Longmont, Colorado, has a habit of going first. Its community-owned NextLight fiber network made it Colorado’s first gigabit city. That same forward-leaning culture drives the city’s permitting modernization, even though its permitting operation was already mature.
The goal is ambitious: become more efficient and deliver a better experience without simply adding staff or budget. As Adrian Lewis, Technical Functional Analyst at City of Longmont, put it, “We have a goal in mind of becoming more efficient, becoming faster without increasing staff or budget costs.”
On the latest episode of Civic Innovators, Adrian joined Accela CEO Noam Reininger and Rob Lloyd, executive director of the Center for Digital Government. They talked about self-service tools, AI-assisted plan review, the wave of retirements facing government, and how Longmont paid for it all with state grants.
Building on a strong foundation of permitting modernization
Adrian is Longmont’s product owner for Accela, and both its technical and functional owner. For nine years he has owned the workflows end-to-end, from back-office processes to the ones residents see.
He was quick to credit the people who came before him. City leaders had the vision to move from Permits Plus to Accela and structured much of what the city runs today. “They hired me on and I just took off and ran with it,” he said.
The next step is connecting more of the picture: the database, data warehouses, external document storage, permit access, and open records requests. With so much internal and external reporting, Adrian said, “we need to make sure that our data is accurate and also easy to access.”
Answering questions before residents ask
Longmont’s first step was the OpenCounter digital assistant, focused on the pre-submittal stage. Developers and builders kept calling to ask what a project would cost before going through the city’s development review process. Those calls took up a lot of staff time.
A fee and project estimate tool was the fix, and it has grown into more. Now it serves the average resident too, someone “wondering if they can do a taco truck on a certain street,” or a right-of-way permit that touches another land use code or jurisdiction.
“It’s becoming a tool that’s answering the questions before the citizen is asking,” Adrian said. That means fewer phone calls and less face-to-face desk time, so staff can focus on plan review and other work.
Adrian also stressed serving everyone, not only large developers: “the mom and pop shops and the contractors that don’t really want to deal with the process or computers in general.”
AI that supports reviewers, not replaces them
Longmont is partnering with Accela on AI-assisted plan review. Adrian was direct about the most common fear. “The goal of our AI use is not to replace any staff,” he said. “It’s to make their jobs and lives more efficient, better over time.”
The biggest opportunity is smaller projects. Decks, pools, and miscellaneous permits take up a lot of reviewer time. With AI handling the first pass, staff would only need to look at a plan when the system flags something, such as a missing or misuploaded document.
Adrian expects that to save hours for each reviewer. Managers can then assign more important work, and the job becomes “more fulfilling” for employees.
Applicants benefit too. Every submittal gets a clear response on what went wrong, what’s missing, and what’s needed, through automatic emails and notifications that fit Longmont’s existing workflow.
The real bottleneck is the back-and-forth
Longmont is also adding ePermitHub for digital plan review, which will eventually connect to AI plan review. The city’s own data told an important story here.
“There’s been a lot of speculation that we take a long time with our plan reviews,” Adrian said. The reporting showed otherwise. “We don’t really take a long time, but the back and forth is what takes a long time. The emails, the questions, the document upload, download, upload, download.”
If ePermitHub can cut some of that, Adrian expects “at least an efficiency jump of 20 to 25%” of staff hours.
Preparing for the Silver Tsunami
Like many agencies, Longmont faces the “Silver Tsunami” of retiring expertise. Adrian described the biggest fear as losing a “monumental repository of information,” someone who could retire in two weeks with years of special situations in their head. “It’s not only something that can halt business, but halt the city as a whole.”
Retirements are only part of it. Younger staff often move on every two or three years, with nearby cities like Johnstown, Fort Collins, and Denver competing for talent.
Longmont’s answer is documentation:
- Sit down before people leave. When senior leaders retired, the city held meetings to capture what they knew and built SOPs from it.
- Create a guide for every position. Each guide covers day-to-day work, current projects, and any special situations or agreements in place.
- Make the work visible in the system. Accela moves what was historically on paper into a shared workflow. If an assignment to staff or inspectors is wrong, “we can go back and fix it.”
“I think creating SOPs is the key to that,” Adrian said.
