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Kanton Luzern
Overview
The city of Luzern (Lucerne), with its 63,000 inhabitants, is the social, political and economic centre of Kanton Luzern. It stands at the mouth of the river Reuss. Within its suburbs, divided into 11 districts, live a further 160,000 inhabitants. Covering 1493.50 square kilometres, Lucerne is the ninth largest Kanton in Switzerland, it has five local planning and building departments and 107 districts.
Challenge
The Swiss Central Government has allocated responsibility for coordinating and approving all planning and building applications to its individual Kantons. Within the kanton, the responsibility for the administration of these processes falls under the remit of the Construction, Environment & Finance Department (BUWD). While any process management is generally the responsibility of the Approval & Coordination Centre (BKZ), which is part of RAWI (the Spatial Development, Business Development and Geoinformation service).
During a building application approval process, several departments (Environment & Energy, Transport & Infrastructure, Agriculture & Forestry, Monument Protection & Archaeology, Building Insurance etc.) are involved in what is known as an “Examination”. As part of this process each individual examining office is required to draw up a statement. The approval process requires, among other things, the intensive cooperation of and communication between all departments, so that each team involved is able to complete its report on time. Traditionally the preparation of reports was done manually and any communication was done by e-mail or internal post, which was very inefficient. To exacerbate the problem, the various reports were being created in a range of formats so consistency was an issue.
The task of collating all of the reports and putting them all into a standard format fell to the Approval & Coordination Centre, and it was very time-consuming. Deadlines were often missed and the approval process was delayed. As it is a legal requirement for the Kanton to complete the entire approval process within 23 days, they had to find a solution that would make it easier for employees to create reports, combine data from various sources into one document, and to meet their deadlines. At the same time, they wanted to create a new level of transparency to ensure the flow of information between the many offices concerned. Of course, the solution had to fit seamlessly into the existing infrastructure, and enable them to retain business control.
Solution
Kanton Luzern chose Metastorm’s leading BPM software to solve their problems and in January 2004 the examination process went live. Upon receipt of a planning application, an officer starts the examination process by completing a form in a standard internet browser, when this is complete, all of the departments involved simultaneously receive the relevant information so that they can process it.
Metastorm BPM™ links together communication and information tools to form a completely transparent system. The process was accurately modeled and automated using the Metastorm Designer, and forms for the departmental reports were designed and are now processed in the correct way by the examining offices. When all of the reports from the examining offices have been received by the Approval & Coordination Centre, all the text is inserted into the appropriate Word document in the correct order at the touch of a button. Text modules aid the preparation of these reports. The final decision is then structured into sections containing the facts of the case, deliberations and the legal ruling.
Another major advantage of the system is that it is now possible to monitor the length of time that the process takes and keep it within the legally stipulated deadlines. Automatic reminders and memos are sent via e-mail and escalation routines are initiated. As soon as there is a possibility of the 23-day processing period being exceeded, the appropriate heads of each department are informed.
“The processes we have created with Metastorm BPM are uniquely tailored to our needs. Any changes to the process or new requirements are quickly and efficiently implemented by the Metastorm support team, which is excellent,” says Mrs. Dennler, Head of Controlling.
Results
By automating the process, officers in the approval and coordination centre have been relieved of a considerable administrative burden. The resources freed up in this way are now channeled into specialist examination of certain applications, among other things. “Using Metastorm, we can comply much more efficiently with the legally stipulated processing times for each individual building application, and officers can devote themselves much more intensively to qualitative assessment of the application. As a document no longer has to be woven together manually, a lot of time is saved. Drawing up the departmental decision and the complete report is considerably easier, and significantly faster, says Mr. Conca, Department Manager of the Approval & Coordination Centre.
“Metastorm BPM is extremely user-friendly, and with simple training has been possible to introduce BPM in the minimum time and with the minimum expense. The decision to develop building application processing using Metastorm has proved to be the right one”, confirmed Mrs. Dennler.
Kanton Luzern intends to extend its use of Metastorm BPM. “Another project that we are considering is to link the districts in the kanton. As a service office, we would like to offer the local planning and building offices access to an up-to-date statement on building applications submitted. We are currently evaluating the feasibility of this project internally, together with the Geoinformation and Survey Department who also see an opportunity for digital communication with the districts”, says Mrs. Dennler.
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