One Ontario digitization initiative seeks to break data from the silo

Developers and builders have been vocal for some time about the delays experienced due to permitting and approval processes. Yet, this is not a problem restricted to ��ϳԹ��.

Aarni Heiskanen, managing partner at AE Partners in Helsinki, Finland,, “One way to speed up the building permit process is to automate it as much as possible.”

He says several governments are developing BIM-based building permits. Regions leading this development include Singapore, the Nordic countries, the U.K., Japan, South Korea and Dubai.

��ϳԹ�� has, until recently, lagged behind other counties in moving towards the digitization of approvals and permitting.

In a , Claudia Cozzitorto, president of buildingSMART ��ϳԹ��, explained ��ϳԹ�� is a highly fragmented country when it comes to all types of regulations, much more than Singapore, for example. She said the result is that ��ϳԹ��’s digital transformation is inconsistent across different domains. Some sectors are advanced while others are behind.

The good news is that some progress is being made.

A collaborative research and development initiative called proposes to streamline development approvals through improved data exchange engagements, thereby acting as a “vendor-neutral collaboration layer” between applicants and various regulatory agencies.

In conversation with the Daily Commercial News, Mark Anderson, director of business development at the , the group behind the initiative, cited an example of a research project examining the time required for both a low rise and a highrise residential building to be completed to occupancy in the City of Toronto. It worked out to about 10.5 years and 11 years respectively.

Toronto is just one jurisdiction, Anderson continued. When one considers all 444 Ontario municipalities, each with their own processes and many of their own interpretations, the complexity of wrapping all those into a single approval process platform is clear.

Even basic definitions are not consistent. One municipality will call a residence “a single-family dwelling unit,” while to another it’s a “single-family home.” Include agencies with a say in planning matters like conservation authorities, each having to deal with several municipalities within their particular jurisdiction, and the overall complexity increases even further.

Anderson says Toronto alone could have 40 agencies with some control over the development approval process.

“Multiply that by the number of emails going every which way and it’s extremely fragmented. There’s no streamlined data across the process.”

One Ontario seeks to go beyond the current slow transition towards e-permitting seen in individual municipalities by, “engaging all levels of government, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) companies, software providers and academics to create innovative data exchange guidelines to harmonize the municipal development approval process. The resulting communications protocols will dramatically decrease permit application times, improve enforcement and reduce burden costs to every municipality.”

Anderson explained the One Ontario platform aims to “normalize the data” by gathering information previously siloed within individual jurisdictions, and translating and standardizing it through what he calls a “fusion engine.”

“We really think that it would solve a lot of problems. It would allow for that streamlining to happen. Municipalities would not have to change what they’re doing today. They would basically just feed the information into the One Ontario system, and then everyone needing access to information could access it.”

It is now within the reach of the provincial government to put the One Ontario platform into action so it can be used across all municipalities and authorities.

“It would be best if it was sort of owned at a provincial level,” Anderson said. “But it needs to have the drive of the government, the desire to really solve the problem and to take ownership of it.”

Perhaps not the type of national BIM mandate that Heiskanen describes or that Cozzitorto would ultimately like to see, One Ontario still represents a meaningful step towards speeding up the approval process, particularly when the housing shortage requires faster, more efficient processes in order to meet building targets.

John Bleasby is a freelance writer. Send comments and Inside Innovation column ideas to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.