Broward County’s 40 Year Building Safety Inspection Program

In a drive to minimize the possibility of future building failures and be better prepared for hurricane winds, Broward County created the “40 Year and Older Building Safety Inspection Program” to take effect in January 2006. The program calls for structural and electrical safety inspections for buildings 40 years old or older and every ten years thereafter.

 What follows comes from the Broward County Code Appeals website:

“Each January a list of buildings meeting the program requirements are provided to Building Officials from a database that the Board of Rules and Appeals obtains from the County Property Appraiser’s Office. The program is then to be administrated by the City Building Department or the County Building Department and a notification letter is sent. The owner of a building or structure shall then furnish within 90 days the required Safety Inspection forms to the Building Official prepared by an engineer or architect. In the event that repairs are necessary, the owner has 180 days from the date of the building inspection report in which to correct the structural and electrical deficiencies that pose an immediate threat to life safety. Repairs that are incidental and non life threatening can be completed at a later date.”

The structural and electrical inspections are extensive. Seacrest Services has checked with various engineering firms and are told they will need to access the interiors of some percentage of the residences in any given building to comply with the electrical safety inspection.

For further information, copies of the necessary forms and a scope of the inspection items please check out the Broward County link: http://www.broward.org/CodeAppeals/Documents/bsi2009.pdf