
Introduction
The Division of the State Architect (DSA) acts as California’s policy leader for building design and construction, and provides design and construction oversight for K-12 schools and community colleges. DSA has offices in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, and San Diego.
DSA also develops and maintains the accessibility standards and codes utilized in public and private buildings throughout California
DSA incorporates the offices of the independent State Historical Building Safety Board, caretaker of California’s State Historical Building Code.
Challenges
One of DSA’s primary tasks is to ensure construction of safe schools in California. DSA performs this task through code development, plan review, construction oversight and other DSA functions and programs. During code development, plan review and construction oversight, issues are raised by stake-holders internal and external to DSA. The issues had to be investigated and resolved by pouring over an archive of paper forms, meeting minutes and holding time-consuming meetings. Needless to say, the process was time consuming and resource intensive.
The current fiscal crisis in California has placed the State in a position where it is forced to reduce headcount and cut budgets drastically. This has created a serious challenge for DSA employees, viz. they need to produce more with a lot less resource.
Kovair Solution
Any solution would have to save time and provide instant access to a central electronic warehouse. It also had to provide a way to enable participants to collaborate online with others, and then to store this communication in a contextual manner for later reference. The system needed to have an automated process for Issue resolution. Lastly, the system needed to be robust and provide maximum uptime. Kovair Change Management fit these criteria and was configured to provide the following:
- A central electronic knowledgebase that is searchable by any criteria
- A repository of known Issues and their solutions
- Enable participants to meet online and communicate with each other via contextual threaded discussions
- Automate processes for Issue resolution
- Automatic email notification alerts
- Generate tasks for participants based on their roles in the Issue resolution process
- A rich set of metrics to measure Issue resolution efficiency
- Generate an Audit trail for any compliance needs
Conclusion
Kovair provides an Internet ready, electronic, searchable archive that is accessible anywhere in the organization. Participants in the issue resolution process, do not need to meet at any given place or time to discuss issues and provide resolution. Kovair makes this meeting area available 24 x 7. Automated workflow and task assignment ensure that the process includes all key participants and that assignments are completed in time. DSA has doubled its output by using Kovair and is able to handle any additional workload.
DSA has doubled its output by using Kovair and is able to handle any additional workload.