The City of Winnipeg’s planning department is adapting to unprecedented circumstances with both a digital and practical approach.
City of Winnipeg director of planning, property and development John Kiernan said while the department is working to fulfil its mandate, there’s no real frame of reference to turn to in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Part of this, generally, is that it’s all conjecture at this point. It’s all rear-view mirror driving,” Kiernan said. “We’ve described this as a never-before-seen situation. We’ve pushed staff home and within the construction industry so much happens digitally already. We’ve always done permits online for contractors and as of April 20 we’re doing that for homeowners as well.”
The planning department was able to transition internal work to employees’ homes and is now also adapting technology to inspections.
“We hadn’t before, but we now offer virtual inspections using Skype and Zoom walkthroughs. We didn’t want a tsunami of applications as people go back to work and we view our role as critical for supporting public and private investment,” he said.
The department is also making changes to the permitting process to address the COVID-19 slowdown.
“Normally when you apply for a permit, we insist you start work in six months with no code changes in between. We’re now extending permits to one year and for those already underway we give them an additional year. Usually there’s a fee and those are being waived,” he said.
Kiernan recently told members of the city’s Planning, Property and Development Committee to expect construction to dip in the months ahead.
“We’ve been moving along well for the first quarter and building permits overall were up. That was Q1, and what we see (coming) is a softening,” he said.
Kiernan cautioned that the numbers up to this point have followed annual trends, making analysis difficult.
“It’s hard to compare month over month. It doesn’t help because we know April will be more than March in any given year,” he said.
He noted common sense indicates there will be a drop-off in residential construction due to social distancing concerns as well as commercial construction.
“We believe it’s the smaller commercial projects taking a pause to see where they end up. With businesses closed, people are concerned with bricks and mortar,” Kiernan said. “Larger projects are still coming in and our department runs its own projects.”
While COVID-19 has shut down many projects around the city, shelter in place also means city facilities that would otherwise be operational can now undergo maintenance, Kiernan said.
“Early shutdown of recreational facilities allowed us to accelerate maintenance. Rather than wait for the regular shutdown time, we time-shifted our regular maintenance schedules on things we would have done later,” he said.
While the pandemic has opened a window for some project work it also meant shutting down a library project when a worker tested positive.
“The rest of the crew then had to go into isolation, so there’s been a ripple effect on private sector groups working on our projects,” Kiernan said.
He added he anticipates a rebound in work in August and September and “then the question is will there be a second (COVID-19) wave?
“We’re in contact with health officials. We operate where people gather, so as (shelter in place) measures are lifted we monitor carefully. We anticipate a second wave, but to what degree is the question,” Kiernan said.
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