Case Study: Manatee County achieves faster permitting and $250K annual savings with Accela Building and Planning

Manatee County Deploys Accela Planning and Building to Reduce Office Foot Traffic, Turnaround Times and Overall Expenses

Manatee County, Florida (pop. 385,571) faced slow, paper-based planning and permitting processes spread across aging, disparate legacy systems that drove high office foot traffic, long turnaround times and the planned expense of a new permitting annex and extra staff. The county needed a seamless, reliable online experience to reduce outages, improve customer service and cut operating costs.

By moving to Accela’s cloud solutions—Accela Building, Accela Planning, Accela Citizen Access and Accela Service Request—Manatee now accepts more than 80% of permits online, reduced overall plan review times nearly in half (single-family reviews from 7 to 3 days), enabled 24/7 submissions and improved quality control. The modernization eliminated the annex plan, cut about $250,000 in annual legacy software and maintenance costs, and significantly lowered office traffic and turnaround times.

Manatee County

John Barnott

Director of Building and Development Services