Planning, Development and Permitting Software

The Vendor is required to provide a comprehensive, integrated Planning, Development and Permitting solution that supports end to-end planning and development processes, including application intake, review workflows, approvals, inspections, and plan review.
- County intends to:
•    Align re-engineered business processes with out-of-the-box software capabilities to minimize customization.
•    Reduce system complexity and improve integration across the application landscape.
•    Enhance automation across Planning, Development and Permitting workflows.
•    Enable ease of configuration and long-term maintainability.
•    Leverage embedded or extensible artificial intelligence capabilities where they deliver measurable operational value.
•    Improve transparency, reporting, and data-driven decision-making.
- Project Goals
•    Cultural Shift: Support a cultural shift from routine, tactical work toward higher-value, strategic activities by equipping staff with modern tools and automation.
•    Increase Process Efficiency and Automation:
o    Leverage workflow automation to reduce manual, high-volume, low-risk tasks.
o    Utilize embedded Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, where appropriate, to assist with activities such as plan review, exception flagging, and prioritization—allowing staff to focus on complex and nuanced applications.
o    Enable automated, real-time data synchronization across systems to reduce errors and eliminate redundant data entry.
•    Seamless Integration and Data Flow:
o    Provide seamless integration between applications to eliminate silos.
o    Support document scanning, storage, and full integration into end-to-end workflows.
o    Ensure a unified data environment that promotes consistency and operational visibility.
•    Real-time Analytics and Reporting: Deliver intuitive, real-time reporting and business intelligence capabilities that enable trusted, data-driven decision-making.
•    Modernize User Experience: Replace legacy interfaces with a modern, intuitive, and user-friendly system that enhances adoption and productivity for both internal and external users.
•    Improve Transparency and Accountability: Provide robust workflow management, alerts, and notifications; clear visibility into approval stages; and comprehensive audit trails to ensure traceability, compliance, and accountability.
•    Ensure Enterprise-Grade Security: Implement strong security controls to safeguard sensitive data, transactions, and user access.
- Success Factors
•    Enhanced Service Delivery: Faster, more accurate, and transparent services for citizens and stakeholders.
•    Positive Public Perception: Improved trust and satisfaction with County services.
•    Higher User Adoption: Staff actively use the system, minimizing workarounds.
•    Improved Operational Efficiency: Streamlined processes, reduced manual tasks, and optimized workflows.
•    Increased Employee Productivity: Employees are empowered to focus on strategic, high-value activities.
•    Faster Data Accessibility and Accuracy: Easy access to a single source of truth for informed, data driven decisions.
•    Enhanced Stakeholder Collaboration: Improved coordination across departments and with external partners.
•    Successful Change Management: Smooth transition with minimal disruption to operations.
•    Customer Satisfaction: Intuitive system design and faster application processing enhance citizen experience.
•    Effective Training and Comprehensive Documentation: Comprehensive resources enable effective system to use and self-driven learning.
•    Strategic Focus: Teams spend more time on strategic initiatives rather than routine tasks.
•    Cultural Shift toward Innovation: Adoption of modern processes and technologies fosters innovation.
•    Employee Empowerment: Integrated, automated systems provide a comprehensive organizational view, enabling timely, informed decisions.
- The solution should serve as a system of record with integrated data, and consolidated reporting.
- The software must reflect industry best practices through robust out-of-the-box capabilities while remaining flexible enough to address the County’s unique operational needs. 
- The County’s preference is to minimize custom development and instead leverage configuration. needless to say, county expects ongoing support from the software office for regular product enhancements, releases, and improvements to both functional and non-functional capabilities, including performance optimization, security, user access management, and system integrations.
- Must provide timely issue resolution, proactive system monitoring, and advisory services to address evolving operational needs.
- End-to-end application lifecycle management, includes but is not limited to:
•    Application intake and validation
•    Application and documentation review
•    Plan review
•    Workflow routing and approvals
•    Inspection management
•    Approval documentation issuance
•    Community/constituent portal
•    Cashiering and fee management.
- Solution’s Desired Key Characteristics County is looking for:
•    Provides a modern, intuitive user interface (UI) that is device-agnostic, responsive, high-performing, and scalable.
•    Provide robust, pre-configured industry best practices that support end-to-end application processing, plan review, cashiering and portal capabilities.
•    Configuration should be the primary mechanism for tailoring the solution to County requirements.
•    Customization should be limited to areas where statutory, regulatory, or essential operational requirements cannot be met through standard configuration.
•    Built-in automation capabilities.
•    Artificial intelligence capabilities that enhance operational effectiveness such as intelligent document processing, automated completeness checks, predictive insights, or workflow recommendations.
•    Robust reporting and analytics functionality that is intuitive and configurable without requiring extensive technical expertise. This should include configurable dashboards and out-of-the-box reports that allow the County to monitor operational performance and application status in real time.
- System requirements:
•    Ability to support at least 150 concurrent users performing application submission, review, and permit issuance without performance degradation
•    Ability to scale elastically in the cloud to handle peak loads during high-volume submission periods (e.g., end-of-month or end-of-year activity)
•    Ability to recover a session abruptly lost on mobile devices or laptops 
•    Describe the architecture used for mobile access
•    Ability to provide native mobile apps for iOS and android that allow offline functionality for field staff, including inspection data entry, photo uploads, and signatures
•    Ability to synchronize mobile app data automatically when connectivity is restored to ensure real-time updates in the central system
•    Ability for mobile users to receive push notifications or email alerts for application status changes, inspection updates, or pending approvals
•    Ability to support multiple device types, screen sizes, and resolutions without loss of functionality
•    System includes an integrated knowledge base accessible via the portal and internal staff interface
•    System provides knowledge base content shall support searchable FAQS, user guides, troubleshooting tips, and step-by-step procedures
•    System shall allow administrators to update, add, and categorize knowledge articles without vendor intervention
•    System provide training for the core system functionality, workflows, document management, reporting, and mobile access
•    System provide advanced training for administrators and power users, including configuration, workflow management, business rule definition, and reporting capabilities
•    Ability to support knowledge base for in-context help, offering guidance based on the user’s current task or screen
•    Ability to provide or restrict access to the vendor's hosted/SaaS solution to an IP range (e.g. Country) i.e., geolocation login controls
•    Ability to enable/disable VPN as per county policies
•    Ability to provide or restrict access to data from other countries (including support/implementation resource location)
•    Ability to maintain blacklists / whitelists (e.g., geolocation through SSO)
•    Ability to set acceptable IP ranges for system access
•    Ability to encrypt data at rest and in transit
•    Ability for a field level encryption or masking available for sensitive data
•    Ability to support two-factor authentication
•    Using the comment section, provide details of authentication and authorization frameworks and standards
•    Ability to support single sign on
•    Ability to support multi-factor authentication for mobile devices
•    Ability to provide an audit trail of all transactions addition/deletion/change, including date, time, and user id
•    Ability to produce audit reports
•    Ability to export audits and configure retention within modules
•    Ability to truncate / purge audit logs
•    Ability to flag transactions not normally processed by a user.