What Every Florida Contractor Needs To Know About Their License

For contractors in Florida, getting properly licensed is essential. From taking your examination, to applying for licensure, to reinstating null and void certification–the process can get complex. What happens if you need to change the status of your license? What’s the difference in qualifying as an individual versus qualifying as a business? 

Join this free webinar, hosted by a construction attorney, and learn everything you need to know about the CILB and getting licensed in Florida.

What we’ll cover:

• New Laws and Developments for contractor licensing
• How to change the status of your license
• Applications for Qualifying an Additional Business
• Contractor Discipline and Unlicensed Activity
• General Information about the CILB

The presentation will be followed by a live Q&A!

Hosted by Chris Cobb, a Florida construction attorney with Cobb & Gonzalez, P.A.

Transcription

Kathryn Barona: (00:23)

Good afternoon, everybody. I’m Kathryn Barona with Levelset. Thanks for joining us for this webinar. All about contractor licensing in Florida and our speaker is Chris Cobb of cocking solace based in Jacksonville. And I will let Chris get started with this presentation. If you have any questions, just put them in the chat box and we’ll get to them either at the end of the presentation, or if it’s, um, pertaining to the material right at the time, then that will come back and ask Chris for you. Let me get away, Chris. Thank you.

Christopher Cobb: (01:04)

All right. Thank you. Um, thank you for the opportunity to present on construction licensing. Um, by way of background, I’m a construction litigation and licensing attorney in Florida. Uh, I have been a lawyer for 20 years and I have, uh, in 2012 was appointed by the governor at the time, Rick Scott to the construction industry licensing board, where I served as the chairman in 2017. Uh, and so I have a lot of insight about the CIOB and, and given the parameters of today’s presentation. Um, I had to really think about what I was going to do to get the, uh, get us the most bang for the buck. And I, I kind of am distilling this very large body of law of licensing down into some, some practical, um, applications that will, that will help you assist you, uh, through, uh, the daily aspects of your license. And in order to do that, uh, I think it’s important for me to start from a foundational basis and provide some, some, some definitions. Um, we’re having some technical difficulties here with my screen share.

Christopher Cobb: (02:20)

There we go. Um, so in order to get an understanding about the licensure and, and how it plays with Florida statutes, we have to understand its originations and, and it is created by chapter 49 of the Florida statutes chapter 49, while it gives the CIOB its existence. Um, the, the licensing board, uh, has the capability of creating its own laws and rules, uh, to governance activities. And those laws and rules are found in 61 G4 sections 12 through 23 of the four day administrative code. And so under chapter 49 in conjunction with those administrative code laws and rules, um, that is, that creates the body of law that, that, uh, construction licensing, um, arrives under part one of chapter 49 is construction contracting. Part two is electrical contracting, and a part three is septic tank. And for the purposes of our conversations, we’ll be dealing with construction contracting.

Christopher Cobb: (03:23)

Although the electrical contracting section does have a lot of parallels to the construction contracting main makeup of the board is important to understand because it is Florida’s largest professional board and it has 18 members and the members are statutorily broken down into sub categories. So there are four general contractors, three building or residential. There’s a roofing sheet, metal air conditioning and mechanical pool plumbing, underground utility to consumer members. And two building code officials and consumer members are non contractors who were appointed by the board. I served as the division two consumer member when I was serving on the board. And so the, the, uh, the, the consumer members effectively act as the voice of the consumer.

Christopher Cobb: (04:15)

The same, the IRB is divided into divisions division one and division two. And, and their specialty licenses created by board rule and even statute division one, uh, class of licensure or the GCs VCs and RCS, and then division two are all the trades. And we’ll get into those in a little bit. Um, but again, it’s the foundational requirements of the licensure start in the statute and it’s, uh, um, they, they are creatures of statute. And so when you look at the specialty licenses, the specialty license is, is assigned to particular division for disciplinary purposes. Um, and, and, um, initial licensure purposes by scope of work. For example, the Marine contractors license is a subset of the GC license. So we would be under division one we’re as the pool specialty decking licenses, uh, our division two, because they associate it with scope of work for pool contractors.

