Permits & licensing in Minnesota.
Minnesota permits at the municipal counter and nowhere else. The Minnesota State Building Code is the minimum construction standard throughout the state, but it is not enforceable by a municipality until that municipality adopts it by ordinance. The Department of Labor and Industry's Construction Codes and Licensing Division administers it under Chapter 326B in conjunction with cities, townships and counties; the state does not issue a building permit.
The state keeps the trades. CCLD promulgates the accessibility, boiler, building, electrical, elevator, energy, high-pressure piping, manufactured structures, plumbing and residential codes, and licenses the people working under them — electricians, electrical and technology systems contractors, elevator constructors, high-pressure-piping pipefitters, manufactured home installers, plumbers and plumbing contractors, power limited technicians, residential building contractors, remodelers and roofers. The Plumbing Board, the Board of Electricity, the Board of High Pressure Piping Systems and the State Fire Marshal sit alongside it.
Electrical inspection follows its own map. DLI is the electrical inspection authority statewide except in cities that have made their own provision for it; Minneapolis is one of them, inspecting under its own Maintenance Code Chapter 244. The county layer, where it appears at all, is environmental rather than structural.
- The Minnesota State Building Code applies statewide but is not enforceable by a municipality until that municipality adopts it by local ordinance.
- In a fully incorporated county the county is not the building-permit counter: Hennepin County's territory is 45 cities, and each city's building official holds the permit.
- DLI's Construction Codes and Licensing Division licenses electricians, plumbers and plumbing contractors, elevator constructors, residential building contractors, remodelers and roofers — the trade license is state, the permit is city.
- DLI is the electrical inspection authority statewide except in cities running their own electrical inspection program; Minneapolis runs its own under Maintenance Code Chapter 244.
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