Five months into the implementation of an overhaul of the Planning Department, Leader of Government Business and Minister of Planning Kurt Tibbetts said customers are noticing the difference.
‘We can report that public complaints have decreased dramatically,’ said Mr. Tibbetts at a Cabinet press briefing recently. ‘I’m real happy to report that. It’s positive news.’
Mr. Tibbetts said about one third of the 170 recommendations to improve the Planning Department made in the Zucker Report have been completed. Another third have been significantly started, while the remaining third are longer-term recommendations, which the Planning Department has not begun to implement.
Mr. Tibbetts said people in the construction industry have called him to say they have noticed the difference.
Contractor Alan Roffey, the chief executive of Androgroup Ltd., said he has noticed the improvement.
‘I… congratulate the Leader of Government Business and the Director of Planning on the improvements made in the Planning Department and Building Control Unit these last few months,’ Mr. Roffey said. ‘There have been noticeable improvements from BCU from my point of view as a contractor.’
Mr. Roffey said there were not only more inspectors now with the Building Control Unit, but that their standard of training had improved as well.
‘Appointments are more likely to be kept and communications generally are much better as the inspectors are becoming more willing to rely on email for communications with their customers,’ Mr. Roffey said. ‘These days we are likely to get a response to a written request for information within a few days whereas six months ago a personal visit was required for a request requiring a prompt response.’
Sam Small, the president of the Cayman Society of Architects, Surveyors and Engineers, also said he has seen improvements, particularly with Building Control.
‘I wish to express that the Building Control Unit does a great job on the whole considering the volume of projects that they have to check and the resources they have deal with them,’ he said. ‘Their staff is very helpful and pleasant to deal with. Their job is not always easy to do due to the substandard quality of the construction documents produced by dubious sources that do not meet code and require re-submission.’
Mr. Small has found, from his personal experiences, that the BCU field inspectors ‘do an impressive job to achieve the target dates, normally within 24 hours of requesting them’.
Mr. Small understands why there are delays sometimes.
[The Building Control Unit’s] job is to check the plans for public safety and certain disciplines require more detailed checking than others for the safety of the end users, which is not explained to the general public and causes frustration.’
However, not all delays are warranted, Mr. Small said, noting that the inspection system sometimes goes off track when people in the construction industry ask for favours to jump the queue, which when granted, delays other people’s projects.
‘There are horror stories of projects taking several months to be processed, which is totally unacceptable,’ he said.
Mr. Small said there is always room for improvement with any system.
‘But I personally think continuous negative comments is slightly uncalled for considering we are in a construction boom,’ he said.
Mr. Roffey also sees room for more improvement.
‘The [Planning] Department must bear in mind that the construction industry requires certainty in inspection processes,’ he said, adding that new wrinkles to the system appear from time to time.
One of those wrinkles has affected his business.
‘Elevators now require inspection whereas they never have before,’ he said. ‘This is an improvement that I am enthusiastic about generally except that it has taken a number of months to work out the process.’
Mr. Roffey said final approval for some completed elevators has been delayed as a result of the lack of an approved process.
‘It doesn’t seem fair to me that a developer and its contractor should be made to wait while BCU decides to introduce a new approval process,’ he said. ‘To my mind the Department should warn the industry of its intentions in advance, set up the new process and test it, educate the industry during a period of familiarization and only then commence rigid enforcement. As I understand it that is how new codes are introduced in other jurisdictions.’
With continued improvements, Mr. Roffey said he thinks the Planning Department could become the construction facilitator that the Zucker Report recommended it should be.
‘I look forward to, and encourage, its continued progress,’ he said.
Another improvement in the works involves the Planning Department hiring additional staff, Mr. Tibbetts said at the Cabinet press briefing.
‘But our first priority is to look at our department’s office space needs,’ he said, adding that Planning would be moving to larger office accommodations.
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