A press dialog
Construction permits administration at Muscat municipality and its role in urban development
• Mohammad Al Rashdi: consultancy offices are a key partner in the work, but there are concerns about their efficiency when considering their full responsibility in the design and structural audit, and the poor performance of some of them in the design delays transactions.
• To contribute to the development of the construction sector and to improve the Sultanate`s economic competitiveness index at the regional and global levels.
• Applying an electronic system in obtaining a building permit has significantly contributed in lowering procedures from 22 steps to only 7 steps only.
By: Anisa Al-Oufiya
The building permits administration is interested in studying modern building systems and materials and ensuring that they conform to local and international standards. Plus the extent to which they conform to the quality safety, environmental and health-building systems, as well as to examine whether they can be approved. With the attention given by Muscat municipality to the building permits sector, which recently ranked the second in obtaining a building permit at the Gulf countries level. The municipality has adopted some divisions in the building permits department and improved the methods of providing services to users.
Building Permit Administration Role
Engineer Mohammed bin Hamoud Al Rashdi, director of building permits administration, said: one of the functions of the building permits department is to adopt new building permits, approve licenses for modifications to existing buildings and make additions.
There are also essential support services, including changing the name of the owner. The approved administrative division of the building permits administration includes three departments: The Residential Buildings Licensing which has four sections, namely, the licensing sections of Grand Mutrah, Qurayyat, Bousher, Seeb and Al-Amirat. The second is the Specific licensing service, which deals with the issuance of building licenses for large/integrated projects for tourism, industrial, or commercial projects. Three departments belong to this admisitration, the Integrated Project licenses department, Multiple-use licenses, and the privileged transaction license department.
The third is the registration and data admistration. This service is concerned with the functions of registering and following up the completion of transactions, in addition to the registration of consultancy offices. Three departments belong to it. The transaction log department, consultancy office registration department and the Coordination and follow up department. A new department was also inaugurated belonging to the director of Administration, named Development and quality Management deportment, which has been created to undertake the development of work on building permits and to conduct related studies.
Al-Rashdi indicates that the new department is competent to scrutinize the quality of the procedures, with a view to developing them, there are proposals to be considered by the head of the department, and the proposals under consideration. Worth to mention that there are some countries adopting this system. Yet there is a big concern to consider whish is related to the weak performance of consultancy offices regardin safety and security issues. This is the focus of the study and its importance must examine the capacity of the consulting offices to assume responsibility in any case, it is local Ordinance No. 23/92 on the regulation of buildings, the consulting offices, the designer, the supervisor and the contractor are fully responsible for The building, without any responsibiloity taken by the municipality.
Development
As for the phased development of the building permits department, Al-Rashdi commented: "At the outset, it should be remembered that this development was in response to various challenges, including the number of transactions; We found the number of transactions from 2001 to 2017 was on the rise, rising from 240 in 2001 as a monthly average until it reached 1319 transaction in 2014, there are record numbers in one month in which transactions has reached 1,500 transactions.
He added: Among the developments in building permits is the obligation of consultancy offices to use the AutoCAD drawing programme or any accompanying programme; We were having difficulty with manual drawings in case of errors, and it takes a long time to redraw and modify Architectural and structural observations, it has been observed that the work of these programmes has rapidly shifted to the completion of transactions, and what is really worth saying is that the consultancy offices are a partner to complement the completion of the transactions in cooperation with the municipality, as the design of the Office of Consulting, scrutinizing and completing the transaction is The municipal road, and ultimately the final outputs of this cooperation contribute to the promotion of urban and physical development in Muscat Governorate.
One of the developments in building permits has also been made is the re-engineering of the proceedings in 2009 to 2011, according to which Muscat municipality was awarded the Municipal Award in building permits and ranked second in the Gulf states. Re-engineering of the proceedings is intended to reduce procedures for registering and scrutinizing the transaction in terms of reducing the number of proceedings, where a new working mechanism was developed within the department and with the consulting offices. The implementation of this phase began in 2009, and the mechanism has been planned in accordance with a number of actions, including the establishment of a work base comprising engineers and registrars Data, with the aim of achieving a smooth movement of the transaction and to shorten the time required to complete it.
Among the actions taken was also the creation of a standard file for transactions; To ensure easy access to maps and attachments and to be able to access owner`s or consultant`s data. At the same time, a building permit application form containing the required approvals upon application was developed, and of positive results was the decrease of procedures from 44 to 22, and the period of completion of the transaction was reduced from 3 months to 2 weeks only, some within a week if the transaction was without any notice.
E-Business
The administration, in cooperation with consultancy offices had begun the process of re-engineering the procedures by thinking to convert the work to a purely electronic transaction, in 2007, the CRM Software Development Licensing program was used was used. This program has played an essential role in assisting to convert into electronic system that was achieved after 5 years of using the program. In 2011, the building permits became electronic and became mandatory in a year 2012, The offices were also requested to sign a pledge to upload the correct official documents and assume full responsibility, and in return the administration delivered a user name and a confidential number was given to each office of the electronic system.
A positive result of the electronic application of the building licensing programme has been a reduction in the in procedures used in obtaining the permit, from 22 to 7, in addition to ease and speed of transfer of transaction, and the possibility of issuing building permits within two days only if they are free of notes, as well as enabling offices to deliver more than one transaction in one-day.
On the development steps that accompanied these stages, Al-Rashdi says: "another important step we were able to do is that we have been able to make circulars to consultancy offices to provide preliminary study of architectural design (for multi-storey transactions) before taking any approvals with a view to check it out". The service is free at the moment and will be developed in the future, the purpose of which is to consultant when he goes to take approvals for other transaction
The admisitration has also urged the consulting offices to submit photographs of the site, which in many cases obviates the municipality to visit it. The adminisitration uses the Geographic Information system (GIS) when checking building permit numbers for the nearby plots, building forms, services etc. It`s important for the engineer to visit the site to decide when to check for specific things, for example an unclear area chart, or levels of the sites or heights.
Challenges of E-transformation
About the challenges faced in the application of electronic transformation, eng. Al Rashdi replied: "There are a number of challenges that we have encountered, some of which are the lack of readiness of many consultancy offices to switch to the electronic system and that challenge has been met by opening space for the offices to provide an unlimited number of transactions if the transaction is submitted electronically, and to give these transactions a priority by the engineer to identify errors and to develop the skills of their cadres to use the system properly.