The Town of Innisfil and Georgian College find success working together to streamline the development review process
The Town of Innisfil is fortunate to collaborate with a number of regional business support partners. These joint efforts both enhance and broaden the assistance it provides to local businesses and organizations.
Post-secondary partners such as Georgian College work alongside local businesses to create applied learning opportunities that benefit students while addressing real-world industry and community needs. Through collaboration with faculty, researchers and students, employers gain fresh perspectives and emerging talent, while students gain hands-on experience that strengthens their education and career readiness. One recent partnership demonstrates how much both industry and learners can gain through strategic, collaborative alliances - and how quickly shared expertise and resources can lead to meaningful outcomes.
The Town's Development Engineering Department recently joined forces with Georgian College's Research and Innovation team. The task? To analyze the Town's development review process, with two goals in mind: 1) analyzing data trends, and 2) finding opportunities to accelerate the development review process.
In late 2024, the Town's Planning & Growth team participated in a team-building event at Georgian College's Henry Bernick Entrepreneurship Centre. The team learned about the various areas of study and how staff might leverage the expertise of students and employees.
Together with the college, they identified challenges related to the development review process that resulted in multiple resubmissions and lengthened the overall review process. The Town provided data that the students analyzed to find trends in recurring engineering review comments across various engineering disciplines.
"We sought this partnership to identify trends or reoccurring issues that we could get ahead of and possibly avoid in the future," says Adil Khan, Development Project Manager with the Town. "Further, we wanted a more modern, data-driven way to understand this information so we could streamline our development review process and improve communication with applicants."
Students from the college's Big Data Analytics program participated. A team of four completed Phase 1 last year, and a new team of five continues the work this year in Phase 2.
The initiative was led through Georgian College's Research and Innovation department, where applied research projects are designed to provide students with experiential learning opportunities in collaboration with industry partners.
"At Georgian College, we focus on delivering experiential learning through applied research projects that connect students with real-world challenges," says Brunilda Xhaferllari, Program Manager, Digital Initiatives. "Programs such as Big Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence enable students to apply their technical skills in meaningful ways while contributing to industry-driven solutions."
"The students helped organize our historical review comments, build the initial database, and create dashboards that highlight patterns in the data. They also began developing models to group similar comments. Their technical skills have supported the foundation of a tool that will help us better understand our development review process," says Khan.
The work was part of the students' capstone project. The comments received by the Town are a critical part of reviewing construction-related projects such as site plans, subdivisions, and infrastructure work, but they were previously stored across multiple files without a structured way to analyze them," Xhaferllari says.
"The goal of the project was to create a searchable database and build dashboards that could provide trends and insights. This helps the Town's Development Engineering team improve consistency in reviews, reduce the time spent searching for past feedback, and support staff."
The project ran for approximately 14 weeks and was structured to mirror a real-world industry engagement. "The students followed an Agile approach and the full Software Development Lifecycle, from requirements gathering and analysis through development, iteration, and final delivery. This helped them build professional discipline, adaptability, and collaboration skills alongside their technical expertise," she explains.
The work is still underway. "We are currently refining and validating the database with the students and our engineering staff to ensure the comment database is accurate. Once this step is complete, the system will help us identify trends and recurring issues earlier, allowing us to communicate expectations to developers in advance of their submissions," he explains.
Their work has since served as a foundation for ongoing collaboration with future student teams. Georgian College's Artificial Intelligence program, which follows a similar experiential learning model, is also exploring collaboration opportunities with the Town, she reports. "These projects provide students with real-world experience while allowing organizations to see the potential of applied analytics and AI in action," says Xhaferllari.
She adds, "We are incredibly proud of their work and grateful to the Town of Innisfil for providing the opportunity to our students. Collaborations like this are a win-win - they help organizations explore digital transformation while giving students hands-on experience that prepares them for the workforce."
This is the first time Khan's department has partnered with a post-secondary institution, and the experience has been a positive one. "The students brought technical knowledge and fresh perspectives that aligned well with our goals of improving and modernizing our processes," he says, noting that they see opportunities for future partnerships in areas such as automation.
A more efficient, data-driven review process leads to clearer expectations and faster turnaround times for developers, says Khan. This supports better project planning and reduces delays. The partnership also strengthens local connections, encourages innovation, and gives students meaningful experience that directly benefits the community.
"Innisfil is on a significant growth trajectory, so finding ways to streamline and modernize our processes is increasingly important. Partnerships like this help us stay ahead of that growth and continue delivering reliable, high-quality service to local businesses and organizations," he says.
Moving forward, staff are exploring ways to implement the findings and continue improving the development review process.
This initiative supports Action 55 of the Economic Development Strategic Plan "to focus on building capacity for innovation supporting intrapreneurs and creating opportunities for employees to be informed on leading-edge practices."
Reach out to the Town of Innisfil Economic Development team to learn what regional supports are available to support your business here, or call 705-436-3710.
This project is funded in part by the Government of Ontario and the Town of Innisfil.
This story was written by Village Media and originally published on Innisfil Today and is now shared on the Town's Economic Development news channel.