Stop waiting for the plan-review queue.
Florida law lets you hire a licensed private provider to review your plans instead of waiting for the city to get to them. The building department may not repeat that review — and if it doesn’t issue your permit within 10 business days, the permit is approved automatically.
§ 553.791, Florida Statutes — on the books since 2002, expanded in 2025.
It isn’t a favour.
It’s a statute.
Most people assume a building department has to be the one to check the plans. In Florida that hasn’t been true for over twenty years. Section 553.791 lets the owner of a building — or their contractor, with written authorization — choose a licensed private provider to perform the plans review instead.
The statute is specific about what follows. The local building official may not replicate the review the private provider performed. They must issue the permit, or send written deficiencies, within a fixed number of business days. And if they let that window close, the application is “deemed approved as a matter of law” and the permit must be issued the next business day.
They also have to charge you less. The jurisdiction is required to reduce its permit fee by what it saves, and may not charge building-inspection fees at all when a private provider is used.
Five steps, one of them yours.
- 01Tell us about the project
Address, scope, and your plan set. We pull the parcel and the jurisdiction's adopted code automatically.
- 02Elect your private provider
You sign a short notice of election — the document Florida law requires — naming the licensed engineer who will review your plans. Their licence and insurance are on screen while you decide.
- 03We review, and you fix
Every code section that applies to your project, checked against your sheets. Anything that needs changing comes back to you with the citation, before anything is filed.
- 04Affidavit of compliance
Once every check is signed off, your provider certifies the plans comply. That affidavit and your notice of election go to the building department.
- 05The city's clock starts
They have 10 business days to issue the permit or send written deficiencies. If they do neither, your permit is approved as a matter of law.
A licensed person signs.
Never the software.
Florida law is precise about who may be a private provider: a licensed engineer, a registered architect, or a certified building code administrator. Software cannot hold that licence, and we don’t pretend otherwise.
What our AI does is the reading. It maps your plan set to the building components on it, routes every applicable code section to the component it governs, and puts a worked checklist in front of the provider. The provider signs off each check against the cited section — and the affidavit is only issued once every one of them is signed.
That is why the affidavit is defensible. It isn’t an assertion that the plans comply; it points at a record of who checked what, against which provision, on which sheet.
The limits, up front.
This is an unusual mechanism and it has real edges. You should know them before you pay for anything, not after a building official explains them to you.
Florida is the only state that gives a property owner the outright right to elect a private provider. Georgia and Texas allow it only once the city has already missed its own deadline; Washington lets a city hire a third-party reviewer but gives you no say. We'll say plainly when your address isn't eligible.
The notice you sign says you selected the provider, that the building official will not repeat the review, and that you assume responsibility for it. That is the trade the statute sets, and it is worth reading rather than clicking past.
The building official may audit the review, may visit the site, and may stop work over anything that presents an immediate threat to safety. Private review replaces the plan-check queue, not the building department.
Zoning, land-use and other non-building approvals still run their normal course. Private provider review is the building-code plans review.
This page describes section 553.791, Florida Statutes, and is not legal advice. Read the statute, or ask a lawyer, before relying on it for your project.
Find out if your address qualifies.
Tell us where you’re building. We’ll say straight away whether private approval is available there, what the flat fee is, and what the city can no longer charge you.