Margate
Margate applies Broward County's building safety inspection standard and reviews the reports through its own Building Department. Owners receive a certified letter when their building comes into the programme, which for most is the first they hear of it.
Condominium associations and the retail plazas along the city's commercial corridors make up most of Margate's covered stock. Vilano Engineering delivers the structural and electrical reports together and submits them as a single sealed package.
The certified letter tells you what is due. It does not explain what the inspections involve or what the building department will be looking for in the reports.
Send us the letter and we will tell you what the work covers before you engage anyone.
Send us your notice →The structural report covers load-bearing elements and the condition of the structure. The electrical report covers the service and distribution equipment, including the equipment serving parking areas, walkways and exterior lighting.
The reports go on Broward County's approved structural and electrical forms; a firm's own format is not accepted. Each page is signed and sealed by the professional responsible for that scope, and the package is reviewed by Margate's own Building Department rather than by the County.
The scope runs past the walls of the building. Elevated walkways, decks and parking structures attached to a covered building are inspected as part of it — for a plaza or a garden-style condominium property, that means the covered walkways and the parking areas come in with the building.
The requirement in Margate is the same one that applies in Coral Springs to the west and Deerfield Beach to the north-east; what varies between them is how each building department takes the filing. Broward requires no thermographic scan, unlike Miami-Dade.
For what happens between receiving a notice and closing the file, see what to do when you receive a recertification notice.
It is the City's notice that your building has come into the building safety inspection programme, and it sets out which reports are due and by when.
Margate's Building Department reviews them and issues the outcome to the owner.
Yes. Vilano Engineering prepares the structural and electrical reports together and submits them as a single sealed package.
No. Broward's standard does not require a thermographic scan.
The repairs need to be permitted, completed and inspected. Obtaining the permits is the building owner's responsibility, and the engineer cannot certify the building on work that was never permitted.
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