Turning a “pipe dream” into a funded plan
Longmont paid for OpenCounter and ePermitHub with grants from the State of Colorado. The city’s grant team found them, and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) guided the application.
For a city of around 100,000 people, that funding mattered. “It opened up the opportunity to get these programs where before it was a pipe dream,” Adrian said. “It’s important that we reinvest into our community and we don’t waste the funds.”
He credited the DOLA team for explaining how to apply, what they look for, and what qualifies for reimbursement later. The grants also buy planning time. Long-term software costs are a hard problem, so Longmont is using the three to four years of grant funding to decide which departments will pay once the grants run out.
Advice for cities interested in permitting modernization
For cities without dedicated funding or a long-tenured platform owner, Adrian’s advice starts with patience. “Give yourself time,” he said. Many agencies rush to buy software as a quick fix when the real issue is the underlying workflow.
Longmont has run multiple lean exercises, mapping each project from the moment it arrives on paper through permit issuance, final build-out, and beyond. Stormwater quality, for example, drives a lot of reporting inside and outside of Accela.
His order of operations: “Get the whole process down, then get your funding, and then evaluate the software.” Otherwise, he warned, you risk buying a tool that fixes only half the problem.
Rob summed up why Longmont stands out: “Longmont’s a leader for a reason.”
Frequently asked questions
Who was the guest on this episode?
Adrian Lewis, product owner for Accela at the City of Longmont, Colorado. He has been the technical and functional owner of the city’s Accela platform for nine years.
What is Longmont trying to achieve with its permitting modernization?
Longmont wants to become more efficient and faster and deliver a better experience for residents, contractors, and builders, without increasing staff or budget.
How does Longmont use OpenCounter?
Longmont uses the OpenCounter digital assistant at the pre-submittal stage. It started as a fee and project estimate tool for developers and now answers resident questions too, which reduces phone calls and desk time for staff.
Will AI-assisted plan review replace plan reviewers?
No. Adrian said the goal is not to replace staff but to make their jobs more efficient. AI can take the first pass on smaller projects like decks and pools, so reviewers step in only when the system flags an issue.
What slows plan review down?
Longmont’s data showed the reviews themselves aren’t slow. The back-and-forth is: emails, questions, and repeated document uploads and downloads. Adrian expects ePermitHub to deliver an efficiency jump of at least 20 to 25% of staff hours.
How did Longmont pay for OpenCounter and ePermitHub?
With grants from the State of Colorado. The city’s grant team found them, and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) helped with the application. The three to four years of grant funding also give the city time to plan long-term costs.
How is Longmont preparing for the Silver Tsunami?
By capturing knowledge before people leave: meeting with retiring leaders, building SOPs, and creating a guide for every position. Accela also moves work that was once on paper into a visible, shared workflow.
What advice does Adrian have for other cities?
Give yourself time. Map the whole process first, then get funding, then evaluate software, so you don’t buy a tool that fixes only half the problem.
Episode transcript
Noam Reininger (0:00): Welcome to Civic Innovators, where we explore how government leaders are using technology to improve the experience for residents and the people who serve them. I’m Noam Reininger, CEO of Accela, joined by Rob Lloyd, executive director for the Center for Digital Government. Today we’re talking with Adrian Lewis from the City of Longmont, Colorado, about how the city is building the next generation of permitting using digital tools and AI to make services faster and easier for residents, create more capacity for staff, and preserve critical institutional knowledge as experienced employees retire. Longmont’s goal is ambitious: become more efficient and deliver a better experience without simply adding more staff or budget. We asked, how can cities modernize services to give residents a better experience while helping government employees work more efficiently?
Noam Reininger (0:56): So today we’re joined by Adrian Lewis. He’s the product owner for Accela, and he’s also the technical and functional owner. So Adrian owns the Accela workflow from end to end. That means all of the back office workflows, and also the resident-facing workflows as well. And he’s been working with the platform for quite some time, for nine years. And so the big question today is all about how cities and counties could continue to modernize and essentially do two things: one, give residents a better experience and more control, and also create much more efficiency for the workers within the agencies that get served. What’s also interesting about what we’re going to talk about today is that critical knowledge that’s starting to leave government agencies and how to countermeasure that. So Adrian, let’s start out with the big question. Longmont, and you’ve been there for some time working on this, already had a really mature permitting program, and you and the team made a decision to keep innovating. So tell us a little bit about what drove that and what were the outcomes you were looking to achieve.
