Deerfield Beach
Vilano Engineering performs building recertification inspections for condominium, cooperative, and commercial buildings in Deerfield Beach — the structural safety inspection and the electrical safety inspection, sealed and submitted to the City as a single package.
Deerfield Beach recertifies under the Building Safety Inspection Program that Broward County applies county-wide. What your building must produce is a county answer and does not change from one municipality to the next; when it is due, and who reviews it, belongs to the City's building department.
A Notice of Required Inspection from Deerfield Beach means your building has reached the age at which the program applies, and it names the date your reports are due. Two reports answer it — a structural safety inspection report and an electrical safety inspection report — each prepared on the County's approved form and each signed and sealed by the professional responsible for that scope.
Send us the notice and we can tell you what your submittal needs to contain.
Send us your notice →The structural portion is a visual examination of the building's primary structural systems — foundation, load-bearing walls, floor and roof structure, balconies, railings, and exposed concrete — assessing condition and identifying deterioration requiring repair.
What the County is looking for is substantial structural deterioration and conditions that present a threat to life safety. It is an assessment of the building as it stands rather than a review against the code in force today, and the report describes the deterioration found and the repairs it calls for.
Deerfield Beach requires an electrical report alongside the structural one. It covers the electrical service and metering, feeders and distribution equipment, panelboards, disconnects and overcurrent protection, branch circuits, grounding and bonding, the condition of conduit and raceways, and emergency and egress lighting.
The County's test is whether the equipment is maintained in a safe condition with its devices and safeguards in working order — a question about how the building runs now, which is why the inspection turns on getting into the electrical and meter rooms.
Broward does not require an infrared thermographic scan as part of the Building Safety Inspection Program. One was proposed at county level and was never adopted, so anything presenting a scan as a Broward requirement is describing a proposal.
Miami-Dade requires it, as do Boca Raton and Boynton Beach, where a building's electrical service is 400 amperes or more in aggregate. Owners and boards responsible for property in more than one county should not assume one package answers both.
Broward requires its own structural and electrical safety inspection report forms, and a report prepared in a firm's own format will not be accepted regardless of how thorough it is. Where the inspection identifies conditions needing correction, the City looks for the repairs to be permitted, completed and inspected, and for a re-inspection affidavit confirming it.
The program does not stop at the walls of the building. Elevated decks, balconies, parking garages, docks and seawalls attached to a covered building are within its scope.
Deerfield Beach has a great deal of property on the beach and along the Intracoastal, and those elements are the ones most often left out of a proposal. Establish what the City counts as part of your building before the work is scoped rather than afterwards.
Broward's municipalities all administer the same county program through their own building departments. A building here and a building in Pompano Beach are held to an identical standard and answer to different building officials.
Cross a county line and the standard itself changes. Miami-Dade's recertification adds an infrared thermographic scan where the electrical service is large enough, together with parking lot certifications; Broward requires neither. Palm Beach County has no county-wide program at all — Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, and Highland Beach each operate their own, and a building elsewhere in that county is subject to the statewide milestone inspection, which is structural only.
For the County's program, see the Broward County Building Safety Inspection Program. For the statewide milestone requirement, see Florida Statute 553.899. For what happens between receiving a notice and closing the file, see what to do when you receive a recertification notice.
A structural safety inspection report and an electrical safety inspection report, each on Broward County's approved form, signed and sealed. Confirm your specific requirements and deadline with the City's building department.
No. Broward's program does not call for a thermographic scan. Miami-Dade, Boca Raton, and Boynton Beach require one where the building's electrical service is 400 amperes or more in aggregate.
No. Vilano Engineering delivers both reports and submits them as a single sealed package.
No. Broward requires its own approved forms and proprietary formats are not accepted.
Elevated decks, balconies, parking garages, docks, and seawalls attached to a covered building fall within the program. Confirm with the City what it treats as part of your property.
No. The milestone inspection is a statewide structural requirement. Broward's Building Safety Inspection Program is a separate county program covering structural and electrical systems. A building may be subject to both, and whether work done for one applies to the other depends on scope.
Vilano Engineering, LLC is a licensed engineering firm providing building recertification and safety inspections, infrared thermography, electrical design, expert witness services, developer turnover, and property condition assessments.
Nicholas Strachan, PE
Licensed Professional Engineer — Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, New York, North Carolina, Texas
Certified Level II Thermographer
Licensed Plans Examiner — Florida
25+ years in engineering design, inspection, and quality assurance