integrate calendar, contact, and process information to efficiently manage notices, meeting deadlines, and communications.
•    Querying and Reporting - Provide a comprehensive yet easy-to-use reporting function for each module.
•    Permitting module - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated municipal permitting module designed with users in mind.
•    Permit data - Permitting module will handle data on contractors, fees, and permit histories.
•    Permit Applications - The Permit Applications module will allow complex customized workflows built to embody the City's processes with minimal frustration, maximum transparency for applicants.
•    Permit tracking/approvals - Track permits through the approval process, with appropriate notifications at each step.
•    Special events permits - Manage permits for events that require City review and approval.
•    Electronic Plan Review module - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated electronic plan review module designed with users in mind.
•    Mark-up tools - Provide, either internally or with BlueBeam integration, a modern, configurable mark-up system.
•    Version comparison - Allow side-by-side comparisons of different documents and submittal versions.
•    Mobile plan review - Allow for electronic plan review documents to be viewed from a mobile device.
•    Inspections module - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated municipal inspections module designed with users (employees, contractors, and applicants) in mind.
•    Inspection scheduling - The inspection module will manage inspection requests in a manner that aligns with the City's service goals and user convenience, with complex approval workflows and real-time customer notifications when appropriate.
•    Field inspections - Manage inspection assignments, rescheduling, and collection of inspection results, on desktop or mobile devices.
•    Inspection results - Handle post-inspection activities such as contact notification with inspection results, permit status updates, public access to records where appropriate.
•    Contractor licensing - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated municipal contractor licensing module designed with users in mind.
•    License applications - Automate the license classification process so the applicant spends minimal time and effort on forms.
•    Assessments and Fee Collections - The platform shall manage contractor licensing and registration fees, including fee schedule history, invoicing, and adjustments.
•    Renewal processing - Provide a simplified process for a contractor to renew an expiring license with minimal steps and paperwork.
•    Public Portal - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated public portal designed with users in mind, to handle permit and planning applications, contractor licensing, fee payments, and public inquiries.
•    Security-enabled functionality - Manage role-based access to appropriate areas behind username/password credentials.
•    Document uploads - Accept upload of supporting documents for each application type.
•    Public Access - Allow access to City-approved public documents without requiring user authentication.
•    Payments - Provide a modern, configurable, integrated cash receipting module to manage the tracking and receipt of fee payments from contractors and applicants.
•    Fees - Manage licensing and application fees based on a City-defined fee schedule.
•    Credits and Third-Party Fees - Collect taxes and fees, and track development credits, on behalf of other
•    City departments and external agencies.
•    Web-based payments - Support online payments for all application types in the applicant self-service portal.
•    Reconciliation and Reporting - Provide customizable reconciliation reports on all payment activity.
•    Interfaces - Integrate with a number of current City systems, including Workday, ESRI, and Google.
- System Requirements
•    The platform shall provide contextual, customizable help (i.e., field descriptions that are displayed based on the location of the mouse or cursor).
•    The platform shall provide data validation on entry.
•    The platform shall create error logs with detail associated with the error.
•    The platform shall provide configuration options for the level of detail that is logged in error logs.
•    The platform shall validate against address field entries to align with City address standards.
•    The platform shall warn a user that they are about to execute a multi-step process and ask if they want to proceed (i.e., to warn before posting a batch of changes, etc.).
•    The platform shall conduct a radius search and generate public notices and mailing labels based on City-defined geographic criteria for the purpose of providing required notification to neighboring properties of a proposed or ongoing project.
•    The platform shall send email notifications to designated project contacts at a City-defined time period to notify of the project expiration date, with the ability to turn on or off.
•    The platform shall display property information for all properties impacted by a project (e.g., adjacent property requiring notification).
•    The platform shall generate letters to property owners and others regarding projects (e.g., upcoming meetings, newspaper advertisement).
•    The platform shall provide a public page that shows all upcoming projects with links to their detailed project information.
•    The platform shall attach final actions (e.g., approval body direction/conditions) to applications.
•    The platform shall accept public comments associated with project applications including date, name, and mailing address through a public portal.
•    The platform shall generate notification letters to applicants.
•    The platform shall generate a checklist for submittal with project application defined requirements. (e.g. project Application = Annexation, the following documents are required for submittal and review.
•    The platform shall generate configurable meeting documents for any application that results in a meeting being held, with the ability for City staff to modify pre-formatted documents.
•    The platform shall track/search project by system and user-defined fields.
•    The platform shall generate maps and display map layers based on project or area selected.
•    The platform shall generate reports on any field or combination of fields tracked by the system (e.g., applications by submission date, average days for applications in each status, applications by assigned staff).
•    The platform shall allow electronic plan review documents to be viewed from a mobile or field device (e.g., laptop, tablet, smartphone).
•    The platform shall allow mobile users to download plans for offline access in the field (e.g., locally save a project plan set while connected to City Wi-Fi rather than use cellular data to access large files).
•    The platform shall allow sketching entry and editing on field device.
•    The platform shall perform full electronic plan review from a mobile device.
•    The platform shall work offline in the field and record actions which can later be uploaded to the system automatically once connectivity is restored.