Adrian Lewis (2:12): Yeah, thanks for having me on. Our main focus was always serving our community. So it’s top of mind that there are different levels of citizens that access our online portal, or contractors or builders, external residents. It’s always a plus when we can serve the entire community of not just Longmont, but Colorado as a whole. Our goal is to become more efficient in that, with major change and major retirements and our knowledge base. It’s important that we keep that knowledge base very well structured, update our code accordingly to match other cities around Colorado, and also incentivize builders coming into the city and developing the way that they see fit. I think it’s also a huge point to make sure that not just the important builders or developers are served well and efficiently, but the mom and pop shops and the contractors that don’t really want to deal with the process or computers in general. But we have a goal in mind of becoming more efficient, becoming faster without increasing staff or budget costs.
Rob Lloyd (3:45): That’s terrific, Adrian. And you know, Noam and I have actually talked about this. The very best cities, counties, states have this amazing ability to put together the leadership: someone who’s really strong functionally and technically, and then a team that just wants to improve. And you’ve served as the end-to-end owner for Longmont’s Accela platform for nine years. So you’re kind of proving the point also of that deep expertise, and working directly with departments to build the workflows that they need and seeing the experience on the other end. Tell us, what’s the difference that you see on that kind of internal ownership, and how it makes a city more effective to improve and expand its permitting processes?
Adrian Lewis (4:27): Well, I would just take a moment to thank the people that came before me too. There were major players in the city that had the vision of becoming a bit more organized and stable long-term. They developed the system switch from Permits Plus to Accela, and they were key in structuring what we have today. They hired me on and I just took off and ran with it. But it’s been very, very helpful that we had leadership in place and the support of it to help us along that path. But going forward, yes, we want to be able to structure our database, our warehouses, our external document storage, our permit access, our open records requests all together and make it more seamless for everyone in the city. And that works for the city. There’s a lot of internal reporting that happens. There’s a lot of external reports that get sent out, and we need to make sure that our data is accurate and also easy to access.
Noam Reininger (6:01): Speaking of access, one really interesting thing is that you’ve chosen to implement the OpenCounter digital assistant. And so from what we understand, you’re really focused on that pre-submittal step and ensuring that you’re guiding the community through the application process, being really clear about what their estimated fees will be. So tell us a little bit about what drove that decision and how you’re thinking about that pre-application step.
Adrian Lewis (6:30): Yeah, initially we had a lot of developers and builders wondering how much it would cost without going through the DRC process. So they would make a lot of calls; it would eat up a lot of our time. Since we wanted to become more efficient in every way, this was a good first step: a fee estimate tool or a project estimate tool that could kind of give that client an idea. It developed into more than that. Now we’re seeing the vision that this could be more than just builders or developers. This could be the average citizen wondering if they can do a taco truck on a certain street, or a right-of-way permit that might bleed over into another land use code or another jurisdiction. So it’s becoming a tool that’s answering the questions before the citizen is asking. And I think that’s a good way of eliminating our phone calls, eliminating the desk time that we have with a person face to face, and some of our staff that are dedicated to plan review and other areas around the city.
Rob Lloyd (7:50): So Adrian, let’s talk about that a little bit more, because you’re describing something really important, which is kind of the fundamentals and foundations. We’re seeing a lot of folks that are looking at AI because it’s sexy and trying to address one issue, but you’ve also talked about how it all comes together into one experience and the different personas you’re trying to work with and support. And you’re actually partnering with Accela to do AI-assisted plan review, right? Where do you see AI having the greatest potential to improve the review process, and how could it change things for the better for both staff on the inside and the applicants on the outside?
