Guide

Is your building a threshold building? How to tell, and what changes

Florida’s threshold law draws its line by stories, by height or by a large assembly room. Past that line, the same county inspection in Miami-Dade or Broward asks more of the people who prepare it.

Send the Miami-Dade Notice Send the Broward Notice

Send the notice by WhatsApp

The short answer

Florida treats a building as threshold above three stories or fifty feet, or with a large assembly room at any height.
A threshold building keeps its county program and dates, but the rules for who prepares its structural report are stricter.
Special inspection while a tall building goes up is a different requirement, tied to construction, not to the county program.

Where Florida draws the threshold line

Florida’s threshold law gives three ways past the line, and meeting one is enough. Two are about size: more than three stories, or more than fifty feet of height, for any use, from a condominium tower to a parking garage. The third is about a crowd: a space the Florida Building Code classes as assembly, over five thousand square feet and with an occupant content above five hundred people, makes it a threshold building at any height.

Both counties use the state’s line. Broward’s program and Miami-Dade’s code repeat the definition, and Miami-Dade’s page words the story test as four stories or taller. In neither county is it a separate program: it changes what the county file must carry.

What changes in the county inspection

Being a threshold building does not move the age at which a building comes due, the notice it receives or the time it has to file. The difference lies in who may prepare the report, and each county writes that rule in its own words.

The self-qualification letter is Miami-Dade’s requirement; Broward’s program texts do not ask for it. Broward’s structural form asks instead whether the building is a threshold building and whether the professional preparing the structural portion is a certified Special Inspector.

Miami-Dade, structural: an engineer specializing in structural design, whose report carries a self-qualification letter with proof of the state’s structural specialization.
Miami-Dade, electrical: an engineer specializing in electrical design.
Broward, structural: a Florida-licensed professional specializing in structural engineering and holding a Special Inspector license as well.
Broward, electrical: a Florida-licensed professional specializing in electrical design, the same rule as for every building in the program.

A façade held by structural sealant

In a structural glazing façade, the glass is bonded to its frame with a structural sealant instead of being held by metal on every edge. Where the building is a threshold building in Miami-Dade, that façade owes a recertification of its own every five years, apart from the building’s report.

Miami-Dade runs that cycle under published guidelines: the county sends a façade notice, the report is due within ninety days, and the inspector must be certified by the state as a Special Inspector for threshold buildings. In Broward, the program’s structural form asks whether a threshold building has structural glazing, when the system was last inspected and what condition it is in.

Not every glass wall is structural glazing; the façade drawings show how the glass is held.

How to tell, before the notice arrives

Most of the answer is on the drawings. The threshold law counts stories, while the milestone law counts only habitable ones, so a floor of parking or shops is not left out of the threshold count merely because no one lives on it.

When a test is close, as with a level partly below ground or a mezzanine, send us the address and what each floor holds, and we read it against your county’s rule.

Stories: more than three, counting every floor the code counts as a story.
Height: more than fifty feet, which makes a building of three stories or fewer threshold too.
Assembly: a space classed as assembly, over five thousand square feet and for more than five hundred people.
Miami-Dade’s wording: four stories or taller, the same line as the state’s.
The façade: in Miami-Dade, glass held by structural sealant has a cycle of its own.

What boards of tall buildings ask

Our building has three floors of homes over a parking level. Does that make it a threshold building?

It does, if the parking level counts as a story. The threshold law asks for stories, not habitable ones, so with that level the building has four, past the line in both counties. A level partly below ground is the case to confirm on the drawings.

Is a hotel or a church a threshold building?

By the same tests as any other building. A hotel over three stories or fifty feet is one. A church, or a low hotel with a ballroom, is one at any height when that room is classed as assembly and passes five thousand square feet and five hundred people.

Does threshold mean special inspection during construction?

Only while a building is going up or its structure is being altered. During new construction, or a repair that modifies the structure or the loads it carries, the state requires a certified special inspector on the structural work. That is separate from the county program and we do not offer it; this guide is about a building already standing.

Our report was sent back over its author’s qualification. What now?

Read the office’s comment against your county’s rule in the list above, because Miami-Dade and Broward do not ask for the same thing. Then send us the comment and the report, and we tell you what the file needs before it goes back.