Building Permit Automation: A Case Study on Qatar's Ministry of Municipality and Environment

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) is one of the largest public service ministries in Qatar, interacting with the day-to-day affairs of the general public. It contributes through its departments, municipalities, and centers to the overall progress and comprehensive development undergoing by the State of Qatar. The Ministry offers many services to the citizens and residents in the field of municipal services, including maintenance of local roads, general public cleaning, pest control, food control, monitoring of markets and retail outlets, issuing of building permits and advertisement permits, issuing of commercial licenses, management of public parks and promenades, and promoting greenery all over the state of Qatar.

The Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) in Qatar was faced with an increased demand for permitting requests and a need to improve customer services. The process of handling paper forms for building permit applications and inspection requests was time-consuming and inefficient. The MME was also dealing with a complex process involving multiple stakeholders and entities, with a large number of related documents, forms, and attachments. This complexity made tracking and following up on specific requests challenging. The MME wanted to manage and control the growing number of drawings and files, as well as the demand related to retrieving this information. They aimed to automate the building permit process, including the Lusail sub-process, to overcome the lack of knowledge in the process steps, especially at the end of the request study and the license delivery. The MME also sought to streamline the cooperation of all parties to ensure the success of the operation and facilitate the generation of accurate reports and statistics.

The MME implemented the Intalio Case Management solution to fully automate the Building Permit Request and inspection process. This solution provided a unified system combining the platform, services, and automated workflow. It helped different government entities collaborate on an electronic platform, enabling them to make the best technical and managerial decisions. The system aimed to automate and streamline the building permit and inspection process, reducing the permitting time, providing better services for citizens, increasing staff efficiency, and enabling tracking of inspections. The solution consisted of a platform for G2G collaboration and workflow automation that included initiation of building permit request, submission of services request approval flow, cancellation of pre-approved requests to be restudied, and the approval and rejecting of requests. The project was achieved in three phases, with the first phase automating one of the smart services across the Government of Qatar. The second phase added additional modules to enhance the consultant interface and redesign the existing website for building permit. The third phase upgraded the existing system by adding new features and enhancements.

• After the successful implementation of the Intalio Case Management solution, the MME was able to fully automate the building permit request process. This allowed MME to receive and handle building permit requests online and automatically transfer those requests to engineers and department heads for approval. The solution also made it easier and more secure to search, retrieve, and access requests, documentation, and templates. Business executives can now monitor their business services and processes, correlate KPIs down to the actual business process themselves, and change business processes quickly if the business environment changes. The solution also facilitated online payments and enabled inspectors to use tablets during the inspection process. The solution achieved maximum availability, minimum downtime, and fast recovery from any kinds of system failures, complying with the desired Quality Assurance level and industry standard security requirements.

• Reduced time in processing building permit applications and inspection requests
• Increased staff efficiency
• Enabled tracking of inspections