Your building needs work. Here's how not to get hurt.

Three separate obligations, often confused, frequently overlapping:

• Milestone inspection (F.S. §553.899) — a structural safety inspection for condominium and cooperative buildings of three or more habitable stories. Phase 1 is visual; Phase 2 follows if substantial structural deterioration is observed.
• County 40-year recertification — Miami-Dade and Broward run their own programs, which in practice absorb the Milestone requirement and add an electrical inspection.
• Structural Integrity Reserve Study (F.S. §718.112(2)(g)) — a funding study covering roof, structure, waterproofing and exterior painting, fireproofing and fire protection, plumbing, electrical, windows and exterior doors, and any other item over the statutory threshold. Amended by HB 913, which added a baseline funding plan requirement.

What matters here is what happens next: an obligation produces a report, a report produces a scope, a scope produces a contract, and a contract produces a building site on your property for a year. Everything below is about running that sequence without the association getting hurt.

A visual survey finds the concrete that has already failed. It does not find the concrete that is going to fail — and on a chloride-contaminated building, that is most of it. The spalls you can see are where the process finished first, not where it stopped.

That gap is the whole reason Phase 2 exists, and it is the reason a repair designed off a visual survey repairs the symptom and leaves the mechanism running underneath the new concrete.

What the investigation actually measures

• Delamination sounding — mapping the concrete that has debonded but not yet fallen. It is the difference between the quantity you can see and the quantity you will actually remove.
• Chloride ion profiling — powder samples at depth, tested for chloride concentration. This tells you how far the chloride front has advanced toward the steel, and therefore how much apparently-sound concrete is already committed to failing.
• Half-cell potential mapping — a map of corrosion activity across an element, including where the steel is actively corroding under concrete that still sounds solid.
• Carbonation depth — a different mechanism from chloride attack, requiring a different conclusion.
• Cover measurement and GPR — where the reinforcement actually is, and how much concrete is protecting it. Low cover is often the reason one elevation is failing and another is not.
• Cores and petrographic analysis — concrete strength, and the condition and history of the material itself.
• Section loss measurement — how much of the bar is left. This is what determines whether the member needs supplemental reinforcing, and it is a structural question, not a cosmetic one.

The board-level point: the investigation is not an expense that delays the project. It is the thing that makes the estimate, the bid schedule and the contingency defensible. Skip it, and the uncertainty does not disappear — it simply moves from the report into your budget, where it costs considerably more.

A restoration project is not a one-off event. It is the visible part of a replacement cycle that runs whether or not the association funds it.

A SIRS inventories these components, estimates remaining useful life and replacement cost, and produces the contribution schedule that funds them. Structural reserves generally cannot be waived, and the findings of a Milestone inspection feed directly into the study — a component the inspection found to be deteriorated does not get to keep its theoretical remaining life.

The decision that actually faces most boards is reserve versus special assessment: fund the cycle steadily, or fund it in a shock when the work becomes unavoidable. Reserves that are pooled and escalated gradually cost owners less per month than a study that funds each component in isolation — and considerably less than an assessment.

An Opinion of Probable Construction Cost is an engineer's judgment of what the work should cost, given what is known at the time it is written. It is not a quote, it is not a guarantee, and it does not become one because a board would prefer it to.

What it is is a defensible basis for funding — provided everyone understands what it rests on.

Why a visual survey systematically under-reads quantity

Deterioration is not randomly distributed; it propagates. Where you find one delaminated bay, the adjacent bay is usually further along than it looks. An estimate built on visible damage alone is not merely uncertain — it is biased, and it is biased low. That is not pessimism; it is what opening the concrete repeatedly demonstrates.

How the bid schedule protects the association

Because the true quantity cannot be known until the concrete is opened, restoration is bid on unit prices against estimated quantities. The engineer writes the bid schedule so that:

• every repair type is a separate pay item with a defined unit and a defined measurement method;
• estimated quantities are stated, so bidders price the same job;
• the contract price adjusts on measured quantity, not on a lump sum that a contractor must either pad or later fight about;
• allowance items are identified as allowances, not buried in the base price.

This is the difference between an overrun that is administered and an overrun that is argued.

Contingency

Set it against the quality of the information behind the estimate, not against a rule of thumb. A number carried on a visual survey needs a wider band than a number carried on chloride profiles and a sounding map. The cheapest way to reduce a contingency is to invest in the investigation that narrows it.

Shoring, scaffolding and suspended access are delegated design. They are engineered by a specialty engineer retained by the contractor, who seals the design; the engineer of record reviews it for conformance with the project requirements. That allocation is deliberate, and it matters to the association for a practical reason: the party who designs the access is the party who carries it.

What the specification must require

• Signed and sealed shoring and access design by a Florida-licensed engineer, submitted for review before erection.
• Tieback and anchor testing — proof-load testing of suspended-access anchorages, with certification, at the frequency the standard requires. This is a life-safety item and it is not a formality.
• Re-shoring requirements where load paths are temporarily removed — the determination of what may be removed, and in what order, is structural and belongs to the engineer, not to the crew's convenience.
• Conformance review and inspection hold points before load is applied.

