The City of Calgary's initiative to improve the efficiency of its building inspection process has earned Alberta's largest city recognition from the Canadian Information Productivity Awards (CIPA) this year.
The city's Single Construction Permit initiative was a result of collaboration among Calgary's Development and Building Approvals department, Building Regulations department and the Calgary Region Home Builders Association, according to David Price, the city's manager of building regulations.
One initiative's main objectives is to reduce the number of inspections the City of Calgary conducts on single family homes from an average of 21 inspections per home to about 16, said Price. "Our concern was that we didn't think the (inspection) process for single family homes in Calgary was as efficient as it could be."
A record-breaking construction boom in Calgary that saw the industry reach $4.7 billion in 2006 has also put a strain on the department's manpower capacity, Price added.
By coordinating the city's home inspection process with the builder's construction process and then targeting defined phases of construction, the city was able to streamline its inspection process and consolidate all three construction phases into a single permit.
City inspection vehicles have been outfitted with a printer and laptop, from which inspectors can access a document management system that allows them to immediately file inspection reports right on site. These reports are transmitted electronically to the city's database and can be accessed and viewed by builders instantly, said Price.
Training was a significant part of the undertaking, said Price. City inspectors were trained on various aspects of construction - plumbing, electrical, etc. - so that one inspector can perform checks on various aspects of construction.
At a gala event in Toronto last Wednesday, the City of Calgary received CIPA's 2007 Gold Award for efficiency and operational improvements. Twenty-three other organizations from the government and private sectors were also recognized this year.
At the awards reception, CIPA president and CEO Norm Kirkpatrick said this year attracted the largest number of entries in CIPA's history. CIPA is a national competition that recognizes Canadian organizations for innovative use of information technology.B B B
Another award recipient was the British Columbia Ministry of Labour and Citizens' Services, which took home a silver award for innovation for its Intrusion Prevention System Project, claimed to be Canada's first large-scale deployment of an intrusion prevention system
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The B.C. government has one of the largest private IP networks in North America, with over 700,000 users, according to the province's chief information security officer, Barbara Hibbins.
The intrusion prevention system enabled the province to manage, record and analyse questionable or inappropriate traffic coming in and going out of its network, said Hibbins, adding that the system has been able to detect over 12 million malicious or questionable pieces of traffic on the B.C. network every month.
The B.C. government has maintained a single information network since the 1980s, called the Shared Provincial Access Network, which provides access to electronic information and services to different users within the provincial government.
"A network like (the B.C. government's) is built for access, it's not built for security," said Hibbins. "Early on in the 70s and 80s, access was what it was all about. Now, one of the big concerns was security.
"What our citizens expect is that we will handle government information in an appropriate manner. That means we will keep it secure, we will have full integrity, and it will be available to the right people at the right time," she said.
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