Background: INDAGINE SURVEYORS (IND) – Fictitious case study scenario Indagine Surveyors (IND) is an organisation of private surveyors who issue building permits, sewerage and waste disposal permits and road access permits for building projects in Victoria. Applicants for these permits may be homeowners or builders for the construction of new homes and buildings and for any remodelling projects as well as the conversion of unoccupied spaces such as garages into living or working space. Three of the departments at IND include Building, Health and Roads. • The Building department performs an initial engineering review of all permits and issues permits for cranes, temporary parking and temporary fencing or site sheds. • The Health department issues permits for sewerage, waste disposal and water testing. • The Roads department issues permits to provide driveway entrances to government roads, traffic control or temporary road closures. For many years the permit process has not changed. First the permit office clerk receives the application along with payment of appropriate fees for each permit on the application. The permit officer then physically hands the application to the Building department for an engineering review. If the application is rejected it is returned to the clerk who notifies the applicant. Applicants do not receive a refund but may resubmit their application with appropriate changes. If the Building department approves the initial review but determines that a permit for Sewerage or a water review is needed the application is sent to the Health department where again it could be rejected. If the application passes this stage but it is determined that a permit for road access is required, the application is sent to the Roads department. At this stage an application may still be rejected or final approval is given. The outcome (rejection or approval) is passed onto the permit office clerk who notifies the applicant and collects any outstanding fees for the subsequent stages before permits are issued.Builders and homeowners find this process to be slow and very frustrating. For one, they don’t like its sequential nature. Only after a permit has been approved or rejected by an engineering review process would they find out that a health or highway review is also needed. Because each of these reviews can take three or four weeks, applicants applying for permits want the review processes to be concurrent rather than serial. Also, both the permit applicants and IND personnel are frustrated because they never know where a particular application is in the permit process. A builder may call to ask how much longer a permit will take but it can take an hour or more just to find which desk the permit is on. Therefore the General Manager of IND, Mr Martin Krowski has asked for the permit process to be changed. In this new process, the permit office clerk would follow a new set of procedures, including; • The permit clerk would still receive the application and appropriate fees but would then scan the application and email it to each department at the same time. • The departments would review the application in parallel and email their decision to a processing officer. • This officer would collate and analyse the results and, if there are no rejections, approve the permit. • The outcome (rejection or approval) would be emailed to the permit office clerk who would notify the applicant and collect any outstanding fees before permits are issued. Mr Martin Krowski would like to have a clearer understanding before these changes are implemented so he has asked you to submit a business report (with academic references) with the relevant information (refer back to the main assignment outline to understand the tasks associated with this case study).