Adrian Lewis (8:26): Yeah, that’s a good question. I think one of the fears of AI is replacing staff. And it’s important that we show and demonstrate that the goal of our AI use is not to replace any staff. It’s to make their jobs and lives more efficient, better over time. I think the big factor in that is bringing up the plan review step for smaller projects. We have decks and pools and all kinds of miscellaneous permits that take up a lot of time for our plan reviewers. If we could reallocate that time to bigger projects, we could succeed on a massive level and be that efficient city that we wanted to be, the city of the future that we want to be. And I think that going forward with the AI review tool, it’s going to be pivotal for our staff to simply not put eyes on a plan review unless there’s something that the system picks up, or a misuploaded document or something like that. It would save hours for each one of our FTEs. And it’s not just FTEs, it’s also their managers. They’re going to be able to assign more important work to those employees, and it’ll be a more fulfilling job for them. So that’s on the employee side. On the citizen side, I think it’s important that we respond to each submittal: what went wrong, what is missing, what is needed for all of these reviews. I think the AI tool will do that just fine with the automatic email responses and notifications that it has for scripts. I think it’ll work perfectly in our workflow.
Rob Lloyd (10:32): I just want to interject. I want to compliment you, Adrian. Noam and I have been at this for a long time, but the fact that you’re seeing the personas, you’re talking about results, you’re saying, “I want to see the whole system work together.” That’s a phenomenal approach, and just too rare. Sorry. No, go ahead.
Noam Reininger (10:49): No, it is. It actually is pretty rare, and I think you’re pretty far ahead, and you’re going to be where the puck’s going to be at the right time with the right approach. Adrian, you talked a lot about the employees and making their lives better. And one of the things that we’re aware that you’re concerned about, the city’s concerned about, and frankly a lot of your peers have the same concern, is the upcoming Silver Tsunami. So plan checkers, plan reviewers, you have a tremendous amount of knowledge. It’s very deep expertise. It’s across the whole life cycle of government work. And we know that folks are retiring, and that it’s been really hard to attract similar talent to come in. I’m curious, what do you see as the biggest risks, and how are you and the city countermeasuring that?
Adrian Lewis (11:43): Yeah, definitely losing that monumental repository of information is the biggest fear. Someone that could retire in two weeks, and we can’t download everything that they’re doing or everything that they know, all their special situations that they’ve been involved in over the past few years. It’s not only something that can halt business, but halt the city as a whole. We’ve had some higher-level executive people retire, and before they retired, what we did was develop some SOPs or just sit down in meetings and download information from them. I think it’s important that we create guides for each position, because it’s not just the retirees. It’s also a moving staff of younger people. We have a lot of staff that change jobs every two or three years. They come in, they get a promotion somewhere else. We have a lot of competitive cities: Johnstown, Fort Collins, Denver of course, all the attractive areas of Colorado. It’s hard to keep staff in one spot for a long term. But for all of the positions, it’s important for us to get an idea of what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis, their work process, the projects that they’re currently involved in, any special situations or agreements that are in place. But I think creating SOPs is the key to that. We use an external tool to help with that and document creation. I think Accela does a great job of organizing the workflow and getting what was historically on paper down into the system and visible for everyone to see if it’s going to the right process. So people being assigned work or inspectors being assigned stuff, it’ll show in the system, and if it’s incorrect, we can go back and fix it.
Rob Lloyd (13:55): Adrian, I think that’s a great segue into another question I have for you, which is that quality-by-design approach. You recently acquired ePermitHub to modernize the plan review part, which is a lot of interchange and interaction, and as you described, people leaving and the knowledge that they applied could really tilt a review if that happens in the middle. How does that investment fit into Longmont’s broader roadmap, how are you going to have a more connected digital plan room, and what does that make possible for a community like Longmont?
Adrian Lewis (14:34): Yeah, I think that ePermitHub is a big step for us. The eventual AI plan review with ePermitHub will automate a bit of the back and forth. There’s been a lot of speculation that we take a long time with our plan reviews. We’ve done a lot of data reporting.
Rob Lloyd (14:57): No city’s ever been told that. [laughter]
Adrian Lewis (15:00): And it shows that we don’t really take a long time, but the back and forth is what takes a long time. The emails, the questions, the document upload, download, upload, download. If ePermitHub can eliminate some of that for us, we should expect at least an efficiency jump of 20 to 25% of our hour time. Our DRC process is very rigorous, but I think it could be a very speedy process if we want it to be.
