ColvosWorkflows

Record work, automated

The record work your staff do by hand, built once and run for you.

Pulling records from several systems, cleaning and matching them, checking them, then doing it all again next month. We build that as a workflow that runs on a schedule, with a note of how every result was made.

  • Public works and utilities
  • Planning departments
  • Health departments
  • Records and GIS teams
  • Built from the records you already keep
  • Checked before anything is published
  • Runs again every week

Tell us your question

What record work takes your staff the most time? We read every answer.

What do you need to check? Pick any.

We use your details only to tell you about this product and closely related ones. Ask us to delete them any time: inquiry@colvoslabs.com.

Case study

1,810 homes in Pierce County with a recent septic record sit within 200 feet of a county sewer main

The health department holds the septic records, the county holds the sewer lines, and the permit offices hold the connections. No office had the picture. We joined them for every parcel in the county.

Aerial photo of central Pierce County with homes on septic near county sewer mains marked in red
Over the USDA aerial photo (2023). Red: a septic record since 2015. Yellow: older or undated septic records. Built 2026-10-04.
634within 100 ft of a main
275within 200 ft of a stream or wetland, or on a floodplain
66sold in the last 12 months
1,238taken off first: decommissioned, or a sewer connection or repair permit on file

How it was built

  • The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department's septic records for 74,953 parcels, matched to their parcels and dated from their files.
  • The distance from every lot to the nearest Pierce County sewer main.
  • Septic decommission records and sewer connection and repair permits from Pierce County and Tacoma, to take off homes that connected.
  • Assessor land use and sales, and the county's stream, wetland and floodplain maps.

What we checked

We read the records behind 10 of these homes at random: each had a septic inspection report, several from 2023, and no sewer permit of any kind.

Limits

The distance is to Pierce County's own mains; city sewers are not in that layer, and connection permits from other sewer providers are not all in what we hold, so some homes counted may be connected. 2,797 more homes have only older or undated septic records and are left out of the headline. A screening from public records, not a survey or an engineering study. The list of homes is shared only with the agencies responsible for them.

What a workflow does

Scanned archives, made searchable

We turned the health department's scanned septic files into an index tied to each property and dated from its file. An office sitting on scanned records can have the same.

Records that share no ID, matched

Permits from two systems, scanned septic records and assessor files, each matched to the right property though they share no common number. The same matching applies to accounts, licences and inspections.

Checked, and kept current

Every result is checked against rules before it is published, and the workflow runs again on its schedule, so the answer does not go stale when the project ends.

How it works

  1. Tell us the question and where the records live.

  2. We build the workflow and show you the first result, with how it was made.

  3. It runs on a schedule, and you get each update with its method note.