Application Journey Audit

Form

On-site mapping with a written journey map

Span

Usually three to six weeks

Where

Client offices in Tasmania; mainland Australia by arrangement

Charge

Quoted per application type and site, from a daily visit rate

The Application Journey Audit is the piece of work most offices ask for first. It is for records supervisors, team leaders, and directors who can feel that files stall, yet cannot point to the desk, the tray, or the referral envelope that holds them.

Who it is for

A council planning unit whose statutory clock keeps being restarted by missing-document letters. A university admissions room that cannot say, by Thursday, which packs still sit in a referral pile. A grant secretariat that knows the scientific assessor is late, but not how late, or how the file came back. If you handle a named class of applications in Australia and the path from lodgement to decision has become a matter of rumour, this audit is the right opening.

What you receive

You receive a wall-sized journey map (and a folded desk copy) of one application type at one site. The map names each station the file actually visits: intake, numbering, completeness check, assessment, referral, sign-off, posting of the notice. Beside each station we record what we saw: how long a sample of files rested there, who touched them, and what sent them backwards.

The written companion is a plain account, not a slide deck. It lists the loops that the official chart left out — the blotter, the windowsill, the officer who is the only one who knows the combination to a cabinet.

What is included

• A briefing conversation to fix the application type and the dates we may sit in the room
• On-site observation at the counter, mail tray, and assessing desks
• A sample of closed files, read with your permission, to reconstruct completed journeys
• Short conversations with the people who stamp, carry, and sign
• One journey map and a debrief with the people who live with the trays
• A follow-up letter two weeks later answering questions raised in the debrief

What is excluded

We do not rewrite your legislation, hire your staff, or install a register. We do not sit in rooms we have not been invited into, and we do not take original files off the premises. Software selection, scanning projects, and the redesign of public forms belong to other trades; we will say so if the map shows those jobs waiting.

Who does the work

Margaret Ellison leads most audits. She spent years as a records supervisor in Hobart and still reads a covering minute the way other people read a bus timetable. Rowan Hale joins when the files are enrolment or admission packs. Clare Pitt takes grant and funding rounds. You meet the named person before the first visit day.

How the days run

1. Briefing. We agree the application type, the sample size, and which closed files we may read.
2. Arrival. We are introduced on the floor, given a chair that does not block the counter, and shown where the trays live.
3. Watching and sampling. We follow live files as they move, and reconstruct older ones from the stamps and minutes already on them.
4. The map. We draw in the evening, on paper, and correct the drawing with staff the next morning.
5. Debrief. We pin the map, walk it, and leave a copy. Nothing is presented as a surprise to the people who already knew the trays were heavy.

Span and place

Most audits take three to six weeks of mixed presence: several full days on the floor, then quieter days of reading. The work happens in your rooms in Tasmania. Mainland visits are possible when travel is booked in advance and a local host can open the registry.

Preparation

Please tell staff we are coming. Please do not tidy the trays for our sake; a sorted pile is a different object from the pile that actually sits there on a Monday. We need a table, a power point if you have one, and a contact who can fetch a closed file without a week of permission-chasing.

Constraints

We will not map more than one application type at a time. We will not publish the map. If a file is before a court or a complaint body, it stays out of the sample.

Charge

The audit is quoted after we know the site, the volume, and whether closed files are in the same building. The starting point is our daily visit rate on the rates page. Travel from Hobart is itemised when the site is outside greater Hobart.

Next step

Write to the practice with the application type and the town. If a statutory clock is already running hot, put that in the first sentence.

Enquire about this mapping