>> good morning. today is march 16, 2011. this is the regular meeting of the built-in inspection committee. i would like to remind everyone

to turn off their electronic devices. the first item is roll call. [roll call] we have a quorum. the next item on the agenda is item two. president's announcement. >>commissioner murphy: good morning. happy st. patrick's day. it would be nice if we could reflect on what is happening in japan right now. a lot of kids going to bed, going to sleep this evening hungry, and they have no idea what has happened. reflect on that. [inaudible]

>> do we have any public comment on the president's announcement? seeing none, moving on to item three. directors' report. update on dbi's finances. >> pamela levin. we continue to show a positive balance at the end of the year. $2.8 million. revenues for charges for services are continuing to come and fairly strong and meet our expectations -- when we built the budget, we showed a small increase in revenues. it is meeting our expectations.

refunds have started to pick up. we are scrutinizing and making sure that they are justified, of course, before we pay. we are not showing, at this point in time, savings and employee salaries and fringes. we are optimistic we will be able to continue to fill positions. to the extent that we can get requisitions through the process and bring back more of the people that were laid off, that will meet what we expect with no savings in salaries. other than that, nothing really remarkable about this report are what has occurred in the last two months. if you have any questions -- commissioner murphy: are we worried at all that we will run

out of money later on with all of these new hires? >> vivian day. as you can see we are showing a $2.8 million surplus in our revenues, which will be added to the operating fund, which will support any hires over and above the existing case. from all current expectations, talking with developers and contractors, we have a glut of permits ready to be issued -- submitted for high-rises right after the next fiscal year. by all indications, the developers are receiving bonds for their projects now, and they are trying to break ground for next calendar year, so that

means they will be submitting their plans right after july. that also includes some very large projects for the redevelopment agency. as you can imagine, what is happening in sacramento, the redevelopment agency is pushing through a lot of their projects right now, which we did not account for in the budget. we, by the end of the year, will show a larger increase than the 2.8 million. we will be able to support current staff, ongoing hires, and with money to spare. we are doing very good. commissioner murphy: i love that phrase, a glut of approved permits. questions, commissioners? public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> item three b, update on

proposed legislation. >> in your package, i put some ordnances that will be forwarded. most of them are just for informational purposes. the first one i included is an ordinance requiring departments -- on-line public notices. this is the beginning of the city being forced into the electronic gage with all the notices and agendas being forced on - electronically. -- online electronically. there will be legislation later on that will show how the city is proposing -- they are developing infill forms, which has not been available to the department before, and which

kept us out of the process. customers could not fill out forms on line and then submit them. the city is now doing this for the whole city. they will be bringing that on in june. that will help our department in getting some of -- more electronic forms available for the customers online. that will be a big thing for the department. i have also included a current copy of the legislation that we will be taking to the mayor for a proposed name change that the city attorney had rewritten again. if the commission remembers, this was tabled by the former mayor. he had a lot on his plate at the time and did not want to bring this to charter at that time in november. to make charter dead lines, to

be on the november ballot, we have to have this in by the middle of may. have this introduced by the mayor and supervisors. we have several supervisors that are willing to support this, along with the mayor. that is all i have on proposed legislation. commissioner murphy: questions, commissioners? public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> item 3 c, opted and permit tracking system. >> pamela levin. in your package, we provided for your request a fairly detailed project plan for the permit tracking system. we set it up into two separate

categories. the first one is the evaluation and bid, negotiating the contract. based on discussions from the last meeting, we talked to a couple departments. i am not sure how long it took for them to negotiate their contracts. as i noted in the bottom of the page, evaluating the bids, negotiating the contract. contract negotiations times have ranged from four months for infrastructure refresh projects, which was primarily some professional services, a lot of purchasing of equipment, to six months for the ivr project, which was a lot of back-and- forth, to a year, which is primarily professional services.

this contract will be professional services. we are hoping it will not take the three months we have been talking about, and a lot of the focus can be put on that. if you look on page 4, we diagrammed what the contract negotiation process involves. if we are in a situation where everything is approved as we go along, it is a pretty straightforward process. however, because this involves multiple departments who have multiple projects on their plate, just like we do, it is about getting the time for them to devote to it, and if there is a problem. we have had in some of our contracts issues about

insurance, indemnity, and those are contractual issues related to risk management related to the city attorney that are not even related to the scope of work which is somewhat time consuming, especially if there is some misunderstanding between what we have clearly stated and what they think they need to do in order to fulfill our requirements. we have started the process of evaluating the proposals that were submitted. we are working through the other departments that use our system so that it is a multiple decision on which vendor we select. so we are moving along.

this one is a higher level, a higher implementation schedules. this is based on a typical implementation schedule. at this time, we do not have another way of seeing. because we have not selected a vendor, we do not know how long it will take to implement. commissioner murphy: commissioner walker. commissioner walker: thank you for the outline. it gives me something to look at to see how we are doing. we are now in the process of gathering bids, statements of interest. how is that going? >> bids were due last friday. we are working -- we have an evaluation team has approved.

commissioner walker: can we talk about how many statements of interest we have received? >> we got four. commissioner murphy: what is the estimated time that this thing can be up and running? two years? >> we are estimating -- as i said, we do not have the schedule, and various products. they could be more sophisticated. we would expect it to be 24 months after signing the actual contract. commissioner murphy: it has to go through these 15 [inaudible] >> some of it is depending on how it goes. we can do some things simultaneously. as much as possible, we try to

do that. but if any entity, let the city attorney makes a change, then we ran have to rugged back through the process. it is a similar process that was used for developing the rfp. if we do not get our partners from the legal people, people in the human rights commission, if they are not behind us or next to us, we will have issues. commissioner walker: i think maybe people are sensing some frustration on the part of the commission. i just want to remind everyone that this has taken a long time. since many of us have been on the commission. it would be great to be able to get other departments as partners to move this forward. overall, it will help our

efficiency and also help move the department along. if the commission can be of assistance in making sure this moves along, i think we are all committed to that. i do not need to speak for my fellow commissioners. >> there is a specific prohibition of commissioners and and the other city employee getting in touch with the vendor. commissioner walker: i am not talking about the bidding process. i am talking about working with other departments. >> we are hand in hand with other departments. they are rescheduling to fit with our schedule. we have had a turnaround time of one hour to two hours. this is a high priority for everybody.

