TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Tampa city leaders are taking their inspectors off the streets and putting them in front of a computer screen to streamline home inspections.
“The inspection Is the worst part of what we do,” said owner of I Know a Guy AC, Chad Kaaa.
Generally when someone gets work done on their house that needs a city inspection – they and their contractor could spend a full day waiting for an inspector to show up.
“We’re in the business of making money,” said Kaaa. “We have to be out there creating revenue so if they’re just sitting there it costs us money.”
On Monday, the city started using a new app, VuSpex which lets inspectors get their job done without wasting time on travel.
“We’re all over the map, working in hotels, office buildings, everything so ideally this is something to help lessen the load for our staff,” said JC Hudgison, construction service center manager for the City of Tampa.
It works a lot like a scheduled Facetime call; inspectors are able to look at work through a technician’s phone camera and give live feedback. Or contractors can upload pictures to be looked over without an appointment.
“If we can come to your house and change your air conditioner and close out the inspection in the same day – it’s just a really good customer experience,” said Chad Kaaa.
Kaaa tells Channel 8 he’s had great success with the technology. He says they’re able to cut out some of the usual human error, like incomplete forms, that may waste time for them and the city.
“There’s many inspections we fail over something very, very simple that if we were there we could have corrected it in real time and they would allow us to,” said Kaaa.
Virtual appointments are stacked on top of each other so that an inspector could potentially check a different project every twenty minutes, without spending a second of time on the roads.
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