Spruce: Environmental Health Tool

Environmental health permitting and inspection software

PH360™ Spruce: environmental health, permit to inspection.

One place for the whole permit. The business owner applies, uploads, and pays without calling you. The health agent opens a review file that is already prepared. The inspector arrives briefed and works offline. Spruce drafts the groundwork at every step, and a person makes the call.

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Configured to your code, forms, and fees Office, field, and offline A person confirms every AI action

Local public health

Environmental health deserves a system, not more compromise.

You permit restaurants, pools, septic, and housing. You inspect them on a schedule set by risk, cite against a code your jurisdiction adopted and amended, and carry the enforcement that follows. The tools on offer have been generic permitting platforms built for other functions, ones that know nothing about a food code, so the real expertise has lived in binders and in the inspector who has been there twenty years. Spruce starts from that inspector instead: a system shaped around what environmental health does.

How Spruce fits your department

One system for every program you run, every phase of the license, and every inspector in the field.

Covers the whole license lifecycle

Pre-operational review, routine operational inspections, and reactive or enforcement follow-up all live on the same establishment record, so nothing has to be reconstructed when a case moves from one phase to the next.

Built for the field, not the desk

History, prior citations, and checklists are already on the device before the inspector walks in, offline if needed, so their attention stays on the establishment in front of them instead of on their screen.

There when you need it

AI-generated summaries and recommendations, like permit history, inspection history, violation history, and suggested next steps, always appear in a marked purple panel. It is easy to see, easy to act on, and just as easy to pass by. It never makes the call for you.

Configured to your code, not just any code

Categories, forms, fees, priority levels, and correction deadlines follow the codes your jurisdiction adopted, your own local amendments, and your fee schedule, not a generic template.

One permit, end to end

See Spruce in action.

Environmental health usually runs out of four or five places at once: a permitting portal, a spreadsheet of inspection dates, a folder of scanned plan reviews, a checklist on a clipboard, and the memory of whoever has been there longest. Spruce is one place for all of it. Application, fee, plan review, inspection, citation, follow-up, issuance, and renewal.

The walkthrough below follows one food service permit. A new restaurant applies and pays, the health agent reviews the application and decides, the inspector visits and cites, the permit issues, and a year later it renews. Anything in purple is drafted by AI and waits on a person.

Recorded walkthrough Watch one permit travel from application to renewal. Click to unlock the walkthroughSign up below to watch

Stills from the same walkthrough are below, in the order the permit travels.

Business portal home showing open notices, the owner's establishment, an application in progress, and issued permits.
The business owner gets their own portal. Notices, establishments, applications in progress, and permits already issued all sit on one screen, so nobody calls the health department to ask where their application stands.
Application step showing establishment category, seating capacity, food handling checkboxes, and a purple panel explaining that the fields shown adapt to the selection.
The form asks only what the answers call for. Pick a category and the required fields change with it, and the purple panel says why those fields appeared. Nothing already entered is lost if the applicant switches back.
Documents step listing the required documents for this application with five of five attached and an optional slot still open.
Which documents are required follows from what the applicant told you, and the list is yours to set. The owner drags them in and can see what is still missing before submitting instead of after a rejection.
Fee review panel showing an itemized fee and a confirmed card payment with a receipt number.
Fees are computed from what was submitted, using your fee schedule, and paid by card in the portal. The receipt lands on the application record, so the money and the paperwork never travel separately.
The health agent's Today screen: the day's route, applications awaiting first review, follow-ups, renewals arriving, and a purple proposed day plan.
The health agent’s day opens on one screen: the route, what is awaiting first review, follow-ups due, and renewals arriving. Spruce proposes an order for the stops and explains the reasoning. Accepting it changes nothing on the record. It is still your day.
Application record with a purple reviewer file: documents read, completeness scored, document findings, risk classification, and a suggested next step.
The moment the owner submits, Spruce prepares the review file. It reads every uploaded document, cross-checks each against the application, scores completeness, and proposes a risk classification. The header says it plainly: drafted for review, not a decision.
Decision panel offering Approve, Return for Additional Info, Request Pre-Operational Inspection, and Deny, with a note that every action is recorded by name.
The decision is the agent’s. Approve, return for more information, request a pre-opening inspection, or deny. Every action is recorded under a name, and returning or denying requires a rationale that goes on the record.
Field view before an inspection showing the establishment, the last two inspections, and the items cited before.
The inspector arrives briefed. Before walking in they see the last inspections, what was cited before and is worth checking first, and who the person in charge is. All of it is stored on the device, so a basement with no signal changes nothing.
Temperature logging in the field with area, equipment, product, and reading fields.
Logging a temperature takes a tap. Spruce offers the equipment and the products it has seen at this establishment before, so the inspector picks from a short list instead of typing the walk-in cooler’s name again.
A drafted finding marked out of compliance with the rule applied, the code section, the source, a confidence level, and the code text quoted.
A reading out of range comes back as a drafted finding: the rule applied, the code section, the source it came from, a confidence level, and the code text in plain language. The inspector, not Spruce, is the one who cites it.
Inspection record showing a follow-up inspection scheduled on the correction clock.
Findings above the priority you set put a follow-up on the calendar automatically, on the correction clock your jurisdiction uses. Nothing depends on somebody remembering to schedule the recheck.
The issued permit certificate, ready to print or save as a PDF.
Once the agent approves, the certificate is ready to print or save. It goes in the department file and on the wall of the establishment, and the owner can pull their own copy from the portal.
Renewal application pre-populated from the prior permit with a banner showing what changed since last year.
A renewal starts from last year’s permit rather than a blank form. What changed is called out at the top, along with why it matters, so neither the owner nor the agent rereads a file to find the one line that moved.

