Smarter Impact Management Captures More Money

At a Glance: Prince William County, Virginia

Located on the Potomac River, Prince William County is home to more than 430,000 residents, making it Virginia’s second-most populous county.

Challenges:

• Lost fees due to manual monitoring of impact conditions
• Tedious manual research

Solution:

• Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise Permitting & Licensing Impact Management module

Results:

• Eliminated manual research and processes for monetary and non-monetary conditions
• Increased collection of fees
• Achieved faster resolution of conditions

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When Rosa Moran and the staff at Prince William County, Virginia, began their search for a new community development and impact management solution, they were faced with a familiar problem among county governments: aging technology that was no longer able to meet their needs.

Operating on a 15-year-old legacy system, the county began looking for a solution that could serve as a “one-stop shop.”

“We wanted a solution that we could turn to for everything we needed – all of the services we needed without a third-party intervention,” Moran explained. “We also wanted a geocentric application. Something that would integrate with our GIS application and provide us with a way to perform actions using a spatial location as opposed to us relying on parcel numbers and addresses.”

The county’s research quickly pointed them in the direction of Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise Permitting & Licensing solution.

Automated, Spatially-Linked Software Enhances Efficiency

Serving Virginia’s second-most populous county, Prince William’s Department of Development Services leads the region’s many development projects, from home improvement and new commercial construction to plan review, bonds, and permitting. Understandably, the department needed tools to enable its staff to operate efficiently and ensure development was completed in a timely manner and that it complied with all county and state requirements. Moran said one of the areas they focused on was improving impact management.

“Our old system was extremely manual,” Moran said. “First of all, we didn’t monitor non-monetary conditions at all in the old system. It totally relied on the end user to research and see if certain conditions applied or not, and then we would have to continuously check. For monetary conditions, it was depending on parcel numbers. If the parcel number changed then it was no longer linked to an impact and at that point there was a potential of losing that fee.”

Armed with a list of requirements, Moran and the staff at Prince William County worked directly with a developer at Tyler to design and implement Tyler’s Enterprise Permitting & Licensing Impact Management module, a tool used to monitor both monetary and non-monetary impact conditions. Leveraging their new technology, the county is now able to create spatially-linked cases and associate conditions to each case, which are automatically triggered at certain points in the development process.

Moran explained that as a permit or plan is being processed and it has met all of the requirements for an impact condition, monetary fees will automatically be added to the fees tab of the permit plan within the module, and non-monetary fees are added to the condition tab. At that point, county staff members can process those conditions, either by receiving payment or indicating whether or not those conditions were satisfied.

“In EnerGov [Enterprise Permitting & Licensing], the Impact Management Module doesn’t rely on parcel numbers or addresses. It’s totally spatial,” Moran said. “And you never have to rely on manual checks to see, ‘Oh, is this non-monetary fee really due at this point in the process,’ because it will automatically appear on the case when it hits that point in the process. The fees get put on each case when it needs to be paid and you never have to worry about parcel number or address changes, which helps us inform the public in a timely manner.”

New Module Increases Collections, Takes the Guess Work Out of Condition Monitoring

Since implementing the Impact Management Module in November 2014, Prince William County is now able to collect monetary fees in more locations, thereby increasing their overall collections and enhancing staff productivity.

“[Enterprise Permitting & Licensing] EnerGov is perfect for monetary conditions,” Moran said. “Fees always used to only be collected on the building development side for building permits, the land side for site permits. Now, the fees can be collected at all areas because it will show up in the system associated with their permit or plan. For the staff, it has worked out great. They’re able to do their jobs easier and more efficiently. It has taken a lot of the guess work out of monitoring conditions.”

In the future, Moran said she and the staff at Prince William County hope to continue to grow with Tyler and Enterprise Permitting & Licensing through implementing eReviews and participating in focus groups to share ideas about product enhancements.

“What makes EnerGov [Enterprise Permitting & Licensing] different is the people behind the product,” Moran said. “They are working hard to make it the best product it can be. I truly believe that. I would recommend EnerGov [Enterprise Permitting & Licensing] to anyone.”