Case Study: Brunswick County Building Department achieves paperless, faster permitting with Laserfiche

How Brunswick County Went Paperless in the Building Department

Brunswick County, NC — one of the fastest-growing counties in the nation — faced a surge in permitting and inspection volume (about 3,000 inspections and 100–150 permit applications per month) that relied on heavy paper handling and manual handoffs across a large, partly rural 846-square-mile service area. This created delays, repeat trips by contractors, and workflow bottlenecks across multiple departments involved in permit reviews.

By implementing Laserfiche Forms, a custom in-house approval dashboard, and integrations with the county permitting system and ESRI Collector for ArcGIS, Brunswick automated intake, parallelized departmental reviews, and enabled inspectors and contractors to access permits and documents via iPads and WebLink. The result: a largely paperless building department where applicants receive permits and invoices electronically, inspectors operate from maps in the field, contractors avoid office trips, and permit turnaround is significantly faster.

Brunswick County

Michael Read

Deputy MIS Director