-- i am going to phrase it as common sense -- on these issues. you are talking about a joint agenda. the way it is set up now, it is at the end of a very long meeting monday night. whether they are a customer or somebody that can provide access services, you have many other items on the agenda. it is within the prerogative of the chair to alter an agenda item and to move it up as reasonable consideration. i would ask that if this is so important and lengthy, have it early, so those who have an interest can attend. i am talking common sense. you have heard about training, field checkers, but some of these businesses that are being

sued, they have had to get permits for some of the work that was done. the food-service industry had a new kitchen equipment, had to get permits. it got sued because there was a step up to get in. the doorway was too narrow. that was not on the plan. but it raises the question, what were they paying attention to when they issue the permits? why didn't they say, this complies, but you have a problem with access because there is a step, because the doorway is too narrow. that is what is disturbing. if you just look at a piece of paper and exclude everything else, is a case of tunnel vision. why is that happening? you have also heard your concern -- computer systems can track bounced checks. i would suggest having some research. what districts, what inspectors

seem to be having a lot of their permits to businesses sued? i think there is an oversight going on that maybe should show the need for better training over all. it also raises the question of the city staff who issues permits, they are oblivious. they need to look carefully to what extent the city is responsible. maybe not legally but morally and functionally. maybe they should have told the architect or contractor, you forgot to do something about this step, about the doorway being too narrow. the cities has a responsibility to educate them. the disabled are the ultimate victim. they are paying the price for everything that everybody previously did not do. commissioner murphy: thank you.

i will take your request to the president of small business. we may be able to accommodate you. further public comment? three minutes. >> san francisco coalition for responsible growth with all due respect to the prior speaker, let me responremind the commisss that any permit application will trigger some kind of handicap work. you may be making some modifications to a kitchen, it may be a specific item with a price linked to it. then you will have to implement

20% of that cost. it is important to recognize any permanent conversion will involve some sort of handicap compliance. we spent quite a bit of time last year in regards to the legislation. any type of commercial building that will be subject to a further complicating that effort. if we make a tremendous effort, which seems to be the trend, there are quite a few commercial spaces that would be subjected not only to seismic efforts, adding seawalls and the like, but handicapped work as well.

[inaudible] you cannot force someone to expend an extraordinary amount of moneyp[m0 to be in full compliance. i would urge the department to look at our chip requests when it comes to providing these things. commissioner murphy: thank you. next speaker please. ,kbá>> good morning, commission. just to follow up on the previous speaker, there is a ceiling. $130,000 or something like that. just keep that in mind. you do have to do 100%.

also, there are a lot of equivalencies that you can use. it is not just a simple matter of 20% always. we are using this 20%, as well as other jurisdictions, which comes from the building code, but ada does not always look at that. i think you will hear more about this in your next joint meeting. commissioner murphy: thank you. next speaker. seeing none. >> item six was removed, discussion regarding 565 marina blvd. however, we are taking public comment on this item. commissioner murphy: any public comment? seeing none.

>> item 7. brief presentation regarding dbi's present day permit tracking system. >> director day, president murphy, commissioners, good morning. happy chinese new year to you today. i am the chair manager for the planning division.

i am glad the commission is taking interest into our permit tracking system. i want to go through our tracking system as the commission is ready to develop a new system for our department. this is a good opportunity for me to show the commission what we have and how it can help our daily operations. i have some reports of i want to show the commission. my topic today is the building tracking system. first, i want to talk about what

we are having now. i will go into the permit tracking system and the management reports, and summary and conclusion of my presentation. what we have now, we have a lot of module systems. each module has their own program. we have models for the building divisions, and electrical, plumbing divisions. we also have a permit service program. [inaudible] we have an intake program.

that is specifically for our programs lead. for the intake program we have various tracking programs. i will be concentrating on just the building permit tracking system, which is in red. anyone who applies for permits, they have to reveal the team taking the permit. a permit number will be created in the screen there. also, in this particular screen, if you see that, that is

one of the thing that we put in there. if you populate this area, you can see that this permit is a landslide program. we are also taking steps to check out complaints. what complaints have come to this department? the reason we have to check out complaints is to make sure that all the complaints against this building permits will be addressed. maybe we can address any new permits. if there is any complaint in the permit about if a particular project -- of a particular project, he there they need to be resolved by the building or housing inspector before we can issue the permit. when you file for a permit, it is important for us to capture

your scope of work and the characteristics of your project. in this particular case, we have 21 new projects. these are pretty comprehensive projects. this is the project stream that we can capture, all the data from the particular parties. right now, i want to go into how we plan with our planning it is an important process. right now, we have to know where your project is going. with these particular projects, we have a lot of phases.

we have the intake, permit process, city planning, and also buildings. we track each permit through the review stages. for a manager, we know exactly what permits are coming in, how you are approved. so this is a fairly important tracking system that we use every day to track permits. in our system, we are also looking at how many projects. some people wonder why it takes so long to get permitting. our permit system also tracks the number of people coming in. it is kept in our records.

the most important thing also is, the fee for the permits, our building code requirements are set by the comptroller, which is set up with department input. what you see here is very important for this project. it is a huge amount of money for this project. for area projects, those that are approved, we are also attracting that by what kinds of special inspections are required. special items are the ones that are in addition to our municipal inspector requirements. these are the requirements where

they have to hire a special inspector to give cer permit, sa very important screen, where we are tracking the items related to the project. our program also can provide a lot of management -- reports for the managers. in this case, our program produces reports to summarize how many permits are filed during that time period and also how many permits are issued during that time and what kind of revenue we collected.

