Phoenix

Expanding Efficiencies to Manage Phoenix’s Current and Future Growth

CitiesPhoenixExpanding Efficiencies to Manage Phoenix's Current and Future Growth

As the City of Phoenix became one of the fastest growing cities in the country, Bloomberg Associates worked with the City’s Planning and Development Department (PDD) to manage the increased commercial and residential planning needs, by making their processes more efficient and data driven.

We are deeply committed to elevating the standard of customer service for residents, businesses, and developers, and [the Process Improvements Plan] represents a significant stride toward achieving that goal.

Joshua Bednarek, Director of the Phoenix Planning and Development Department

Relevant Expertise

Modernize Municipal Systems and Processes

Contract Transparency
Procurement Process Optimization

Challenge

Recent increases in population and visitation have brought greater opportunities to Phoenix while at the same time placing a heavier burden on the PDD to manage the City’s existing infrastructure and environment effectively, efficiently and sustainably.

To harness its growth and ensure that the needs of a growing number of citizens, businesses, and tourists are met, the PDD asked Bloomberg Associates to help develop strategies focused on improving existing permitting processes, tracking customer service matters, identifying best practices for fiscal impact studies, digitizing manual/paper processes, and exploring new AI technologies that could speed up the evaluation and approvals for constituents.

Approach

Bloomberg Associates reviewed procedures in several areas requested by the PDD, e.g., examining several years of data pertaining to building plan submissions, and issuance of permits. Delays were identified and suggestions were made collaboratively about how the PDD could improve performance in those areas.

Other findings were identified that prompted recommendations to improve data collection and streamline the tracking of pending matters, thereby ameliorating customer frustrations. We provided case studies from ten other planning departments, including their KPIs, to compare peer procedures and inform better practices.

Furthermore, Bloomberg Associates, in partnership with graduate students from the Johns Hopkins University Engineering Management Master’s Program, gathered research on 6 AI tools that have been used in 15 cities that could be incorporated by PDD to boost efficiency.

Impact

In 2024, the PDD released a comprehensive Process Improvements Report that cited significant enhancements to the efficiency and effectiveness of the City’s development processes, productivity, and overall customer service. That major overhaul contained some elements from the efficiency reviews conducted by Bloomberg Associates.

–16 recommendations implemented by the then newly created PDD Office of the Ombudsman, that improved data collection and management practices.

–4 bottlenecks identified by reviewing 2 years of building permit data, with those delays in the permitting process remediated.

–2 peer city planning departments from Boston and New York convened by BA to share their expertise on fiscal impact studies with the PDD, boosting the PDD’s understanding of meeting the crucial needs of the City for utilities, transportation, etc., while negotiating with developers.

Information is power, and in this case, the process improvements identified during this collaboration, the AI and fiscal impact studies presentations, contributed to PDD’s ongoing productivity and enhancement of its customer service, the priority of Director Bednarek made at the beginning of the Bloomberg Associates engagement.