Scope

What Spruce covers.

Applications the public can finish

A portal where owners apply, upload, and pay, with the required fields and documents following from their own answers. Your staff get a prepared review file on every submission.

By role

What changes, and for whom.

The field inspector

Arrives briefed, logs the visit offline, and confirms a drafted finding with the code section already attached rather than writing it up back at the office.

The health agent

Opens a prepared review file, sees which documents disagree with the application before reading them, and spends the time on the decision instead of assembling the packet.

Department leadership

Changes categories, fees, and deadlines in settings, and can answer a records request from a trail of who did what and when.

The business owner

Applies, uploads, and pays without a phone call, sees where the application stands at any hour, and renews from last year instead of starting over.

Part of the platform

Spruce runs on the same engine as the rest of PH360.

Spruce runs on our public health reasoning engine. The FDA Food Code is built in, and your own adopted rules, forms, and fee schedule sit alongside it. You change your categories, documents, and deadlines yourself, with no change request to us.

Common questions

Spruce FAQ.

How do we get started?

We configure Spruce with you: your establishment categories, required documents, fee schedule, inspection frequencies, priority levels, and correction deadlines, plus the forms and certificates your jurisdiction issues. Schedule a walkthrough and we will scope it against your own permits.

Does it work with the code we actually adopted?

Yes, and that is the point. The FDA Food Code is built in, and your local adoption and amendments sit alongside it. Findings are drafted against what your jurisdiction enforces, with the section and the source shown so the inspector can verify each one before citing.

What happens in the field with no signal?

The inspector keeps working. The establishment history, prior citations, and the checklist are stored on the device, and the visit syncs when there is a connection again. How long a device may stay offline before it must sync is a setting you control.

How do we know an AI-drafted citation is right?

You check it, and Spruce is built to make that quick. Every drafted finding shows the code section, the source it came from, a confidence level, and the code text in plain language. It only proposes a finding when it has a grounded source. Without one, it abstains rather than guessing.

Is there a human in the loop on the AI?

Always. Anything AI-generated is marked in purple and cannot complete on its own. The agent accepts or changes the proposed day plan, AI-drafted findings must be marked reviewed, the inspector is the one who cites, and returning or denying an application requires a rationale recorded under a name.

What happens to our current permitting system?

You can start with one permit type in Spruce and leave the rest where it is until you’re ready. Single sign-on, directory integration, and access to your data through an API get settled when we scope the work with you, and we will tell you plainly what is in place and what we would build.

Are those real records in the screenshots?

No. Every screen is the actual product, and the people, businesses, and permits in them are sample data. Nothing on this page came out of a live department.

See it against your own permits.

Thirty minutes. Bring your establishment categories, your fee schedule, and the code you adopted, and we will run Spruce against them.

Schedule a walkthrough Back to PH360 overview

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