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September 19, 2018

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Putuo’s Changshou Rd ‘building chief’ idea takes off

A “building chief” program initiated by Changshou Road subdistrict in Putuo District is being promoted citywide to offer bespoke services to local office buildings in an effort to optimize the city’s business environment.

A building chief is normally appointed at local residential buildings to solve domestic disputes, organize residents’ activities and send notices from the neighborhood committees.

Under the innovative program, senior subdistrict officials serve as the “building chief” for the commercial buildings under their jurisdiction to better serve the companies and solve all kinds of difficulties they encounter.

Twelve senior officials, including Li Rui, the Party secretary of the Changshou Road subdistrict who serves as the “general building chief,” have begun working in the 48 office buildings in the region. Over 5,000 companies, including some two-thirds registered in Putuo, are based in these buildings in the city’s western downtown.

The building chiefs work together with the district’s market supervision, industry and commerce, taxation and police authorities to offer “one-stop” services, ranging from administrative approval, talent services, and legal consultation to the employees’ housing, education, medical and even matchmaking issues.

Since the Changshou Road subdistrict initiated the program in February, some 500 enterprises have newly based in the Changshou community, a 6-percent increase year on year. The building chief scheme has now been expanded to cover all the 151 business buildings across Putuo.

However, it is not an easy task to serve the large number of companies and find solutions in time to various problems, from the complicated to the tiny.

“The building chiefs must take the responsibility to offer help and solve difficulties for the companies rather than being a sideshow and making empty promises,” said Li.

Apart from serving as the general chief to oversee the program, Li himself also serves as the building chief for the Putuo Technology Building, where hundreds of high-tech and startup firms are based.

According to stipulation, every building chief must visit each company within the building frequently to ask whether they have encountered any trouble. The subdistrict has made a notebook for each of the chiefs along with a policy manual in case the problem was unfamiliar.

Over 30 common services have been listed in the notebook along with 104 policies to solve the difficulties that companies frequently encountered.

Within five months, the building chiefs of Changshou subdistrict have visited 312 companies and held 286 meetings with company officials while solve 260 problems for them. Most concerning issues include government policies, talent recruitment, entrepreneurship issues as well as employees’ lunch, children’s education, parking difficulty and traffic congestion, according to the subdistrict.

For instance, the Amara Signature Shanghai, a five-star hotel from Singapore, planned an official opening in February after the completion of all kinds of preparation work, but the hotel found a certain certificate was lacking which required more than a month of processing.

The hotel boss asked for help from Zhao Ping, the director of the Changshou subdistrict and the building chief of the hotel during Zhao’s regular visit. Zhao immediately reported to the district government who organized a joint effort among various government bodies and shorten the approval process to three days from over a month.

The hotel on Changshou Road opened as scheduled and at a propitious time.

In another case, a government-funded white-collar canteen has been established with the help of the building chief for the Baochengwan business zone, which has benefited over 2,000 employees in six nearby office buildings.

The subdistrict has also released an innovative company list based on the information collected by the building chiefs. The red list involves the fastest growing enterprises, while the blue list includes rising startup firms. A blacklist has also been released to publicize those fraudulent companies to protect the customers from being cheated, said Li Yunjiao, the director of the Party construction department with the Changshou subdistrict.

In the next step, an electronic platform is under construction to include this information. Building chiefs will also be able to accept and solve problems through the online and mobile platform.

With the building chief scheme, the subdistrict has also managed to better link up the companies and residential communities. Employees working in Changshou community can now send their children to nearby community day care centers, while the white-collars are encouraged to give lessons on computers or finance to the residents.




 

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