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Fairview staff view GovWell permit software demo as potential replacement for IDT
Summary
Fairview commissioners and staff watched a 15-minute demonstration of GovWell, a cloud permit and plan-review system. The company’s sales representative described features, support and migration plans; staff asked about customer history, adoption and transferring five years of IDT data.
Fairview commissioners and staff watched a demonstration of GovWell’s online permitting and plan-review software during a work session on Oct. 12, where the company described its user portal, integrated plan review, notifications and support model.
GovWell sales representative Liam said the product is pitched to small and mid-sized municipalities and emphasized configurability and live support. “We have a very hands on approach to our support,” Liam said. He demonstrated the applicant-facing portal, staff workflows for reviews and inspections, automated fee calculation and email notifications for applicants at each step.
The demonstration was scheduled ahead of a contract on the Board of Commissioners’ agenda. Ethan, a Fairview staff member who arranged the demo, told the board GovWell would migrate Fairview’s historical permit data from IDT into GovWell; he said the town began using IDT in 2019 and has about five years of data to transfer. “Yes. There will be data transfer to where it moves over all the historical data,” Ethan said.
Vice Mayor McDonald and other commissioners asked about GovWell’s experience and adoption challenges. Liam said GovWell launched in March 2023 and currently serves roughly 30 customers. He acknowledged change can be difficult for long-time contractors and staff but said early customers reported faster processing times after adopting the platform. Liam offered to try to share an annual recap from Hampton, Georgia, showing time-savings metrics.
Board member Mary Anderson told the group she found GovWell more user-friendly than IDT and welcomed GovWell’s live support. “I like the process that you have where the applicant gets, you know, information back quickly so that they know their next step,” Mary Anderson said.
On data portability, Liam said the city retains its data and GovWell supports exporting it; he also noted some prior vendors can be difficult about transfers. “If you do choose to go another direction 1 day, then, yeah, the data is yours,” Liam said. He described a customer success manager assigned for implementation and said the firm plans user-testing before go-live to match Fairview’s forms, workflows and fee schedules.
No formal contract vote was taken during the demo. The demonstration ended after questions and the board moved on to staff reports.
The demo materials showed how applicants can submit permits and complaints, how staff can route plan reviews and mark up plans, and how the system attaches records to parcels for code-enforcement lookups. Liam demonstrated invoices generated from the fee schedule and online payment options as well as a searchable property tab that aggregates permits and violations.
Fairview staff and commissioners asked for follow-up details including any comparative adoption metrics GovWell can share, an implementation timeline, and confirmation of the scope and format of the data transfer from IDT.