The cost consequence boards miss: access method drives duration, and duration drives general conditions — the contractor's standing cost of being on your building every month. An access approach that shortens the programme can be cheaper overall even when its own line item is dearer. That trade-off should be evaluated at specification, when it can still be influenced, not discovered in month nine.

Waterproofing failures are almost never product failures. They are installation failures, and they are found at the terminations — the slab edge, the drain, the door threshold, the railing post penetration. A system installed at the correct thickness across the field and detailed badly at the edge will fail at the edge, on schedule.

What the specification must state

• The system, by manufacturer and product, selected for the actual exposure — pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, ponding, UV.
• Surface preparation and profile, and moisture content limits before application.
• Primer, coat count, and required dry-film thickness — a number, not an adjective.
• Detailing at every termination: slab edges, drains, thresholds, penetrations, cove and upturn requirements.
• A mock-up, approved before general application, which becomes the standard the rest of the work is measured against.

Field verification — the association's only real protection

• Wet-film gauge readings taken during application, recorded, at a stated frequency. Once it cures, thickness is difficult to prove and easy to dispute.
• Adhesion pull testing to the specified value.
• Substrate moisture testing before coating.
• Hold points — defined stages the contractor may not build past until the engineer has observed the work.

On warranties: a material warranty replaces the material. A manufacturer's system warranty — which normally requires an approved applicator and a manufacturer field inspection — is a different instrument and worth considerably more. Know which one you are being offered, and require the one you intended to buy in the specification, not after the fact.

Repairing an existing element does not automatically drag the whole building up to current code. But it can drag that element up — and the determination is a professional one, made by the engineer in coordination with the building official.

The framework is the Florida Building Code, Existing Building, which distinguishes:

• Repair — restoring damaged materials or elements to a sound condition.
• Alteration — changing an existing element, which brings that work under current requirements.
• Substantial improvement — where the cost of the work crosses a threshold relative to the structure's value, with substantially heavier consequences.

Where the work sits in that framework is not a matter of what the association would prefer to call it.

Common triggers on a restoration project

• Guards and railings — height, opening limitations, load requirements, and in the HVHZ, wind and glazing requirements. Railing posts embedded in a deteriorated slab edge are also a frequent hidden source of the spalling itself, which is how a concrete repair becomes a code question.
• Glazed openings — see the next section; this is the largest one.
• Means of egress — where walkway or stair geometry is affected.
• Electrical — particularly where the county recertification's electrical inspection intersects the work.

Resolve this before the project is funded. A code trigger discovered at permit review — after the budget is approved, the assessment is levied and the contract is signed — is the single most disruptive thing that can happen to a restoration project. It is also entirely foreseeable, which is why it is the engineer's job to raise it while the board still has choices.

Restoration frequently requires clearing openings. The deterioration runs through the head, the jamb, the sill, or the slab edge under a slider track — and corroding perimeter anchorage and buck framing is often the corrosion path feeding the spalling in the first place. Once an opening has to be cleared, three questions arise, and all three are professional determinations, not contractor decisions.

(a) Does current code now apply?

When removal and reinstallation of a glazed opening constitutes a new installation, current code attaches to it. In the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, compliance is specific and unforgiving:

• impact-rated glazing, or an approved protection system;
• design pressures derived for that specific opening — positive and negative, by zone and height, per ASCE 7 — not a generic rating;
• a product carrying a current Miami-Dade Notice of Acceptance or Florida Product Approval, installed within the limits of that approval.

A legacy non-impact unit carries none of this and cannot be made to. Where current code attaches, it cannot lawfully be reinstated to satisfy it.

(b) Can the substrate actually carry the new window?

This is the determination boards never think to ask for, and it is the one that most often goes wrong.

A new impact unit imposes substantially higher design loads on its anchorage than the original non-impact unit ever did. Those loads go into a slab edge and buck which — by the very hypothesis of the project — are deteriorated. The engineer must:

• evaluate whether the rebuilt substrate can develop the anchorage the product approval requires;
• specify the buck and the anchorage detail, including fastener type, edge distance and embedment;
• set the condition the rebuilt concrete must meet before an opening may be glazed, as a hold point.

The most common defect in condominium window replacement is a compliant window installed into a substrate that cannot develop its rated load. The unit is approved. The installation is approved. The assembly still fails, because nobody was asked to check the thing the approval assumes. On a restoration project, nobody else is going to catch it.

(c) The windows belong to the unit owners. Now what?

Under most South Florida declarations — though not all; the declaration controls — unit windows and sliders are unit-owner property. That produces the deadlock that stops projects: the association is rebuilding a slab edge that a unit owner owns the window in.

