Over the last 55 years, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (the Air District) has closely regulated stationary sources of air pollution in the San Francisco Bay Area. Regulatory oversight for a diverse set of 25,000 businesses has required the Air District to make its business processes smart, efficient, and automated. The Air District is using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as the foundation for an automated, online permitting and inspection system that will replace a mainframe computer and manual, paper-based processes. It expects the solution to help it cut permit processing time from 45 days to a matter of minutes for simpler applications. Engineers and inspectors will be able to focus more time on significant sources of pollution and increase the number of inspections they perform annually, and permit applicants will experience less bureaucracy and lower costs.
Situation
From charbroilers in fast-food restaurants, to dry-cleaning equipment, to machinery in chemical plants and fuel refineries, 25,000 businesses that operate emissions-producing equipment in the San Francisco Bay Area are regulated by Bay Area Air Quality Management District (the Air District). The agency was established in 1955 by the California Legislature and covers nine counties:
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With SharePoint Server 2010, we’ll be able to free up time for our key resources to focus on the sources of air pollution that have the most effect on ambient air quality. |
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John Chiladakis
Director of Information Services, Bay Area Air Quality Management District |
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Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, southwestern Solano, and southern Sonoma counties. Despite significant increases in traffic and population, the air in the Bay Area is substantially cleaner than it was 50 years ago, and this is in large part due to the efforts of the Air District. “However,” says John Chiladakis, Director of Information Services at the Air District, “we are still not in attainment of all national ambient air-quality standards. We have more work to do.”
Currently, Air District engineers spend a good deal of their time following highly manual, paper-based processes for issuing new permits to businesses and renewing existing permits. Each application for a permit to operate emissions-producing equipment requires a series of forms to be completed and supporting documentation to be furnished, and may include photographs, equipment manufacturers’ specifications, inspection reports, information about the business applying for the permit, and more. Some of this information is stored and managed in a 40-year-old mainframe computer. The rest of the information is tracked on paper-based forms. “We have gotten to a point where issuing and renewing complex permits is extremely time consuming because the processes are so manual. Very simple sources—such as dry cleaners and gas stations—can take a long time to process,” says Chiladakis. In fact, it can take more than 45 days from the time an application is filed for the Air District to issue a simple permit. The Air District is eager to improve the efficiency of these processes so that its highly skilled engineers can spend more time addressing significant sources of air pollution.
“We also want to improve the consistency of our oversight,” says Chiladakis. “As a regulatory agency, it is crucial that we apply the same standards to the same type of equipment at different businesses.” The paper-based processes have made it challenging, and more time consuming, for permit engineers and inspectors to ensure consistency. Also, permit engineers are tasked with visualizing and understanding complex connections between pieces of equipment in larger facilities and calculating estimated emission rates in order to compare them against regulatory standards and set operating conditions. “While our engineers have developed a deep institutional knowledge of these connections and emissions, what an inspector sees in the field will sometimes vary,” says Chiladakis. “We need a way to ensure that these equipment and data visualizations are as accurate as possible.”
The Air District also wants to improve the permitting experience for business owners in the Bay Area. “Our agency is funded through permit fees and tax dollars, and our goal is to minimize the burden we place on tax payers and on the regulated community. If businesses have to spend a lot of time and energy dealing with our agency, their costs go up, and those costs are passed on to the consumers in the Bay Area,” explains Chiladakis, “We want to help businesses keep their costs low so that they can be more competitive. This means reducing the number of unnecessary hours they have to spend on the permit process.”
The Air District’s specific goals include:
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Providing a rich set of dashboards, metrics, alerts, and analysis tools to allow the agency to effectively evaluate air pollution emissions from large complicated businesses.
Solution
Toward the goal of regulatory innovation, the Air District did a thorough analysis of its key business processes and restructured them toward achieving the highest possible degree of efficiency, consistency, and customer satisfaction. “To enable the new approach, we had to identify a suite of technologies that would replace our mainframe and our paper-based methods; at the core, it would be a solution that had a robust and highly flexible content management system,” says Chiladakis.
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We have gotten to a point where issuing and renewing complex permits is extremely time consuming because the processes are so manual. |
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John Chiladakis
Director of Information Services, Bay Area Air Quality Management District |
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Adds Jeff McKay, Deputy Executive Officer for the Air District, “Our goal with this solution is to make our agency a leader in regulatory innovation for permitting and inspection.”
The Air District enlisted the help of a firm that specializes in evaluating content management systems; and, out of 18 solutions that the firm recommended, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 emerged in the top two. “We chose SharePoint Server 2010 because we felt that the system was flexible enough to accommodate our highly complex processes,” says Chiladakis.
