Structural Peer Review: When It's Required in Florida
By Judian Duran, PE, StS-1, Founder and Principal Structural Engineer at Duran Structural. Last updated August 2026.
A structural peer review is one of the cheapest line items on a large project and usually the first one cut. It’s an independent licensed engineer reading the structural design, the calculations, and the assumptions underneath them before anyone pours concrete or sets steel. On a mid-rise, a hospital wing, or a coastal building on a tight site, that second set of eyes separates a manageable change order from a claim.
Here’s where owners and developers most often go wrong. They assume peer review is a legal requirement, like a permit. In Florida it usually isn’t. What the law requires is narrower, and knowing the difference keeps you from buying the wrong service.
Key Takeaways
- Florida defines a “threshold building” as one “greater than three stories or 50 feet in height,” or an assembly occupancy over 5,000 square feet with more than 500 occupants (Florida Statutes 553.71(12), 2026). That status triggers a special inspector during construction, not a design peer review.
- Most structural peer reviews in Florida are driven by contract rather than statute: a lender, an insurer, an institutional owner standard, or a design somebody disputes.
- The reviewing engineer never becomes the engineer of record, who stays “responsible for all structural aspects of the design of the structure” (Fla. Admin. Code 61G15-31.001, 2024).
- A plan check asks whether a design can be permitted. A peer review interrogates the engineering judgment behind it. They aren’t substitutes.
What is a structural peer review?
A structural peer review is an independent evaluation of a structural design by a licensed engineer who had no hand in producing it. The reviewer examines the design criteria, the load path, the modeling assumptions, and the governing calculations, then issues written comments the design team formally responds to. It’s a check on engineering judgment, not a redesign.
The word “independent” carries the weight here. A useful reviewer has no stake in the design being right, no subordinate relationship to the design team, and a direct reporting line to whoever commissioned the work. The ASCE Code of Ethics sets the posture: engineers are to “comment only in a professional manner on the work, professional reputation, and personal character of other engineers” (ASCE, 2020). Adversarial about the math, collegial about everything else.
One clarification worth making early. Reviewing a drawing set isn’t the same as walking a building. If your question concerns an existing structure rather than a proposed one, you want a physical structural assessment instead, and our guide to what a structural inspection includes maps that territory.
When is a structural peer review required in Florida?
Less often than people assume, and almost never under that name. Florida statute imposes several independent-review obligations, but each is a specific instrument with a specific trigger. The broad “have another engineer check this design” requirement usually arrives through a contract or a lender’s funding condition, not through the code.
| Trigger | What is actually required | Typical project |
|---|---|---|
| Threshold building: over three stories or 50 feet, or assembly over 5,000 sf with more than 500 occupants | A special inspector working to a “structural inspection plan prepared by the engineer or architect of record,” with the fee owner selecting and paying that inspector (F.S. 553.79(5), 2026) | Mid-rise, high-rise, arenas, large assembly |
| Licensed health care facility | The Agency for Health Care Administration reviews facility plans and surveys construction, on a statutory fee schedule (F.S. 395.0163, 2026) | Hospitals, surgical centers |
| Condominium or cooperative, three habitable stories or more | A recurring structural inspection of an aging building, required by statute and performed by a licensed engineer or architect. Not a review of anyone’s design (F.S. 553.899, 2026) | Coastal condo towers |
| Lender or insurer condition | Independent design review as a funding or binding condition | Any financed or hard-to-place project |
| Institutional owner standard | Peer review written into the design agreement at named milestones | Universities, health systems, public agencies |
| Disputed or performance-based design | Review commissioned by the owner, contractor, or counsel | Alternate means, complex geometry, litigation |
Read those first three rows carefully, because the distinction matters commercially. Threshold status obligates inspection of construction, not a second opinion on the design. Agency review of a health care facility is a licensure check against agency standards. A statutory inspection of an aging building looks at what is standing today, not at a drawing set. If you want the design challenged before it’s built, somebody has to buy that deliberately.
When is a peer review wise even though nobody requires it?
The projects that benefit most share one trait: consequences concentrate rather than spread. A repetitive low-rise structure distributes risk across many similar members. A transfer slab, a long-span roof, or a high-rise lateral system funnels it into a handful of decisions, and those are the ones worth having a second engineer defend.
We’d rank a review high for commercial work using alternate means or performance-based procedures, for healthcare and institutional projects where an agency review is coming and a rejected submission costs months, and for coastal structures where wind and flood criteria interact in ways a spreadsheet can quietly get wrong. If the criteria themselves are the open question, start with the wind load requirements for Tampa Bay.
Existing structures are the other strong case. Adaptive reuse and historic restoration mean designing on top of a building nobody fully documented, and an independent reviewer is very good at finding the assumption that was never verified. The same holds for renovations and additions that cut into an existing lateral system.
How is a peer review different from a building department plan check?
A plan check answers a compliance question: can this be permitted under the adopted code? A peer review answers an engineering question: are these criteria, this load path, and these assumptions defensible for this building? A plans examiner works to a checklist under a permit deadline. A reviewing engineer works to the physics.
| Service | Who performs it | The question it answers | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Building department plan review | The local plans examiner | Does this comply well enough to permit? | At permit application |
| Private provider plan review | A licensed engineer, architect, or building code administrator the owner retains (F.S. 553.791, 2024) | The same code question, on the owner’s schedule | At permit application |
| Threshold special inspection | A special inspector qualified under Chapter 471 or 481 | Is what’s being built what was drawn? | During construction |
| Structural peer review | An independent licensed engineer retained by owner, lender, or counsel | Are the criteria and assumptions sound? | During design |
Florida’s private provider statute is the one most often mistaken for peer review. It lets an owner hire a licensed professional to perform “building code inspection services,” plan review included, in place of the local department, while the building official keeps authority to issue stop-work orders and audit that provider (F.S. 553.791, 2024). Useful schedule tool. Still a compliance check, still not a second opinion on your engineering.
