Cobb County Permit Portal: Plans, Fees, and Inspections

The Cobb County permit portal, officially called Citizen Access, is the online system where residents, contractors, and developers apply for building permits, upload plans, pay fees, and schedule inspections for work in unincorporated Cobb County.¹ It connects to the Community Development department’s Building, Planning, and Land Use divisions and feeds plans into the county’s Digital Plan Room for electronic review.²

Setting Up Your Citizen Access Account

Every transaction on the portal runs through a free account. Register with an email address, which becomes both your login and the destination for every permit notification the system sends. Create a password, complete the verification step, and you’ll land on a personal dashboard where applications, uploads, status updates, and payments all live.¹

Licensed contractors should link a state license number to the profile during setup. Georgia requires general contractors on residential or commercial projects to hold a license through the State Licensing Board for Residential and Commercial General Contractors under the Secretary of State.³ Attaching that license to your profile up front keeps reviewers from pausing the application later to verify credentials.

What You Need Before You Start

Gather everything before you open the application. The forms run several pages and can time out if you stop to hunt for a parcel number.

Property address and the ten-digit parcel identification number, which links your permit to the correct property record.
Project scope details: square footage of the work, estimated construction cost (the fee calculation depends on this figure), and the occupancy or use type.
Contractor credentials, including state license and business license, if a licensed contractor is doing the work.
Plans and supporting documents in PDF, digitally signed where required: site plans, architectural drawings, structural details, and specialty items like fire suppression layouts for commercial projects.

Residential renovation applications ask about specifics like bedrooms or bathrooms being added or modified, because those changes trigger additional plumbing and electrical review. Commercial applications ask for detailed descriptions of structural modifications and fire-safety systems. Reviewers compare what you type into the forms against what your uploaded plans show, and any inconsistency bounces the application back.

Uploading Plans in the Digital Plan Room

After submission, most of the real work happens in the Digital Plan Room, which runs on Accela’s E-Permit Hub. You upload plans, watch review progress, read mark-ups and comments directly on your plan set, and resubmit revised sheets through a slip-sheeting tool that replaces individual pages without re-uploading the full package. Approved plans can be downloaded with the county’s stamp as soon as review clears.⁴

Three technical requirements apply before you upload anything:

Plans, drawings, and supporting documents must be in PDF format.
Design professionals submitting signed and sealed documents need a digital signature issued by a trusted Certificate Authority such as IdenTrust, Entrust, GlobalSign, or DigiCert.
File names must follow the county’s standard naming conventions so documents sort into the right review queues for architectural, structural, electrical, and other disciplines.

The digital signature rule catches people off guard. A scanned image of a wet signature pasted into a PDF does not qualify. The certificate-based signature is a cryptographic tool reviewers verify electronically, and if the document was modified after signing, the signature reads as invalid. If you don’t already have a certificate, budget a few days to obtain one before you plan to submit.⁴

What a Permit Costs

Cobb County calculates building permit fees from the estimated construction cost of the project. The fee schedule updated effective July 1, 2024, with rates tied to International Code Council Building Valuation Data.⁵

Residential Building Permits

Up to $15,000 construction cost: $80
$15,001 to $25,000: $150
$25,001 to $50,000: $300
$50,001 to $75,000: $450
Over $75,000: $6.00 per $1,000 of estimated construction cost

Commercial and Multifamily Building Permits

Up to $15,000 construction cost: $100
$15,001 to $25,000: $175
$25,001 to $50,000: $350
$50,001 to $75,000: $525
Over $75,000: $7.00 per $1,000 of estimated construction cost

Commercial projects carry extra calculation rules. A shell-only building with no tenant uses 80 percent of the ICC building valuation. Remodels in Type 1-A or 1-B construction are calculated at half the valuation cost; remodels in other construction types use 75 percent. Mixed-use buildings are pro-rated, and phased projects are charged 25 percent of the original permit fee for each phase.⁵

These numbers cover the building permit alone. Depending on scope, you may also owe separate trade permit fees for electrical, plumbing, or mechanical work, plus plan review fees. Anything beyond a simple renovation will cost more than the base permit line.

Submitting and Paying

Once your forms are complete and your PDFs are uploaded, the portal walks you through a final review screen. Check construction cost figures, scope descriptions, and file names against your actual plans. When you confirm, the application moves into the processing queue and the system redirects you to payment.

Wait for the final confirmation screen before closing your browser. If the window closes mid-transaction, the payment may not link to your application record, and sorting that out with the department costs time. A successful payment triggers an automated notification telling the review team to begin.

