Cape Coral unveils Kaizen overhaul of utility permitting to speed connections

City staff on April 8 told the Cape Coral City Council Committee of the Whole that a recent Kaizen process redesign of the utilities permitting workflow is intended to make connections faster and reduce wasted staff time.

"The scope of this Kaizen event had five clear goals," said Myra DeLeon, the team lead presenting the effort. She told council the targets included reducing overall utility connection processing time by 25% and improving permit completion and closeout times by 25%.

Staff described several specific changes: embedding a wildlife affidavit directly into the online permit form so it cannot be submitted separately and thus will always be associated with the correct address; automatic conversion of text fields to uppercase and validation of the city STRAP number against GIS to prevent mis‑entries; consolidation of separate septic‑abandonment and utility‑connection permits into a single combined permit; automated fee calculation and immediate invoicing in the application; and new employee "hub cards" that display real‑time data on the review dashboard.

DeLeon said the City processed 1,001 septic‑abandonment permits between July 1, 2025 and March 8, 2026 and that consolidating permit types will eliminate what staff estimates could be roughly 1,400 additional duplicate permit submissions under current project volumes, representing about a 50% reduction in permit volume for that workflow.

The team proposed a $20 administrative fee for each resubmission after the first for documents submitted after the initial attempt, a measure intended to give contractors a financial incentive to submit complete, correct applications. City staff emphasized that the $20 proposal is a recommendation and would have to be returned to council for formal fee adoption.

City Manager and staff also said they have put in place metrics to compare "before" and "after" performance and noted that mandatory fee payment prior to staff review will take effect May 1, 2026, per a notice to industry. The manager described the Kaizen as an internal initiative run by a cross‑functional BTC (Bureau of Transforming Change) team, with external lean guidance from a consultant.

Council members asked for clarity on whether the $20 resubmission fee would cover staff review time; the manager said the figure may not be full cost recovery and would be refined before any legislative action. Council also asked staff to report back with the agreed baseline and the post‑implementation comparative metrics needed to demonstrate the claimed 25% reductions.

Staff said many of the changes described are already implemented or in process and that remaining items have clear owners and deadlines. The presentation closed with staff offering to return with updates once the full set of automation and dashboard enhancements are in place.