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(Source enr.com - Date 3/23/03)

By Judy Schriener

While many Internet companies are pulling back, NetClerk is expanding both its functionality and its reach. NetClerk has added the capability for its online permitting solution to incorporate attached files and has begun offering services to homebuilders, who have to submit "footprints" of their houses in order to get permits. Pulte Homes in the Phoenix area is NetClerk’s first customer to use this service.

San Francisco-based NetClerk also has expanded its service to include the utilities and telecommunications industries for encroachment and right-of-way permits. The online permitting provider is just now rolling out the service into those two markets and hopes to have its first customers within 30 days, says Jeff Kraatz, NetClerk’s president and CEO.

An agreement announced earlier this month between NetClerk and ABCpoint.com, the online service aimed at members of the Associated Builders and Contractors, is for NetClerk to power ABCpermitpoint, which includes a discount to ABC members for online permitting services.

NetClerk also has expanded into the 50 or more cities in the broad Chicago market, its 13th metropolitan region. Other metro areas already served are Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, Seattle, Denver, Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Detroit and Tampa. NetClerk’s services work with the cities’ permitting systems but are not incorporated into them in the back end, as are some competitors’ solutions. The set-up in each city requires the cooperation of each city to approve and process permits.

The NetClerk process can utilize e-mail, fax, Web and file protocol transfer (FTP). "Our GovCentral Web-based tool has successfully been 'integrated' into over 40 cities' environments," says Kraatz. "Utilizing this tool, NetClerk processes greater than 14% of all its permits completely electronically."

Kraatz is especially enthusiastic about his company’s entrance into the residential market. "It’s a step up that food chain of where we want to go," he says.

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