Online government payment portals commonly add a convenience fee on credit card transactions, typically 2 to 3 percent. On a large permit that surcharge adds up. For accepted payment methods or to pay by phone, contact Community Development directly.

Tracking Reviews and Scheduling Inspections

Your Citizen Access dashboard shows the status of every active application. The Digital Plan Room sends automatic notifications when reviews are complete or when a reviewer needs more information, so check your email regularly.⁴ If a reviewer leaves mark-ups, you can read them on the plan set and resubmit revised sheets through the slip-sheeting tool without starting over.

Once the permit is issued, scheduling inspections through the portal follows a specific click path. Log in, open “Record Info” under your building permit (not the “Schedule an Inspection” link in the top navigation bar, which leads elsewhere), choose “Inspections,” then “Schedule or Request an Inspection.” You can only schedule one inspection at a time.⁶

A typical residential job needs inspections at foundation, framing, electrical and plumbing rough-in, insulation, and a final before the certificate of occupancy issues. The portal records every result as a permanent digital compliance history. Georgia law also requires you to post the issued permit conspicuously at the site or deliver it to the property owner within ten days.⁷

If an Inspection Fails

A failed inspection is common and costly. Cobb County charges a re-inspection fee when an inspector returns to verify corrections. For residential re-inspection fees, call (770) 528-2060; for commercial, call (770) 528-2071.⁸

The fee is the smaller problem. A failed inspection stalls downstream work until the issue is corrected and the re-inspection passes, which means idle crews, extended equipment rentals, and rebooking trades who have already moved on. Reading the inspector’s prior comments carefully, and making sure the specific code item ready for the next visit is accessible, is the best prevention.

Risks of Skipping the Permit

Georgia gives local building officials broad authority over unpermitted construction. Under O.C.G.A. § 8-2-26, a code official can issue a stop-work order whenever work violates code. If the official finds an immediate threat to public safety, the stop-work order takes effect right away.⁷

The problems outlast construction. Homeowner’s insurance claims tied to unpermitted work are routinely denied because the insurer can argue the work was never verified to code. At sale, unpermitted improvements can derail a deal or force a price reduction, since buyers and their lenders want proof that structural and electrical work was inspected. The county will often require a retroactive permit, which can mean opening finished walls so an inspector can verify what’s behind them.

Owner-Builder Exemption

Georgia lets property owners build on their own property without a general contractor’s license, as long as the structure is for personal use and will not be sold or leased immediately after completion. Selling or leasing shortly after finishing is treated by the state as evidence the project was built for commercial purposes rather than personal occupancy.

The exemption carries real conditions. Any subcontracted work must be performed by someone licensed in that specific trade; you cannot hire an unlicensed friend to do electrical rough-in. As the owner-builder and the party of record on the permit, you take on full legal and financial responsibility, including liability for injuries to on-site workers not covered by a contractor’s workers’ compensation policy. Standard homeowner’s insurance often will not cover those injuries, leaving you to absorb the risk personally.

How Long Review Takes

Cobb County does not publish a single guaranteed turnaround for building plan review, and duration depends on project complexity and current workload. Georgia law does set a backstop: under O.C.G.A. § 8-2-26, once a complete application is submitted, the local jurisdiction generally has 30 days to act on it. That clock pauses if the application is rejected as incomplete and restarts when you resubmit.⁷ Straightforward residential permits usually clear faster than the statutory ceiling; complex commercial applications may run through several review cycles before approval.

All work must comply with Georgia’s state minimum standard codes, which currently include the 2024 edition of the International Building Code along with other International Code Council standards adopted by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. Cobb County can add requirements on top of the state minimums, so your project may need to satisfy both layers.⁹

Contacting Community Development

When the portal can’t resolve your question, Community Development handles permit inquiries directly.¹⁰

Address: 1150 Powder Springs Street, Suite 400, Marietta, GA 30064
Phone: (770) 528-2125
Hours: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Residential inspections: (770) 528-2060
Commercial inspections: (770) 528-2071⁸

1
Cobb County Georgia. Citizen Access eServices
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Cobb County Georgia. Building and Development
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Georgia Secretary of State. State Licensing Board for Residential and Commercial General Contractors
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Cobb County Georgia. Digital Plan Room
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Cobb County Georgia. New Fee Schedule Effective July 1, 2024
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Cobb County Georgia. Schedule an Inspection
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Justia Law. Georgia Code 8-2-26 – Local Enforcement, Inspectors, and Permits
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Cobb County Georgia. Pay Reinspection Fees
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Georgia Department of Community Affairs. Current State Minimum Codes for Construction
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Cobb County Georgia. Community Development