With Clariti’s Launch permitting software, Albany has automated its planning and zoning processes, significantly improved application quality, and reduced planning review times by more than half.

Home to over 100,000, Albany is the capital of New York State and one of the oldest cities in the United States. The city is known for its rich mix of historic architecture and civic development, with over 4,000 historic properties designated for preservation.

Before Clariti

Albany’s planning and zoning review process was heavily manual. Staff relied on PDFs, spreadsheets, and paper forms stored across shared folders, which made it hard to keep information consistent across departments. Incomplete applications were common, review times were long, and planners spent valuable hours tracking and rechecking data.

Avi speaking about the city's previous challenges with its heavily manual process

“It was a challenge to make sure all planning departments were working from the same document, and whether that document even had accurate, up-to-date information,” said Principal Planner, Avi Epstein. “It also took a lot of manual labor to track all of our data in spreadsheets. You’d have to remember to go back and update them.”

The Solution

So far, the city has implemented the Clariti Guide and phase one of its Clariti Launch system, which includes 22 application types and subtypes. With the new system, applicants are now asked to complete a pre-application survey first, which then automatically determines the application type based on their answers. The GIS-powered Guide also prepopulates known fields to save time (and reduce the chance of error), and gives each applicant clear instructions to ensure there’s no confusion about requirements.

Avi walking through Albany's pre-application survey

In the back office, the system automatically carries the application through phases based on custom rules and tracks the information relating to that specific project. Staff don’t have to think through who they need to send a document to or when. And they can add comments directly to the files, so they have one source of truth to refer back to.

Albany's back office

Results

Since going live, Albany has seen a significant uptick in application quality. The average review time for common applications has been cut in half, and staff are seeing much better coordination and collaboration across departments. By automating their workflows, they’ve taken a lot of the guesswork out of the review process, and overall made it easier for everyone involved.

Editing workflows

Instead of staff manually adding site plan details, applicants now input that information up front, which saves a ton of time.

Before vs. After Clariti

Want to see Avi walk through Albany’s workflows and steps? Watch this live product demo for a behind-the-scenes look at the city’s permitting system. Plus — see how you can copy their configurations over to your own system with Community Templates!