One of the far-sighted actions taken by Prince William County was the creation and funding of the Prince William Science Accelerator. The accelerator is the result of years of work and effort by Ms. Martha Schoonmaker. She is an economic development visionary.
In a
nutshell, the Prince William Science Accelerator was created to provide the
catalyst for a growing life sciences industry cluster. I could go on, but the
purpose of this post is to highlight my minor contribution.
One of the
early concerns was the permitting process.
It is important to remember that the clients applying for space in the
accelerator are scientists. These
individuals know their science and products/services. However, permitting was new to them.
Former Prince
County economic development director Jeff Kaczmarek asked me to put together a
working permit guide for future tenants.
It is highly customized and applicable only to this facility. I started working on the draft and
immediately contacted staff in Development Services (permitting). Working with me, they offered concrete steps
to ensure that the process was as expedited and smooth as possible. All of these are Joint Occupancy Evaluation
(JOE) permits.
Working
with all the key partners, I was able to distill the process into 10 steps on
two pages (and not small print). When appropriate, a contact, website, and link
to an application was included. I also
added the expected cost and how long a tenant should be prepared to spend
getting a permit. It is essentially a
soup to nuts document.
Link to the
process: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o0PEj1T8v5C5eTD4iZ1k8EM-9-1b7-ie/view?usp=sharing
