Design-Build in Florida: How to Ensure Compliance with Local Codes
If you’ve spent any real time working on commercial projects in Florida, you already know this truth. Good design is only half the job. The other half is making sure that the design survives the permitting process. Florida does not play around when it comes to building codes, and honestly, it shouldn’t. Between hurricanes, flooding, heat, and constant development, the rules here are shaped by hard lessons. Still, when business owners step into a design-build Florida project for the first time, the amount of regulation can feel like a wall closing in from all sides. What I’ve learned over the years is that most compliance issues don’t come from bad intentions. They come from assumptions. Someone assumes a layout that worked in another state will pass here. Someone assumes the inspector will be flexible. Someone assumes approvals are a formality. In Florida, those assumptions cost time and money. The smartest design-build Florida teams don’t treat codes as an afterthought. They tre...