This press release was originally posted on the Symbium website.
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SAN FRANCISCO, California, September 14, 2021 – Accela, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for state and local government, and Symbium, the Complaw® company, are proud to announce a technology partnership that will streamline building and planning compliance reviews. This partnership introduces pioneering zoning code compliance tools that align with Accela solutions to help reduce permit processing delays and accelerate local governments’ digital transformations in response to the pandemic as they address their recovery and whatever challenges may come next.
This partnership combines Accela’s strength as an industry-leader in providing cloud solutions to local governments and Symbium’s expertise on its Complaw® technology, which is focused on the mechanization of laws and regulations.
Communities face several critical barriers when it comes to reducing permitting delays and accelerating community development. Chief among these are:
- The lack of an efficient online permit application platform that provides a seamless experience for residents and staff, and the lack of automated compliance and error-checking tools to help local government staff intake and then process permit submissions with consistency and efficiency.
- Government staff onboarding to learn new local codes and then having to manually apply that training when reviewing permit applications contributes to the permitting backlog in communities with high staff turnover.
- The need for per-application consultations with government staff to understand the feasibility of a proposed project. Together Accela and Symbium can address these barriers through the integration of Symbium Plancheck into Accela’s Civic Application for Planning.
Accela and Symbium will demonstrate the seamless integration of Symbium Plancheck into Accela’s Civic Application for Planning at Accela’s annual conference, Accelarate 2021. At the conference, product experts will illustrate how planning departments can support growing communities and increases in permit applications while spending significantly less time to process site plan reviews and respond to public inquiries about project feasibility. City planners using Symbium Plancheck with Accela’s Civic Application for Planning will delivery faster, more accurate, and more consistent responses to the public so that more projects can be approved in shorter time periods.
“Accela is focused on empowering governments to drive impact in their communities,” said Tom Nieto, Chief Operating Officer at Accela. “By partnering with Symbium and leveraging Accela’s solutions, governments can increase their efficiency while delivering a better experience to their communities.”
Accela’s Civic Application for Planning fast-tracks critical community development processes, such as zoning, site plan reviews, and issuances of land use entitlements, with its enterprise portals and process automation. Symbium Plancheck is a Complaw-enabled web application that makes zoning regulations and large data sets easy for city planning staff to navigate and compute, empowering them to quickly assess what’s possible on a piece of property or across a jurisdiction.
UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation has identified that, in California, regulations are what holds housing production down and keeps housing prices up. Symbium’s building of an integration of Symbium Plancheck into Accela’s Civic Application for Planning will empower local planning departments to tackle regulatory bottlenecks and achieve faster turnaround times with regulatory site plan reviews and more accurate and consistent responses to project feasibility inquiries from the public, leading to less friction at application intake and more permitting revenues in shorter periods of time. This leads to faster residential project approvals, increasing the availability of housing within communities and helping to lower the cost of development.
“With this partnership, Symbium aims to extend its position in streamlining regulatory review and feasibility of residential projects for planning departments across the U.S.,” said Leila Banijamali, Symbium CEO “Bringing laws and regulations directly to the point of human experience is the core of our Complaw business and we couldn’t be prouder of partnering with Accela, the nationwide leader in permit tracking and workflow solutions for planning departments. This partnership has significant implications for how our companies will futureproof local planning departments together and create intuitive end-to-end permit application experiences for the public and planners at scale.”
About Symbium
The key to Symbium’s business is Complaw®, which is concerned with the representation of laws and regulations, such as planning codes, in a computable form. Symbium’s applications make the zoning regulations that shape our cities and towns easy to navigate, empowering anyone to quickly assess what’s possible on a piece of property or across a jurisdiction. Symbium was recently recognized as a 2021 GovTech 100 company, a 2021 American Bar Association Women of Legal Tech award recipient, and a 2020 Ivory Prize awardee for innovations in regulation and policy to achieve housing affordability. Symbium is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information, visit www.symbium.com.
About Accela
Accela provides market-leading cloud solutions that empower the most innovative state and local governments around the world to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens. More than 275 million citizens globally benefit from Accela’s solutions, which are powered by Azure, for permitting, licensing, code enforcement, and service request management. Accela’s fast-to-implement Civic Applications, built on its robust and extensible Civic Platform, help agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are prepared for any emerging or complex challenges in the future. The company was recently recognized as a 2021 Microsoft US Partner Award winner for its innovative SaaS solutions to help governments respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was named as one of the Largest East Bay Tech Employers by San Francisco Business Times. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with additional offices around the world. For more information, visit www.accela.com.