5.3 Codes & Standards Committee: October 2025 Activity Report
The Committee recorded two successes during October. The first was the endorsement of AIBD-sponsored modifications to the Florida Building Code by the Code Administration Technical Advisory Committee of the Florida Building Commission. Those modifications involve changing section 107.1 of the FBC-Building portion of the code to add support for digital plan submissions, remove requirements for registered design professionals to prepare all construction documents, and accommodate two new defined terms: special condition and additional construction document. The new terms and their definitions will be added to section 202 of the code. Assuming the Florida Building Commission accepts these TAC recommendations, they will appear in the December 31, 2026 edition of the code. These changes will eliminate the ability for a Florida local government to amend the statewide code to declare that all projects within the jurisdiction have a special condition and to then require construction documents to be prepared by a registered design professional when such documents are exempt under state law.
A similar success was achieved later in the month when the ICC's IRC-Building Committee, meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, endorsed a similar set of modifications that had been previously accepted by the ICC's ADMIN Committee for inclusion in the 2027 editions of the IBC and IEBC. The committee thanks Steve Mickley for his successful representation of our proposal.
The month also unfortunately included a procedural defeat for our chair, who failed to acquire reconsideration of a prior rejection by the Florida Building Commission of his appeal of a denial by the Broward County Board of Rules & Appeals (BORA) to consider a challenge he had brought against the agency's local code amendment adoption process. The only recourse at this point would be to return to the Broward County circuit court to seek a writ of mandamus to compel BORA to conduct the hearing or to seek a declaratory judgment finding the local amendment process violated state requirements. BORA had repealed the most egregious local amendments that require all construction documents for residential projects to be prepared by a registered design professional in July 2025, likely in response to our prolonged opposition. A decision should be made before the end of the year as to whether court action is justified or to wait for the 2026 Florida Building Code to remove the local option for such a requirement. Given the time required for a case to make it through the legal process in that circuit, the next edition of the code will take effect before the case could be adjudicated.
A similar success was achieved later in the month when the ICC's IRC-Building Committee, meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, endorsed a similar set of modifications that had been previously accepted by the ICC's ADMIN Committee for inclusion in the 2027 editions of the IBC and IEBC. The committee thanks Steve Mickley for his successful representation of our proposal.
The month also unfortunately included a procedural defeat for our chair, who failed to acquire reconsideration of a prior rejection by the Florida Building Commission of his appeal of a denial by the Broward County Board of Rules & Appeals (BORA) to consider a challenge he had brought against the agency's local code amendment adoption process. The only recourse at this point would be to return to the Broward County circuit court to seek a writ of mandamus to compel BORA to conduct the hearing or to seek a declaratory judgment finding the local amendment process violated state requirements. BORA had repealed the most egregious local amendments that require all construction documents for residential projects to be prepared by a registered design professional in July 2025, likely in response to our prolonged opposition. A decision should be made before the end of the year as to whether court action is justified or to wait for the 2026 Florida Building Code to remove the local option for such a requirement. Given the time required for a case to make it through the legal process in that circuit, the next edition of the code will take effect before the case could be adjudicated.