everybody is as anxious to get this working as a commission. commissioner murphy: commissioner lee. commissioner lee: i am glad we are talking to other departments. i am hoping it goes smoothly. it is good to hear that everyone else is on board, but two years out seems a long time. technology moves very fast. apple turns out an ipad every 10 months. if we are working toward a two- year goal, is technology going to change, are we going to be keeping pace with the latest developments? those are some of the question that we need to ask. the best thing would be to get this out quicker.

>> we have been carefully looking at what versions people have been able to acquire when they do this type of project. the companies are typically trying to make sure that whatever the latest version is there. primarily, the reason this project takes a long time is, -- i do not want to say customization, because it is not. it is a way of modeling to make sure that things are set up in the way that we need them to be. an off-the-shelf system is basically a structure. this is simple terms. i would think of it like excel, or an access database. we are looking for something

that is flexible enough to pick up data from multiple places, manipulate it, do all kinds of algorithms and put it together to get it where we need it at the time. that is specialized for us, and that is something that we have to work on. data conversion is a problem. we need to clean it up. we started, but there is a cleanup process. commissioner lee: let me ask a follow-up question. would it be helpful to put out a basic version first and then add on to it, cater to what we want? >> we are working on having similar functionality as we have now, with the flexibility to move onto something later.

i think what we are doing is what you are asking for. i am hoping we can shorten it. we said no more than 24 months. there are possibilities, depending on what happens, that it can be shortened. i will continue to update you as we go through the process. >> i would also exercise the concern that 24 months is far too long. the category hear of that portion of staff that will be trained, possibly moved on, the transition that takes place, training staff -- it may be on a continuing basis. >> one of the key elements in

this process is making sure we have the capability to train the trainer. basically, that would give the expertise of being able to, in part, current staff and future staff. it is like having a succession plan. i understand the 24 months. as soon as we can start any discussion with the vendors, we will talk about how that can be shortened, making sure that the system works when it is implemented. commissioner clinch: is there an approach by which -- i know there are a lot of people out there that are still using the categories of microsoft 2003.

the compatibility of 2007 -- we are adding another four years into this -- that will wrap in another layer of compatibility that will be challenging for the public. that is my concern, where the continuity could be road blocked by the system. >> commissioners, this is a web- based product we are looking at. any updates to the product or software will be made once by the department. users of the system will automatically see the update, but it will not be a major change, like microsoft 2003 to 2007. in past practices -- i have implemented several of these systems in prior jobs. whenever there is an update to the product, there is a -- that

is distributed to the owner of the product, and something that we can give to the public to say that these are our changes. we made sure that this was in our contract. any changes to the software that will be major will be fully described to both the in-house user and public, and documented as such, before the update is released to the public. so there will be constant training and online training available. we have asked to have that available from the vendor also. if you see a change in the system, you can see what the change is. it is very different from a microsoft product. commissioner murphy: thank you. commissioner clench? -- clinch?

commissioner clinch: i have questions about retaining a vendor, signing a contract. >> there are procedures set up by the city on how you go through the process of selecting and negotiating a contract. we also looked at some of the things that we had experienced. this is, obviously, worst-case scenario that you keep on working in a circle and then move on. the biggest stumbling blocks are the legal review. insurance is usually a no-brain year. going through the office of contracts administration. i feel like we have stretched our arms around that and have gotten them to be comfortable to us and respond to our questions. they know that you are very

anxious to get this. they know that we are, too. commissioner clinch: first, i sympathize. this is driving me crazy. secondly, do you feel 23 months is sufficient to get through all of this? >> i feel it is sufficient, but my issue is getting and keeping on top of the contractors to make our project the highest priority in terms of negotiating the scope of work. commissioner clinch: [inaudible] >> and just pushed them. commissioner clinch: unbelievable. ok. commissioner murphy: supervisor mar.

commissioner mar: thank you for the chart. i think a lot of things are going to happen a lot faster than the 24 months. even when we configure the target date, goals, maybe we could put it on the agenda to get a progress report? this helps us in terms of progress. i also know we are trying to set up joint meetings with other conditions, particularly the planning commission. when we have that meeting, if we could make sure they are on the same targets that we are, see if we could have some discussions in that context. >> i am working directly with a member of the planning department and several people within the planning department to move along, getting to the evaluation comments and they are also anxious. i have -- actually, i do not

know what her formal title is, the second-in-command in planning, to keep this moving. they are frustrated with their systems, who just cannot work together. i commit to giving you exactly where we are and looking at how the schedule is running. if things are running faster, giving you a better feeling for where we are as we get through the evaluation and selection. commissioner clinch: following up, i agree in might be faster than the 24 months you are talking about. i think it would be a great idea to give us an update -- if you could tell us where it is on the

flow chart so that we can know -- as time progresses. i was not sure if you had answered that. >> once we get through and are allowed details, i will definitely let you know what stumbling blocks we are running into. commissioner clinchcommissioneru anticipate any stumbling blocks? >> because the evaluation is not done, we are just starting that bid. i do not know the answer to that. based on our projections of what it will cost, i