Permits & licensing in Florida.

Florida runs one code. The Florida Building Code is adopted by the Florida Building Commission inside the Department of Business and Professional Regulation and updated on a three-year cycle; its first edition replaced every local code on March 1, 2002. What is written in Pensacola is written in Key West.

Enforcement is local and it is layered. Section 553.775 puts authority to enforce the code in the hands of the local building official, and every county plus nearly every incorporated city runs its own department. The city department displaces the county's inside the city line: Hillsborough County reviews the plan set until the parcel falls inside Tampa, and then Tampa does. Land use, zoning, setbacks, site development and architectural review stay reserved to the local authority regardless of who holds the code file.

The state layer is licensing plus an alternate review route. The Construction Industry Licensing Board certifies contractors to work in any jurisdiction in the state and registers others to work only in the jurisdiction that qualified them. Section 553.791 lets a fee owner or the owner's contractor engage a private provider — a licensed building code administrator, engineer or architect — to perform plans review and required inspections in place of the department's own.