The Alliance at FIATECH is a one-of-a-kind program to streamline the nation’s building and land use regulatory processes. It is housed at FIATECH, an industry consortium that identifies and accelerates the development, demonstration and deployment of fully integrated and automated technologies in engineering and construction.
The Goal of the Alliance is to share and promote successful streamlining actions to aid state and local governments in meeting the challenges of enhanced effectiveness and efficiency through the use of streamlining products and information technology in building codes, land use administration and enforcement programs. To Alliance members, streamlining is not regulatory abandonment, but rather, making our regulatory system more effective and efficient.
Project Contacts
Project Manager: Bob Wible, 703-568-2323 or wible@fiatech.org
Challenge
Working through its members who include the National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, U.S. Conference of Mayors, American Institute of Architects, Building Owners and Managers Association, Associated General Contractors and U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Alliance at FIATECH has documented that regulatory overlap, duplication and inefficiency contribute over $200 billion annually in unnecessary costs to the nation’s construction industry. Moreover, the Alliance has developed and distributed streamlining tools and materials that, when applied, have resulted in jurisdictions reducing the amount of time it takes to move a new building through the building code regulatory process by as much as 60%.
How much is it costing your community, company or organization to get your new or existing building’s design and construction successfully through the regulatory processes in your state or locality? How much can regulatory streamlining save you and your citizens and customers?
Our nation’s economic viability depends upon the timely production and distribution of products and services through an infrastructure that includes our nation’s construction and regulatory community. State and local governments responsible for oversight of construction are faced with growing demands to provide more effective and efficient services with significantly reduced resources while at the same time continuing to ensure public safety and enhance the economic competitiveness of their communities.
Working together in a growing number of communities the private sector and state and local governments are finding successful ways to overcome these challenges, including reducing the amount of time it takes to move a building through the regulatory system by 40 – 60%. Examples of such savings and improved services include:
- Louisville/Jefferson County, KY saved five man-years of staff labor and saved their customers 2-3 days of staff time by applying IT to its permit applications and field inspection programs.
- Los Angeles, CA used IT to reduce permit waiting times from 2-3 hours to seven minutes and cut plan review times from 10 weeks to 10 days for simple commercial structures. Through IT, the city was able to handle an 87% increase in construction volume with only a 2% increase in staff.
- Osceola County, FL during its implementation phase of electronic plan review is saving over 60 hours per month of staff plan review time and saving its contractors thousands of hours in unnecessary driving time (to drop off resubmissions) and plan rewrites.
- North Middleton, PA applied IT to their permit, scheduling and inspection processes and cut the time to perform these functions by 80%, saving them four man-years of labor.
Benefits
Member Project Participants
Avolve Software, Building Owners & Managers Association, Clark County, NV, DuPont, Intel, National Association of Home Builders, Salem, OR, Salt Lake City, UT, Target, Texas A&M, Wisconsin Department of Commerce
Membership in the Alliance at FIATECH will enable you to:
- Identify and eliminate areas of regulatory overlap and duplication.
- Strengthen building code enforcement and community economic competitiveness, sustainability & disaster resiliency by improving the effectiveness & efficiency of building and planning department programs.
- Build faster, better, safer and at less cost.
- Gain stakeholder support to streamline processes & make effective use of information technology.
- Speed the development, demonstration and deployment of fully integrated and automated technologies.
Membership services and benefits include:
- Access to detailed information and streamlining best practices and processes that enable you to enhance building code program effectiveness.
- Opportunity to provide direct input to the selection and design of new streamlining products and services that improve code enforcement.
Collaborating Organizations
American Institute of Architects, Carnegie Mellon University, National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, National Association of State Chief Information Officers, U.S. Conference of Mayors
Project Status
There currently are three major initiatives underway that you can participate in to help speed implementation of the FIATECH Roadmap where it intersects the nation’s regulatory system and enhance public safety and economic competitiveness of our communities.
Initiative #1: Develop & Gain a State’s Adoption of Regulations that Provide for Single Plan Reviews for Replicable Buildings
Twenty states currently have mandatory statewide building codes that cover commercial and residential structures. Under those codes, however, the builders of replicable buildings (buildings designed and built using the exact same plans) are unnecessarily subjected to repeated reviews of those plans by every local jurisdiction.
