From Paper to Digital: Chesterfield County’s Modernized Community Development
Chesterfield County, located just south of Richmond in the Commonwealth of Virginia, was settled in 1611.
It is the fifth-largest county in Virginia by population and has grown by 60% since 2000. The county is recognized for its prime mid-Atlantic location, which enables local businesses to reach 45% of the U.S. population, 50% of the nation’s manufacturing operations, and 60% of corporate headquarters within a one-day travel time.
Community Development Faces Challenges in Chesterfield
The Community Development (Planning & Zoning) division operated an aging mainframe system when Kuzhal Sundar, Information Manager of the Planning Department, joined in 2001. A migration project began with Computronix to modernize building inspection systems.
However, due to high costs and complexity, only 30% of Planning’s applications were migrated. The county developed an in-house backend solution called CDIS for Zoning, which enabled online zoning applications but resulted in multiple disconnected systems.
Departments could not collaborate effectively, and maintaining these systems was costly and unsustainable. After a decade, Chesterfield sought a consolidated solution and selected Accela.
Digital Transformation with Accela
The project commenced in 2019, but when COVID-19 forced office closures, the county was still 100% paper-based. Chesterfield quickly developed an interim module, eReview, allowing document submissions via the Accela Citizen Access portal.
eReview was so successful that it remains in use today with ongoing updates. The county also integrated DigEplan to enhance digital plan review. Automated workflows in Accela notify departments and applicants of task updates, and a consolidated review document compiles the staff’s comments.
Today, 95% of all documents are processed electronically, significantly improving efficiency. The full implementation took two years, influenced by a strategic decision to migrate Building Inspections from Computronix and pandemic-related challenges. The project was completed in February 2021, marking the transition from legacy systems to Accela.
“Accela helped us identify bottlenecks in our processes. That was very helpful for us, the leadership, and the developers to know where things were getting stuck and to begin to figure out how to correct it. We could look at every step along the way,” said Kuzhal.
Staff and citizens have experienced remarkable improvements. The staff appreciates better transparency, as they can publish data, including housing pipeline statistics, on their website. They have also reduced the number of inquiries about any project.
Chesterfield staff has also improved their turnaround times, which has resulted in shorter application turnaround times and a better user experience for citizens.
An Enterprise Approach for Cross-Departmental Success
Five departments now operate within a unified Accela system, including Community Development, Building Inspections, Environmental Engineering, Planning, and Utilities.
Accela facilitates both individual departmental needs and cross-departmental collaboration. Citizens, businesses, and government agencies access services through the Accela Citizen Access (ACA) portal, including:
- Building Inspections
- Compliance, zoning, and code enforcement concerns
- Environmental project applications
- Variance requests, historical preservation, and site plans
- Utility service connections
Departments seamlessly contribute to shared projects, ensuring efficient reviews and approvals. Take the Environmental Engineering (EE), for example. They will contribute to Land Management when a new septic system is required for a building project. Or during a Building Permit application review Fire, EE, and Planning will add inputs to the record as comments to the assigned tasks.
“Everything we do has some aspect of cross-departmental collaboration, and anything that we can automate, we like to automate,” Khuzal shared.
Looking Forward
As Chesterfield looks to the future, their goal is to continue to provide a seamless, efficient experience for their citizens by focusing on collaboration and innovation.
