Birmingham City Council

Overview

Whichever way you look at it Birmingham City Council certainly has some pretty impressive statistics when it comes to Building Control Services. A total of fifty surveyors split into three groups, South and North Community, and a City wide Commercial team all servicing a wide range of developments including the new Bull Ring Shopping area currently the largest building site in Europe.

Handling upwards of 5500 applications per annum naturally generates a high degree of expectancy with their many thousands of clients. Birmingham City Council takes a very proactive approach to improving the services they offer and set and achieve very fast turn around times. “By committing to and achieving fast turnaround times of one day to send out acknowledgement, five days to carry out internal checking and a full decision within two weeks we dramatically reduce the effort we need to put into dealing with customer enquiries concerning their applications progression” says Marc Crump Building Control Manager. “By working with our customers in partnership we aim to achieve an Approval in the most effective and flexible manner. The Submit-a-Plan facility is now a key component in our quest to improve the level of service we can offer.”

“As well as exceeding customer expectations we have the Implementing Electronic Governance agenda to comply with and again Submit-a-Plan provides an easy win ensuring that our services are fully compliant. It provides an off the shelf check box for Building Control to qualify.”

“A wide range of activity inevitably attracts a high degree of interest from private sector Building Control providers. This is a challenge that we have embraced and has helped spur us on to innovate and diversify the services we provide. The ability to receive and respond to information in a diverse range of formats is increasingly an issue for the industry in which we participate.”

Progress to date

Submit-a-Plan was first introduced to their clients through via their established customer panel where a local architect Kevin Bramwell Designs took up the mantle and piloted the system. Marc goes on to say “We were conscious the that we didn't want to open the flood gates to electronic applications and be unable to deliver. We therefore took a measured approach to rolling it out to a small number of customers to give us the opportunity to adapt systems and ensure that the electronic applications could be handled effectively.”

Since going live neither Kevin nor the Building Control department have looked back. “We quickly got to the stage where we had seventy five applications under our belt with no real problems to report. We have five seats spread across the different teams. Our surveyors have quickly got to grips with the new technology and can now readily access electronic applications, print off key areas of plans onto A3 for site purposes and collaborate electronically using email. There is no doubt that any change in working practices needs to be managed and with a step change from paper to electronic information a certain amount of cultural change will need to take place but this is something we feel we must go through in order to achieve the goal of improved services to our customers.”

The customer perspective

Kevin Bramwell reports that it “really is very easy to use and once you have created one application from then on it is plain sailing greatly improving the Building Control experience. Not only is the initial application quicker but also amendments can go back and forward electronically meaning in some cases approval can be agreed the same day. In fact I deal with two other authorities Cannock and Litchfield in the same way and would
highly recommend that anyone creating information on a CAD system will find it much easier and more convenient to submit applications using Submit-a-Plan than the traditional paper in the post method. We have had no problems to date and will be growing our usage to speed up our processes and in turn offer a quick service to our clients. I almost forgot to mention that the service is completely free of charge! Why would you not utilise this service?”

What's next?

“ We are now ready to expand the use of the service to interested customers and will be actively encouraging the usage of Submit-a-Plan where this is a customer requirement. Our objective is not to force anyone to submit applications in a particular way but quite simply to provide flexible service options to suit the varied needs of a varied customer base.