Noam Reininger (15:42): What’s also really interesting about how you’re modernizing is that you’ve gone out and acquired some grants to help you expand. So I’m curious, how did you identify the grants? How did you go through that process as a city, and what were the difference makers that allowed you to accomplish that?
Adrian Lewis (16:03): Yes, our grant team was fantastic in finding these grants offered by the State of Colorado. Other cities have capitalized on using these grants. This is one of our first times putting it towards Accela, and honestly it opened up the opportunity to get these programs where before it was a pipe dream. Our city isn’t the money maker like bigger cities. Our population is only around 100,000. It’s important that we reinvest into our community and we don’t waste the funds that they spend on permits or licensing. We don’t want it to go to waste. We want to put that back into the community. So once our grant team found what was available, we pursued it. We were awarded the grants. It was a fantastic process. Kudos to the DOLA team in Denver. They do a great job of explaining how to apply for the grants, what they’re looking for, and what is acceptable later on for reimbursement. I think that if you have a state that helps you all the way down to the nitty-gritty details of the application process, you have people that will help you long term. And over time those funds will be reimbursed to us, or they match a certain amount. It kind of gives us a little bit of a projection ahead of time of what we need to spend after the grants run out. A hard part of keeping any software long term is the budget, and which departments are going to be paying for it and which departments are going to be utilizing the software. I think it’s important that after the grants are done in three or four years, we have a plan in place, and the grants provide that time period for us to plan it out.
Rob Lloyd (18:13): Hey Adrian, it’s been a few years for me. Is DOLA the Department of Local Affairs in Colorado?
Adrian Lewis (18:20): Yes. Yes, it is.
Rob Lloyd (18:21): Very, very cool. And then let me ask another question that kind of builds on what you’ve been talking about. For cities that want to modernize but lack dedicated funding, or someone with your deep expertise and ownership over years, what kind of lessons from Longmont’s experience would you tell them to start with, so they can create that flywheel of investment and improvement?
Adrian Lewis (18:43): Yeah, I would say give yourself time. Patience is key. I think a lot of people rush into buying software for a quick fix, or hoping to solve an issue where internally the issue is not with the software they’re using or the process. It’s the underlying workflow of how information gets sent to one another. We’ve done multiple lean processes where we map out our entire flow of our projects, from when they are on paper and they come into the city to when they issue the permit or when it’s final build-out. Even after the build-out, we have processes that happen for external clients. For an example, we have our stormwater quality in Accela, and there’s a lot of reporting that happens off of our data. So what does that look like inside and outside of Accela? Map that out first. Get the whole process down, then get your funding, and then evaluate the software. Because if you get trapped with a software that is just fixing half of the problem, then you’re just exacerbating the issue that got you there in the first place.
Rob Lloyd (20:13): Love that.
Noam Reininger (20:15): Yeah, that’s great. And frankly, that wraps us up. So Adrian, first of all, thank you so much for telling us about your story and the continuous transformation at Longmont. What was really interesting in that last question and the response was that technology alone doesn’t solve problems. It really requires very strong leadership and process management. You talked about lean, so really understanding change and how to transform existing processes. And what’s amazing about what you’ve built is really a continuous improvement loop, where you continue to improve the experience both for staff and for your constituents, for the city. So thank you again. It was a pleasure having you.
Adrian Lewis (21:00): Thanks for having me on, and thank you to my team in Longmont. I really give you guys the best praise, because without you guys it couldn’t be possible. So thank you, team.
Rob Lloyd (21:16): Noam and Adrian, I also want to point out that Longmont’s showing what cities are doing to position for what’s coming next, right now too. You’re giving residents more information, that sense of progress through what you’re doing and how they’re interacting. You’re using AI to support plan review, but also not being application-sprawl oriented. You’re capturing knowledge before experienced employees leave, and treating that institutional knowledge as valuable as those employees and their mark on your organization. So just a lot of compliments to you, Adrian, from the Center for Digital Government’s point of view. Longmont’s a leader for a reason.
Adrian Lewis (21:54): Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that.
Noam Reininger (21:57): And for all our audience, thank you for listening today. And until next time, keep asking the bold questions.
