Event management & registration that stays out of the way

Challenge

Carrigan Farms runs events that draw 500 to 700 people on a busy day. Every attendee who wants to access the swimming areas has to pass a swim test, and every one of those tests needs to be logged accurately. Before this app existed, that process ran on paper and scattered spreadsheets. There was no history per participant, no way to look someone up across multiple visits, and no way to review attendance patterns when planning staffing for the next season. On a high-volume water event day, inconsistent logging isn’t just an operational inconvenience. The farm needed a system that lifeguards could use in the field, on their phones, without slowing down the line.

Solution

We built a mobile-first app on Laravel and Livewire that lets lifeguards run swim tests and log results directly from their phones. The app creates and maintains a full testing and attendance history for every participant, so staff can look up a returning visitor, see what tests they’ve passed on prior visits, and move faster through the line. Livewire gives the app a fast, reactive feel without the overhead of a full single-page application framework, which matters when staff are working outdoors with a queue of people waiting. Admins have a dashboard view of test activity, attendance counts, and per-event summaries. The data is also structured for export to Carrigan Farms’ marketing and retargeting tools.

Results

Carrigan Farms now has clean, searchable records for every participant who has gone through the swim test process. Staff move through the testing line faster because the history for returning visitors is already in the system. The attendance data drives staffing decisions going into each new season, and the team can look back at prior events to understand how turnout is trending over time. The marketing export ties the operational records to promotional activity, so the participant database does double duty. The app handles the volume that comes with a destination drawing thousands of visitors without slowing down the people running it.