What Is a Private Provider?

A private provider is a licensed Florida engineer or architect authorized under §553.791 to perform building plan review, inspections, or both, in place of the local building department, on a statutory deadline instead of a discretionary timeline.

Why it exists. Florida building departments handle enormous submittal volume, and review times vary widely by jurisdiction and season. The private provider statute gives property owners and contractors a parallel path: hire a qualified private provider, and the review happens on a fixed clock with a real consequence, deemed approval, if that clock is missed.

Who can serve as a private provider. Only licensed engineers or architects, or firms employing them, meeting the statute's qualification requirements can serve in this role. Not every engineering or architecture firm handles private provider work; it requires specific process knowledge, insurance, and a working relationship with building departments across jurisdictions.

What a private provider actually does day to day. Plan review against the Florida Building Code, inspections at each required stage of construction, and submission of compliance affidavits and inspection results to the building official of record. The building department retains final authority to issue the permit and can audit private provider work, but the review itself happens outside their internal queue.

Where a permit expediting and compliance firm fits in. A firm like Construction Care Consulting doesn't replace the private provider, it manages the process around them: application completeness, statutory deadline tracking, comment response, and resolving disputes when a building department pushes back on a private provider submission. That last part is where most of the real value shows up, knowing exactly which statute and subsection to cite when a jurisdiction tries to impose a requirement the private provider statute doesn't allow.