The city Corporation will from October 1 onwards accept new building permit applications only through the Intelligent Building Plan Management System (IBPMS).
Mayor V.K. Prasanth issued such an order after engineering-wing officials reported that building permit applications were still being received through the old Sanketham software, when he convened a meeting to assess the progress of the IBPMS.
The State government had earlier decided to use the IBPMS software on pilot basis in the city Corporation. The trial run for the same had begun in July. The local body also organised training sessions for approved building designers, supervisors, engineers and architects to make use of the new software, but the shift was never made at the practical level.
With the strict instructions to shift to IBPMS from next month, training sessions will be organised for employees on September 27 and for building designers on September 28.
Human intervention
With the IBMPS system reducing human intervention reduced to a minimum, the chances of the applications getting stuck at particular desks will get reduced. The entire process of building permit application will now shift to online.
The building designers will submit their plans in the .dwg format in the online portal. As the Kerala Municipality Building Rules (KMBR) is integrated into the software, it could make checks on the submitted building plan based on various parameters. These actions were carried out manually before.
The plan will now be accepted only after this initial vetting process. Though the previous software had online plan submission facility too, the hard copies also needed to be submitted separately, a requirement which has now been done away with. In the next stage, the master plan for the city will also be integrated to the software, thus making it possible to check more parameters for the application. The software is also expected to be linked with the existing online systems of the other departments, including town planning, fire department, and the coastal regulatory zone authority, from which clearances are required. The IBPMS software was developed by DEV IT.