With initial funding support from Target, BOMA, AGC, Marriott Corporation and the National Association of Counties, this project is completing work on a preliminary draft of model regulations for single statewide plan review for hotel occupancies. FIATECH members are invited to participate and assist in the funding of this project to finalize the draft model and then expand it to include commercial and residential structures. This initiative then will work with one state to adopt and implement those regulations and document the savings that are achieved. FIATECH member, the State of Wisconsin is considering adopting these model regulations.
Initiative #2: Speed Adoption of On-Line Plan Review Systems – Documentation of Savings & Preparation for Acceptance and Use of BIM Data.
Where it has been applied, electronic review of building plans are saving building owners, architects and contractors up to 80% in staff time and related costs to submit and have their plans accepted for construction. To date, however, no state government has moved to this technology.
This project will undertake two specific initiatives to speed adoption and use of this technology:
- Select and work with a State to adopt and implement ePlan review & measure savings to companies and disseminate that information to elected officials in other states
- Accept the AGC’s invitation to establish within their BIMForum a work group comprised of building regulators to gain government use and recognition of BIM in the building regulatory system for building plan review, product approvals and remote field inspections
Initiative #3 - Produce & Nationally Distribute on CD-ROM - A Streamlining Toolkit for Building Owners, Managers & Construction Industry – “Tools You Can Use to Build Smarter, Faster, Better, Safer, & At Less Cost”
The Alliance at FIATECH has successfully designed and distributed streamlining tools targeted at elected officials. Those tools include a Streamlining Toolkit, model procurement requirements, and numerous white papers on the benefits of using IT. Recent presentations at meetings of BOMA and AGC identified the need to develop a Streamlining Toolkit for their members. These are companies that FIATECH identified in its “2007-2010 Outlook,” as FIATECH future target members: “Building Owners & Operators, AEC/EPC Companies, Technology Developers, Architects, Facility Management Companies and Equipment Manufacturers.”
Tools to be developed under this initiative will include: “A Guide to Working with Your State & Local Government to Improve Regulatory Efficiency,” and “The Business Case for Regulatory Streamlining” with links to the FIATECH website to download relevant streamlining materials.
New projects currently under development include:
- An Elected Officials Guide to Negotiating with Large Companies Moving into their Community
- A Regulatory Streamlining Pathway to support the introduction and use of new technologies in building design, construction, commissioning, operation, renovation, and demolition.
- Model state legislation/regulation to provide single statewide plan review for replicable buildings.
- Access to Members Only Streamlining Information Site to network and share experiences / best practices and information on hardware/ software.
- Access to Streamlining Jurisdictions Monthly e-Bulletin that highlights latest streamlining activities and benefits being achieved by state and local governments throughout the nation.
- Access to information on actions being taken by construction industry and capital projects industry to increase use of innovative technologies in building design, construction, operations and maintenance.
- Invitation to participate at discounted rates in FIATECH’s Annual Technology Conference and Showcase: Where the Best Get Better and our Annual Fall Member Meeting.
Project Deliverables
- National Model Document for Plan Review
- The Elected Officials Guide to Enhance Public Safety & Economic Competitiveness Through Using Information Technology in Building Department Plan Submittal, Review, Tracking and Storage
- Model IT procurement requirements
- National IT ROI data and surveys
- IT applications
- Peer contacts in jurisdictions that use IT
- Streamlining Toolkit for Elected Officials
- CD ROM that reports to Governors, Mayors and County Officials
Related Industry Research
Resources
Articles
"FIATECH Streamlining Project Brings Building Officials Into World of BIM and E-Plan Review." Jun. 2008.
"How Much Is This Costing You And Your Customers? The Pains and Costs of an Inefficient and Ineffective Construction Regulatory System and an Invitation to Address Them," written by FIATECH members Judith Passwaters of DuPont; Michael Alianza of Intel and FIATECH’s Streamlining Project Manager Robert Wible.
"Next Steps to Promote the Effective, Efficient and Resilient Regulation of the Nation's Construction Industry." 3 Mar. 2006.
"White Paper: On Best Practices in Electronic Plan Submittal, Review, Tracking and Storage." Nov. 2007.
Wible, Robert C. "Keeping Building Departments Ahead of Curve." Building Safety Journal. Dec. 2008: 12.
Presentations
SMARTcodes-Automated Code Complaince and E-Government, Dave Conover, International Code Council, Aug. 12, 2008.