Capping the Number of Scheduled Inspections – Managing Load

Unfortunately, we cannot cap inspections in the Oregon Model because the only way to cap inspections in Accela is to ‘weight’ each individual inspection type  which is not likely something we could standardize across agencies. Additionally, there are many, varying factors that affect inspection loads each day:  inspector certifications, drive time to inspections, staffing, and much, much more.  

Our best-practice recommendation for managing inspection load, is to do the following:

Each afternoon, go into MY TASKS page > Inspections tab > run the ‘Tomorrow's Inspections’ filter:

• Review for volume, inspection type/inspector certification, 
• Sort by ‘Address’ to determine location/drive time involved, and 
• Consider what your staffing will be for next day – 

and determine then - a day ahead - if any inspections need to be rescheduled. 
If they do - PLEASE NOTE, rescheduling does NOT send any email or notification to the Requestor -  you will have to reach out to customers to let them know their inspections are being rescheduled to whatever day you determine.  

You also have an available filter called ‘Inspections Scheduled in the Next Two Weeks’ if you wish to look ahead a little further - but note, new inspections are being scheduled every day - so if you look ahead too soon or too far, then it is very likely that additional new inspections will be scheduled regardless.

If you are needing to actively Cancel (versus Rescheduling), then it is most ideal to click in to the individual inspection and actually result it as 'Cancelled' and then send the result email that generates in the back office.

The only downside to this automated email you have the option to send in the back office, is that you cannot include any other text or information, it is a canned email - but does still state that the inspection has been cancelled and includes your agency's contact information.  
Alternatively, you have the option to checkbox the scheduled inspection - in MY TASKS > Inspections > Manage Inspections > Cancel Inspections from the list level (rather than the individual inspection level) - but this method does NOT send any notification or communication to the Requestor, so like rescheduling - you would have to specifically reach out to the requestor to let them know their inspection can't be completed as scheduled and is being cancelled (versus rescheduled for a different date).

Both of the above methods for cancelling inspections, result in a new pending instance of the cancelled inspection type for further/future scheduling.