Building With Laguna Beach
A twelve-month partnership to build a native AI plan-check process — approved 5-0, with the bar written into the contract.
On August 4, the Laguna Beach City Council voted 5-0 to approve a twelve-month partnership with CrossBeam. The Voice of OC covered it, and the whole discussion is on the city's public record — but here's what we want to say about it, because this is the partnership we've been looking for.
We're going to build a native AI plan-check process with a real city, from the inside. Not a demo bolted onto the counter — a rebuild of how a permit moves, done together with the people who run it.
Why Laguna Beach
Because they were already moving. Before this partnership existed, Laguna's Community Development team cut its zoning plan-check queue from 57 days to 13, and brought the average run from first zoning check to building permit down from seventeen months to a little over twelve. They did that themselves, with process and effort. What's left is the part effort can't fix: a full plan check on a Laguna property can take up to eight hours of a plan checker's day. Plan sets arrive at 30 to 50 sheets. The residential zoning checklist runs more than 300 items, and much of those hours goes to consistency — confirming the same setback on the site plan, the floor plan, and the elevations, on every sheet, every time.
A city that fixes everything within its control and then goes looking for the next tool — that's the partner we wanted. They ran real projects through CrossBeam before ever bringing it to a vote. Their IT team put the platform through a security review and signed off on the record. This is a team that wants to move quickly and become AI-native, and we get to build with them. The staff report called the arrangement what it is: a collaborative development partnership, not a software purchase.
What we're building together
Three things, on short clocks that start at contract signing:
Within 30 days: every application screened on arrival. Today, an incomplete online application costs Laguna staff an estimated 2 to 2.5 hours of back-and-forth before real review can even start. We're building completeness screening into the front door — applicants find out what's missing right away, and staff open full packets instead of writing correction emails.
Within 90 days: AI plan review, building and zoning. The eight-hour first pass becomes minutes. CrossBeam reads the full set against Laguna's own checklist — the setbacks, the height limits, the sheet-to-sheet consistency — and hands staff findings with citations. The plan checker's job shifts from hunting to judging, which is the part that actually requires a plan checker.
Alongside it: an assistant for staff that answers the routine questions — permit status, project milestones, review timelines, department information — that eat a morning at the counter.
Every finding lands in front of a human plan checker. The pilot changes where staff time goes, not who decides — the review is preliminary, the judgment stays with the city.
The bar, in writing
We asked for the accountability to be in the contract, and it is: 85 percent accuracy on zoning and building plan checks, measured jointly — the city and CrossBeam, side by side — at the six-month midpoint and again at the end of the term, alongside the staff-hour numbers Laguna already tracks. Laguna is a coastal town with some of the most exacting review standards in California; a bar that's real here means something everywhere.
That's how this should work. Cities shouldn't have to take AI on faith, and vendors shouldn't get to grade their own homework.
The next twelve months
Councilmember Alex Rounaghi said it best at the meeting:
"There is no better use case in city government than the plan check process because of how tedious it is."
We think he's right, and we think the next twelve months in Laguna Beach are the proof-of-what's-possible that local government has been waiting for. Every city is watching the same queues grow and spending the same staff hours on the same checklists. What Laguna Beach just showed is the template: fix your process first, pick a partner, set a measurable bar, and put it in writing.
We told the council we'd be honored to build the most innovative plan check process in California — and in the nation — right here in Laguna Beach. The vote was unanimous. The clocks start the moment the contract is signed — and they're short.
To Director Matt Schneider, the Community Development team, and the Laguna Beach City Council: thank you for the trust. Let's build it.