In storm-battered Hernando County, Florida, artificial intelligence is cutting what once took months into minutes. After two major hurricanes, reviewing building plans had become a 45- to 60-day process for county officials. Now, thanks to Swiftbuild.ai, the initial review can be done “in under two minutes,” Deputy County Administrator Toni Brady tells GlobeSt.com. “The second review is less than 45 seconds.”

For Brady, the technology has changed how local government works. The AI platform reviews lengthy documents—sometimes more than 200 pages—against building codes and standards, automatically checking for compliance.

“The AI goes and says this matches the code, check, this should be 15 feet, not 25 feet,” Brady explains in a hypothetical situation.

Managing Partner of the AI firm, John Mirkin, founded to streamline permitting and zoning processes, is using its technology to help municipalities accelerate housing development.

“We develop AI-powered solutions to streamline local government, permitting and zoning, with a focus on helping accelerate housing development,” he tells GlobeSt.com.

Much of the tedious work the software handles involves the most disliked parts of plan review.

“It’s in a lot of the worst parts of the review that people just hate doing, like counting, measuring setbacks, counting shrubs, [and] things like that,” Mirkin said.

The company’s tools can review single-family home plans as well as multifamily, townhouse and subdivision projects.

“At [the subdivision] level, we’re reviewing potentially thousands of homes at a time,” Mirkin says. He notes that in Florida and other states, laws often require reviews to be completed within 30 days after a municipality receives an application.

“There’s a lot of pressure that these governments are under to turn around the reviews fast,” he says, adding that if reviews exceed legal time limits, localities, in some cases, can be compelled to issue permits automatically.

Swiftbuild Managing Partner Sabrina Dugan says the nationwide permitting backlog isn’t due to inefficiency as much as demand. “Right now, there’s a pretty big permitting delay across the US, and it’s not necessarily due to anything other than just how much housing is needed,” she tells GlobeSt.com.

Implementing the software in each locality is a customized process, Dugan notes. “A lot of jurisdictions have different codes, different requirements, and the goal is standardization and being transparent with their community,” she says. “If we can help support them with that in the AI tool, to ensure that what is being relayed is actually required by the local government entity, then it becomes a really powerful tool for the users.”

For Hernando County, the results speak for themselves. Brady says the software has allowed staff to move beyond “redundant and mundane” work to focus on broader priorities like long-range planning and affordable housing—projects that once had to wait.

This article was originally published in GlobeSt by Erik Sherman.