It is worth knowing that this is not the dead end most boards assume. Fla. Stat. §718.113(5) deals with hurricane protection — which includes impact-rated windows and doors — and two points from the current version are worth having in your head before the first board meeting on the subject:

• Hurricane-protection work carried out under that subsection is expressly not a material alteration of the common elements — so the supermajority a material alteration would normally require does not attach.
• Unless the declaration says otherwise, a unit owner is not responsible for the cost of removing and reinstalling hurricane protection — including exterior windows and doors — where that removal is necessary for the association to repair property it is responsible for. Which is precisely what a slab-edge repair is.

That is the headline, and it is where we stop. §718.113 has been amended repeatedly, your declaration can change the answer, and the vote, notice and expense-allocation mechanics are legal questions. They belong to your association's attorney working from the current text — not to your engineer, and not to a web page.

What we can give counsel and the board is the thing the legal analysis is useless without: a real technical record. Which openings must be cleared and why. What code requires for each. What the rebuilt substrate can carry. What the alternatives actually cost. A board asking its attorney to resolve a window question without that record is asking a legal question in a vacuum.

Specifying and verifying the installation

• Buck condition and anchorage schedule, tied to the product approval.
• Perimeter sealant and flashing detail — the joint between a new window and a rebuilt slab edge is where this work leaks.
• Field water-infiltration testing (AAMA 502 / 503) as a hold point on a sample of installed openings, before the contractor is allowed to glaze the whole building.

The lowest total is not the lowest bid. On a unit-price contract it is not even a meaningful number, and a board that compares totals is comparing the bidders' optimism, not their prices.

Levelling the bids

Every bid is a total, built from unit prices multiplied by estimated quantities. Change the quantity assumption and the total moves — but the unit prices are what you will actually pay, because the final quantity is measured in the field, not negotiated in the bid room.

So the exercise is:

• strip out the totals and compare unit prices, line by line;
• re-run every bid against a single quantity assumption — the engineer's — so the comparison is like-for-like;
• read the allowances and exclusions, which is where a low bid usually hides;
• examine general conditions and duration, which is a real cost the association pays monthly and which a longer programme quietly inflates.

The lowball, and how it works

The classic pattern is a low headline total, carried on optimistic quantities and high unit prices. It wins the award. Then the concrete is opened, the quantities come in where the engineer said they would, and the association pays those high unit prices on every additional unit — with no leverage, because the contract is signed and the building is under scaffold.

This is not an exotic failure. It is the ordinary way restoration projects go wrong, and it is entirely visible in the bid documents to anyone who knows to look.

The rest of the review

• Prequalification — licensure, relevant experience at comparable scale, financial capacity, current backlog.
• Bonding and insurance — payment and performance bonds, and limits appropriate to the contract value, reviewed rather than assumed.
• Schedule — a duration the contractor can actually defend, since it drives general conditions.
• A written recommendation to the board with the reasoning on the record, so the decision is defensible to owners afterwards.

This analysis belongs to the association's engineer, and it does not belong on a bidder's website. A contractor coaching boards on how to judge contractors is a conflict, however well-intentioned.

The specification stops being a document the day the contractor mobilises. From that point, it is only worth what is enforced — and enforcement is the engineer's job.

Before the work

• Submittal and shop-drawing review — products, mixes, coatings, anchorage details and delegated designs, checked against the specification before they are bought or built.

During the work

• Site observation at a stated frequency, with written observation reports. An observation report records what was seen and whether it conforms. It is not a guarantee of the contractor's work and it is not a substitute for the contractor's own quality control — and any engineer who lets a board believe otherwise is setting up a dispute.
• Hold points — defined stages the contractor may not build past until the work has been observed. The opened repair area before steel is coated. The reinforcement before formwork closes. The coating before it is covered.
• Quantity verification — measured in the field, witnessed, and documented as it happens. Quantities cannot be reconstructed after the pour.
• Pay application certification — the engineer certifies that the quantities and the progress claimed have actually been achieved before the association pays for them.
• RFI handling — the contractor's questions answered promptly and in writing, because an unanswered RFI becomes a delay claim.

Change orders

There is a real distinction, and the association should insist on it:

• A legitimate condition change — the concrete was worse than the contract documents represented, and additional quantity is genuinely required. This is what the unit-price schedule and the contingency exist to absorb.
• A contractor's pricing problem — the work was always in the scope, and the bid was simply too thin. This is not the association's to fund.

Telling them apart requires the engineer to have the original documents, the field measurements and the investigation data. It is very difficult to argue afterwards, and straightforward to establish at the time.

Closing out

• Substantial completion, punch list, and verification that the punch list was actually closed.
• Warranties, product approvals and as-built documentation delivered to the association — not to the contractor's file.
• Filing the recertification, where the repairs were performed to satisfy one.

The board's own obligation: owners must be kept informed, and the association's governance requirements around notice, meetings, records and assessment don't pause because there is scaffold on the building. That is association business rather than engineering — but it is the part boards most often let slip while they are busy watching the concrete.