In 2023, the City of Tarpon Springs, Florida, made a significant leap forward in its development operations by fully transitioning from a cumbersome paper-based system to a streamlined electronic plan review process using e-PlanSoft™ solutions. The journey was marked by operational challenges, organizational resistance, and ultimately, a complete cultural shift in how city staff and external stakeholders approach development.
Before adopting e-PlanREVIEW® and goPost™ from e-PlanSoft, Tarpon Springs processed all planning and permitting through paper submissions. Allie Keen, Principal Planner with Tarpon Springs Planning Department, described it, “We were all paper - paper applications, paper plans, big folders. Everything in our offices was a mess.”
In both the Building and Planning Departments, the processes were time-consuming and highly manual. On the permitting side, plans were walked down to staff mailboxes once a day and reviewed sequentially - one department at a time. “It was a very linear review process… obviously that’s very antiquated,” noted Keen. Missing paperwork was common. “We’d have to go around City Hall and be like, ‘hey, do you have this permit?’”
The Planning Department was also working through some inefficiencies in their process. The Technical Review Committee (TRC) - comprised of staff from various city departments - meets monthly to review planning and zoning applications for development proposals that ultimately go before appointed/elected boards for approval. Distributing 12 full sets of planning documents for each project to committee members and then again to each board member, meant handling massive volumes of paper. Manual checklists and annotations were added to permit packets, and all comments were consolidated post-meeting - sometimes from emails, sometimes verbal notes, or handwritten forms. The result? Lost time, fragmented communication, growing frustration, and needless confusion in public hearing settings.
The push for an electronic plan review system stemmed from three core issues: inefficiency, inconsistency, and lack of transparency. Staff noted that ensuring complete, consistent application materials and staff comments was nearly impossible with paper. “It was hard enough already,” Patricia McNeese, Planning Supervisor with the Planning Department shared. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but compiling everything into a written document and getting it to the applicant in time was really difficult.”
Another catalyst for implementing an electronic plan review system was the City’s experience during COVID. The city needed a way to continue to do business during emergency events and other similar situations that did not rely on staff physically being in their offices.
There was also a desire to reduce physical storage of paper files. As McNeese put it, “You’ve got four or five building technicians in the building department, processing 3,000 permits a year. It was chaos - shelves full of paper, permits on hold for six months. It was time for a change.”
While the city evaluated other vendors, e-PlanSoft stood out. “e-PlanREVIEW’s overlay function really is helpful,” Keen emphasized. “It cuts our review time dramatically. We can compare building permit plans with approved site plans in seconds.”
The team also recognized the solution's flexibility. Initially intending to use it only to manage permitting applications, the Planning Department quickly realized its potential for the TRC meetings. “We watched the presentation and thought, ‘wait, this could be helpful for our TRC process too.’”
User-friendliness was another deciding factor. Compared to more complex planning and permitting solutions, e-PlanSoft was described as “really user-friendly,” especially by those with backgrounds in CAD or other digital tools.
Although e-PlanSoft solutions were introduced in 2022, adoption across the City was gradual. Plan reviewer resistance was a significant hurdle. “People were used to doing things a certain way, and they didn’t want to change,” McNeese explained.
A win came early for the Planning Department as they mandated digital use for TRC. “We just didn’t give them an option,” said Keen, “the process improvement for our team was too great to not implement as soon as possible.”
The Building Department continued to accept both paper and digital submissions well into 2023. As a result, many reviewers never got comfortable with the system. It wasn’t until January 2024, under the leadership of a new building official, that the city went fully digital. “That’s when digital submissions were required through goPost - no more paper submissions,” Keen recalled.
When the building official shift took place, it gave staff the opportunity to truly test how the system worked. “It quickly became clear that we initially were trying to make the software operate how we processed the paper permits rather than how it is intended - we just couldn’t give it up! This resulted in frustration with some reviewers, and we continued to not have buy-in because the system did not work that way. Permits would get delayed, and in-turn frustrate applicants in some cases,” said Keen.
Christopher Brown, Construction Inspector with the Tarpon Springs Building Department realized there was a better way, and the process could be improved. Working closely with the Planning Department, Brown was able to completely change how permits are reviewed for the city simply by using e-PlanREVIEW and goPost correctly and re-training staff.
Once implemented, the benefits became clear. A major breakthrough was the shift to concurrent reviews. Previously, plans were reviewed sequentially - first Planning, then other departments on-by-one. e-PlanREVIEW lets all reviewers evaluate the same plans at the same time. “That alone was a game changer,” McNeese said. “’Why can’t we all look at this at one time?’ Now we can.”
Time savings are already evident. “We can do a mechanical permit in 15 minutes now - reviewed, approved, and back to the client,” Brown affirmed. Digital records also improve customer service. “Someone says they submitted four weeks ago, but I can show they submitted yesterday. It’s all documented.” McNeese added, “One side-benefit of that example is that contractors are having to become a little more accountable to the homeowner, their client!”
In TRC meetings, planners now project digital plans onto large screens. “No one complained about that,” Keen shared. “They kind of forget the benefits - they just believe, ‘this is how it’s always been.’”
The digitizing of plans allowed for a transformation within the Planning Department’s office space as well. In 2023, the Department remodeled its office, freeing up space by eliminating physical files. Keen recalled, “We fit in an additional office space for a planner and added more conference space - all because we’re no longer storing paper.”
Culture change remains the biggest win. “It’s a huge cultural shock,” Brown said. “But it’s working. People are seeing the value.” McNeese summed it up well: “From my perspective, e-PlanSoft has helped us steer the ship in a new direction. It’s a shift from how government used to work to how it needs to work now.”