In 2008, the Air District worked with Microsoft Services to design the system architecture for a revamped permitting and inspections process, and is now also working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Vertigo Software to implement the user interface. Developers are using the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 development system and Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2010 to customize an online permitting and field inspection system, relying heavily on external content types in SharePoint Server 2010. External content types represent data that is stored in external sources, such as Microsoft SQL Server 2008 data management software. “We are doing a lot of our modeling of external content types directly in SharePoint Designer 2010,” says Jonathan Dibble, Enterprise Systems Architect at the Air District.
While SharePoint Server 2010 provides centralized storage and management for the system’s vast volume of applications and supporting documentation, other information, such as equipment emissions specifications, are stored in the SQL Server database. ”External content types are great because they allow us to show and work with the data from our line-of-business systems inside of the SharePoint Server environment,” says Dibble.
Applying for Permits
In the new environment, customers will go to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District website, and, using online forms (Figure 1), be able to apply for a permit to construct and operate new equipment or to modify the operation of existing equipment. The Air District is using Microsoft ASP.NET 4.0, part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, to develop the application, which sends data to a centralized, SQL Server 2008 database. The system employs IBM WebSphere ILOG Rules for .NET, a business rules management system, to determine if an application requires evaluation by an engineer. If it does, the application is routed to the appropriate engineer through a workflow enabled by Windows Workflow Foundation in the .NET Framework. Applications that meet all of the regional, state, and federal standards are issued permits automatically. By using a similar process, applicants can also apply for annual permit renewals from the Air District website.
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Figure 1. Online application for businesses to register equipment; business location
shown through Bing Maps |
Managing Applications and Inspections
Air District engineers who need to review permit applications will access the system through SharePoint Server 2010 from desktop computers. By using a customized My Site, a personal SharePoint site that provides each engineer or inspector with a central location from which to manage his or her tasks, these workers can see which businesses and applications have been assigned to them. Once the evaluation is completed and the application approved, the engineer issues the permit, which is delivered to the applicant electronically, through email.
Field inspectors also will use the system to manage their routinely scheduled tasks, such as an annual inspection for a stationary diesel engine. The permitting and field inspection system also connects to Bing Maps, which inspectors can view in the SharePoint Server 2010 portal to efficiently navigate among the different businesses they need to visit (Figure 2).
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Figure 2. Portal for compliance staff to visualize field activities and
current tasks |
Jamie Williams, Enterprise Software Development Manager at the Air District, adds, “Inspectors will also use the system for ad-hoc tasks, like responding to complaints filed online or over the phone.” For instance, passersby or neighbors to a business can report concerning circumstances—such as excessive smoke or flames—online. “Inspectors typically respond to these situations within an hour, and they can do all their reporting through the SharePoint site, on their laptop or mobile device.”
Inspectors will use two different online forms, one of which is based on InfoPath Forms Services in SharePoint Server 2010, and the other which is based on custom ASP.NET code. “For simpler situations, such as gathering information from a person who has submitted a complaint, we’ll be using InfoPath forms,” says Williams. “These forms include prepopulated text fields to help speed the typing process for the inspectors.”
In more complex scenarios, such as verifying emissions compliance in a larger facility where many different equipment connections exist, an ASP.NET-enabled form will be used. “In these cases, an inspector may have to fill out a different form for each type of equipment and verify that a multitude of conditions for operation have been met. We use ASP.NET to help us manage these complex relationships more easily.”
Visualizing Plant Emissions
The system will also provide access to an application that uses the Microsoft Silverlight 3 browser plug-in to help inspectors and engineers visualize the connections among emissions-producing equipment in larger, more complex facilities (Figure 3). “Through Silverlight, we are taking information from our transactional database that describes each equipment connection and provides details on emissions, and making this viewable through SharePoint Server 2010. It is also touch-enabled, so engineers and inspectors can pan and zoom, search for different types of equipment or pollution in a facility, and bring up emissions information very easily,” says Williams.
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Figure 3. Microsoft Silverlight–enabled diagram of equipment inside
of a facility, displayed in the SharePoint Server 2010 portal |
Enhancing Collaboration
The Air District will also be implementing Microsoft Office 2010 to improve collaboration among employees. “The close integration of SharePoint Server 2010 and Office 2010 will help us centralize all of our document-based processes inside of the new system,” says Williams. For instance, mobile inspectors will be able to use SharePoint Workspace 2010 to access Office 2010 documents without connecting to the Air District network; update permit application forms using Microsoft InfoPath 2010 information gathering program; and map business processes within Microsoft Visio 2010 drawing and diagramming software, and then render them in a web browser through Visio Services in SharePoint Server 2010.