then, we can also print out in detail about the permit and what kind of conditions they have for each of the permits. we can also track each of the issue permits in detail. this is the most important tools that our manager can use to make sure the applications align to our businesses, but then, those permits, we want to make sure the permit is being reviewed in time, so we have the capacity to check every permit. also, we can track how many permits are approved by the

individual paying chapters, and also, we can do in our performance and appraisal so we can talk intelligently with our staff. we also require staff to employ into their daily activities. it is very important for us to capture what kind of activities they perform on a daily basis, like the time they spend. they have to employ it into our computer system, and we are tracking the production of our staff accurately by using these methods. also, we can reveal how much time we spent on a permit,

whether it is a mechanical or structural plane check hours, so we can get those accurately for each of the permits. also, we can check when we are putting a permit on hold, sometimes, we would like to see how many permits are being put on hold so they can ask the applicants what happened to their permit. maybe that sends a message out that the permit is on hold. this screen is very helpful for customer-related requirements. also, on item 10, we can create a query as to how many permits, what type of permits, how many we issue within a certain time,

and i or quarterly report, that really is helpful in our report for our executive teams. lastly, i wanted to go through a little bit. it comes into our division, and the trucking, when we assign it to staff, and also which objective. this is the tool we use every day to make sure the permit is not overly delayed. right now, our criteria is we need to get the permit review within two weeks into our divisions. so far, we have not been able to do that.

as i said before, the tracking system really can tell us how many permits that we issue, what type of permit that we issue in the particular time frames. if you see that during that time, it would be one month, we issued about 1700 permits, so it is a big number when we perform our permit review. this system is good for every type of from it. small permit, large permit -- we track than the same way. also, our computer also can generate the planned review comment, and also, the project sponsor information, so we saw

in our systems. right now, i would like to get a little summary about money -- my discovery of our permit system. our current system is still capable of serving the operational needs. at this point, our system is well-used by our staff. all our staff is very familiar how to do the computer tracking and how they use the computer, so this is -- at this time, we are capable to do our daily functions. still, we recommend we improve on the current tracking system. one is to improve the system to provide user friendly acrylate -- operations. right now, sometimes, we have to close a script, and they go to

another screen, so it is not very smooth in our operations. i recommend to expand the linkage. right now, we have various modules for each of the divisions. i think we can create more linkage within our departments. we feel that our linkage to the various departments -- we need to improve on that. the city planning and building department have some linkage, how we use our record, but somehow in the justice office or made to the audit department, happily, they do not have our system, so we need to have better linkage on our audit departments. to my surprise, when i come in, we have not had a uniform

operation manual for our computer, so i feel we should develop a uniform computer operation manual so ever department has the same manuals to depend on, and any time in our system, we put that thing into our manual, so the whole city can have a more uniform manual. the last one -- the last but not least is we should provide better public accessibility and improve transparency. i think we can improve the website and also permit the public to use our permit tracking system.

so this is kind of like the end of my slide. i hope this will help the commission when they inspect the new generation of tracking systems, and give you a little insight into what we have right now. i would like to provide an answer that our commission -- commissioner murphy: thank you. very good presentation. commissioner hechanova had his hand up first. the reason i put this on the agenda was more or less to educate our newer commissioners that cannot possibly understand the workings of dbi. i just wanted to do that. i hope you were enlightened by this presentation. commissioner hechanova. commissioner hechanova: thank

you very much for a very precise and comprehensive introduction, but more importantly, a snapshot into what the department does, and from my score with you and other members of the staff, it has been a category that we provide service in the city to really ensure that level of safety and welfare of the general public. how long has this system been in design? because we are now in the process of having sent out an rfp. were you involved with that design for the system from its onset? >> are you talking about this current system for the new system? >> the new system. >> i have not spent a lot of time on the new system yet. maybe in the future, i'd like to

produce a bit on that. >> but were you involved prior to development of the system to where it currently is being used as the basis for this rfp? >> yes, this system, in the old times, before 2000, we had what we call the motorola. in the year 2000, our system did not work. i was involved in the initial development of the current system at that time, the year 2000. so gradually, over the years, we improved it until in 2007, when we talk about a complete new system, i have not been involved since 2007 in that. >> deputy director of administration. we are now forming the evaluation committee for the

rfpp system, a tracking system, and anybody who works on it cannot be part of the evaluation committee. commissioner murphy: we will give you a chance to speak in a minute. let him finish first. yes. >> there seems to lease the five categories of improvement that you made on the recommendation at the end of your presentation. >> yes. commissioner hechanova: should this be incorporated into the system that is currently being proposed? >> i can answer that. his suggestions have already been included in the previous rfp and the new one. the reason we cannot do it with the current system is the current system is not capable of doing this.

that is why we have to get a new system. we have to get a system that is compatible to other city departments that can be a citywide system. our system is the in-house system. planning department, even though it is right next door, cannot enter into our system unless they are in our building. it is kind of a weird system. it cannot be network. it is in-house. it is a departmental, cloned, home grown system. to do this, we would have to do vpn's forever city department at a cost to the city department which would be more than the new system would cost, to let the other city departments have access to our servers. commissioner murphy: it seems to me that what commissioner hechanova is asking, the gentleman who gave the presentation, who was involved in the origin of the old system,

why he is not involved in the new system today. that is what he is asking. >> we would like to answer the question if we get a chance. the problem is an evaluation cannot be in on designing the rfp. that is a city mandate from the city attorney's office. the person that writes the rfp cannot evaluate the system. we need users to evaluate the systems that we are proposing to bring into the city. that is what we had to make a decision on, who was going to be an evaluator and who was going to write the rfp. commissioner murphy: thank you. commissioner walker. >> -- commissioner walker: thank you for this. actually speaks to the process that we have been involved with. even as we went into this process of realizing we needed a new system, we did not have a presentation to actually talk about what