What does the reviewing engineer do, and what does it not do?
The reviewer reads the design criteria first, because most serious findings live there rather than in arithmetic. From there: load path continuity, lateral system behavior, analysis model assumptions, governing member and connection checks re-run independently, and coordination of delegated design items. The deliverable is a numbered comment log, the design team’s written responses, and a closeout letter.
What it doesn’t do matters as much. The reviewer does not become the engineer of record, does not seal the construction documents, and does not redesign. Florida keeps that line bright: the engineer of record “is responsible for all structural aspects of the design of the structure including the design of all of the structure’s systems and components” (Fla. Admin. Code 61G15-31.001, 2024), and the Board of Professional Engineers is explicit that a PE “can only sign and seal an engineering document that you were in responsible charge of preparing” (FBPE, 2026).
“Our job is to be usefully wrong in private so nobody has to be expensively wrong in public. Even when every comment closes out clean, the owner gets something real: a documented, independent record that the design holds up.”
- Judian Duran, PE, StS-1
That record keeps earning long after occupancy. Owners facing an insurance dispute or a post-storm evaluation find a documented design review is one of the few things that establishes what the structure was designed to resist.
How do you scope a peer review that’s worth the fee?
Timing decides value. A review at 90 percent construction documents finds the same problems as one at design development, at many times the cost to fix. We suggest a checkpoint at the end of schematic design, while criteria and system selection are still cheap to change, and a second near 60 percent.
Then put five things in writing: documents in scope, governing codes and standards, whether the reviewer runs independent calculations or checks the engineer’s, the comment and response format, and how disagreements get resolved. Ambiguity on that last point turns a technical review into a personality conflict.
Fees scale with structural complexity and depth of checking, not square footage alone. For budgeting, see what a structural engineer costs in Florida and our guide to when you actually need a structural engineer.
Weighing a peer review on a Tampa Bay project? Call (813) 536-8002 or request a consultation. Duran Structural is led by an engineer with over a decade and 100-plus projects behind him, including eight years at Thornton Tomasetti, and we’re an MBE and SBE certified business, which matters on public and institutional bid lists.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a structural peer review required by the Florida Building Code?
Not as a general rule. Florida statute requires a special inspector for threshold buildings, defined as those “greater than three stories or 50 feet in height” or large assembly occupancies (F.S. 553.71(12), 2026). Design peer review is normally a contract requirement from an owner, lender, insurer, or institutional standard.
Who pays for a structural peer review?
Whoever commissions it, typically the owner or developer. Florida applies the same logic to threshold work: “the fee owner of a threshold building shall select and pay all costs of employing a special inspector” (F.S. 553.79(5), 2026). Owner funding protects independence, because a reviewer paid by the design team isn’t genuinely independent.
Can the peer reviewer stamp the drawings?
No, and you shouldn’t want that. A Florida PE “can only sign and seal an engineering document that you were in responsible charge of preparing” (FBPE, 2026). The engineer of record keeps responsibility for all structural aspects of the design. The reviewer’s deliverable is a comment log and a closeout letter, never a seal.
Is a threshold inspection the same thing as a peer review?
No. A threshold special inspection verifies construction against a “structural inspection plan prepared by the engineer or architect of record” (F.S. 553.79(5), 2026). It happens in the field during construction. A peer review happens on paper during design, and questions the design itself rather than its execution.
When in the design should a peer review happen?
Early enough that the answer can still change the drawings. A review at 30 to 50 percent design can redirect a framing scheme cheaply. The same comments at 90 percent land after the connections, foundations, and coordination are set, so acting on them means rework the schedule rarely has room for.
The bottom line
Required versus wise is the wrong argument to have. The useful question is where your risk concentrates, and whether anyone independent has looked at that spot. Threshold status, health care licensure, and condominium age each trigger their own statutory review, and none substitutes for a real second opinion on the engineering.
One practical note before you commission one. The written scope matters more than it sounds, because “peer review” covers everything from a two-day sanity check on the lateral system to a full independent re-analysis. Writing it down is also what makes the comment log useful a year later, when somebody asks whether a particular question was ever put to the design team.
If you’re weighing one on a Tampa Bay project, the fastest next step is a short conversation about where that risk sits. See our structural assessment and peer review services, or get in touch. Every structure is different, so consult a licensed engineer about your specific project before deciding.
Judian Duran, PE, StS-1 is the founder and principal structural engineer of Duran Structural, a boutique Tampa firm serving Tampa Bay and all of Florida. A licensed Professional Engineer in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama with over a decade across 100-plus projects, he brings big-firm rigor earned as a project engineer at Thornton Tomasetti to coastal, historic, healthcare, and high-rise work. He serves as a Structures Specialist (StS-1) on Florida Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3 and as Vice President of the ASCE West Coast Branch. He also sits on the ASCE 24 Flood-Resistant Design committee and is a contributing author to FEMA P-2345, the Building Designer’s Guide to Calculating Flood Loads Using ASCE 7-22 Supplement 2.