Deployment Plans
The District plans to complete development work on the online permitting and field inspection system by the end of 2010. It aims to deploy the system to 25,000 users by mid-2011. The IT department will continue to develop and deploy enhancements to the system on an ongoing basis.
Benefits
By using SharePoint Server 2010 as the foundation for an online permitting and field inspection system, the Air District expects to increase employee efficiency so significantly that it will lead to cleaner air, because highly skilled engineers will have more time to
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This [SharePoint Server 2010–based] system will let applicants spend less time on permitting processes and devote more time to their businesses. It will help keep costs low and competition high. |
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John Chiladakis
Director of Information Services, Bay Area Air Quality Management District |
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spend solving pollution problems. For business owners, this helps promote more sustainable economic development. The new solution will mean fewer administrative chores and lower costs, because permits will be faster and easier to acquire.
Higher Efficiency
The Air District believes that its move away from mainframe computing and paper-based processes to a SharePoint Server 2010–based solution will help it to reduce the time it takes for a business to acquire a simple operating permit for emissions-producing equipment from 45 days to a matter of minutes, without sacrificing air quality. In addition, the Air District estimates that the ability to capture and share information electronically in the field will enable field inspectors to perform 40 percent more inspections annually. “They’ll be spending less time managing paperwork and rekeying notes and data,” says Williams.
The agency will experience other IT efficiencies, as well. “From a management standpoint, making SharePoint Server 2010 the hub of a centralized, connected environment for content management, transactions, and reporting, with automated business rules and workflow, will help us reduce the amount of time we spend maintaining, troubleshooting, and supporting our systems,” says Williams.
From a development perspective, the close connection between SharePoint Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 has resulted in a streamlined development experience. “The integration between SharePoint Server 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 is much better than in previous versions,” says Dibble, who, in previous roles, worked extensively with older versions of Visual Studio and SharePoint Server.
Improved Customer Experience
With an online, automated application process at their fingertips, Bay Area businesses will have a much better experience as they work with the Air District. “We want our applicants to think ‘this is the easiest, fastest permitting process I have ever experienced,’” says Chiladakis. “Our goal is to minimize our burden on tax payers and on the regulated community. This system will let applicants spend less time on permitting processes and devote more time to their businesses. It will help keep costs low and competition high.”
The Air District estimates that 65 percent of its permits will be issued automatically. “A business owner will be able to sit down and, in one session, get a permit to operate. The online system will totally automate the process,” says Chiladakis. “For a standard permit for, say, a charbroiler or dry-cleaning equipment, a business should be able to complete the process and get their permit in four minutes. The process is simple, wizard-based, and similar to filing taxes online.”
More Time to Eliminate Air Pollution
When the new solution is deployed, Air District engineers and inspectors will be spending the majority of their time discovering and abating significant sources of pollution. “Our goal is to put our engineers to work implementing cutting-edge air pollution solutions. The big pollution problems happen primarily at the larger facilities, as opposed to the small businesses,” says Williams. “SharePoint Server 2010 will help us eliminate the time our engineers and inspectors spend on rote administrative tasks so that they can focus on the serious pollution problems.”
Chiladakis comments, “At the same time, the SharePoint Server 2010 solution helps us efficiently and consistently regulate the smaller businesses. They are not to be ignored. Their emissions have a significant cumulative effect, and now we’ll be able to solve their problems and issue their permits more efficiently.”
The project, ultimately, will help the Air District attain its goal of meeting national and state air-quality standards. Chiladakis explains, “This project will make the tax dollars and money generated from permit fees, which is used to operate our organization, go much farther. With SharePoint Server 2010, we’ll be able to free up time for our key resources to focus on the sources of air pollution that have the most effect on ambient air quality.”
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Internet.
For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
Microsoft Office 2010
Microsoft Office 2010 gives your people powerful, timesaving tools to do their best work from more places. With new capabilities and insightful updates to Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Outlook, Office 2010 offers the complete package — with familiar, intuitive tools. Now you can express ideas, solve problems, connect with people, and create amazing results — in the office, at home, or on the go.
For more information about Microsoft Office, go to:
www.office.com
For More Information
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. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at
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For more information about Vertigo Software products and services, call (510) 307-8200 or visit the website at:
www.vertigo.com
For more information about Bay Area Air Quality Management District services, call (415) 771-6000 or visit the website at:
www.baaqmd.gov