Christopher Cobb: (05:20)

And so that’s how the divide, the specialty license. This is up in the, uh, in the, at the board level. So Florida, there are two types of contractors are certified contractors, which are statewide. Uh, they, they are required only to exhibit state licenses in the local jurisdictions to pull permits. Uh, and they state certified contractors can perform their scope of work, which is defined by law in any location in the state. And so it is truly a statewide application versus the registered contractor, which is licensed by the local jurisdiction. Uh, there typically are issued a competency card. They register that competency card, that local license with the Navy PR in Tallahassee. And, um, those licenses are only permitted to work on their scope of work in the geographical area for their jurisdiction. So if you are, if your license is a local license for Leon County, which is where Tallahassee is, then you are only allowed to work in Leon County.

Christopher Cobb: (06:24)

Unless there that County has a reciprocity agreement with other counties, then you can work in other counties, but you need to make sure that you’re only practicing in the geographical limitations. If you go outside the geographical locations, you can be hit for unlicensed activity. So you’ve got to be careful where you, where you’re working more definitions that are really important for today, because we will spend some time talking about qualifying agents and what you have to do to qualify an additional business, uh, with your license. When you have a company that is going to be performing construction activities and contracting, it must have any qualifier in the state of Florida licenses, uh, individuals, it does not license companies. And so that the individual obtains the license. And then from there, they effectively park that license with the company and they become its primary qualifier. As the primary qualifier, you are responsible for directing and managing and control and supervise in both the business activities of the, of the company and the construction activities.

Christopher Cobb: (07:35)

And now those are two separate categories. So you’re responsible for both all of the business and all of the construction as a secondary qualifier. You’re only responsible for construction activities on jobs for which you’ve pulled a permit, and you have no financial responsibility. And so you may ask yourself, what does it mean to supervise direct management control of both the business activities and the construction activities? Well, uh, there’s a series of questions that can be addressed that will dissect those underlying parts such as, do you have the ability to contract? Do you have the ability to hire and fire employees? Do you have the ability to look at the bank statements? Do you look at the tax returns, uh, do you, uh, ex execute vendor contracts and can you terminate a project if it’s going bad? I mean, all of these questions are, are indicative of whether or not you exercise the control of the business and the construction activities.

Christopher Cobb: (08:29)

And so it’s not, there’s no definition, there’s no statutory guidance or rule guidance on what that means. And so you have to kind of distill that from, from its sub parts, which is those questions that I just asked after we get through the, uh, qualifiers. And if you don’t a lot of contractors that I know don’t want to run businesses, they want to build things. And so you don’t have to necessarily, uh, run the business you can delegate to what’s called a financially responsible officer, excuse me, the financially responsible officer is responsible, would be responsible for the business aspects, uh, of the organization. Um, they fill out an application, uh, they have to go through credit reports and background checks just like most, uh, most qualifiers do, but they are primarily relieving the construction qualifier from the business responsibilities that he has at Faros, which they’re also known as financially responsible officer.

Christopher Cobb: (09:30)

The fro may be subject to disciplinary action if they, um, mishandled or mismanaged the, uh, uh, the company. But it, it it’s the construction license is what gives the CIOB most emits disciplinary authority. And we will, we will talk in, in, in further detail later in the presentation about disciplinary matters and what happens if you get, um, and entrenched in some disciplinary action by the state and the lastly from a definitional perspective, before we go forward forward with any other, any other discussion, we have to understand the definition of a contractor. So what is contracting contracting is someone who for compensation, and that can be, it can be a bid scenario. It can be bartering scenario. It can be anything other than that, that you gain for value is, is a legal definition for compensation does by himself or herself or by others. So there’s your subcontracting requirement himself herself is self-performing others through subs.

Christopher Cobb: (10:42)

And then you have this list of berms that you can perform for contracting construct, repair, alter remodel, the Mollus and track improve real property, any building or structure, including related improvements for real estate, for resale to others, and for job scope with just substantially similar in scope to two, a subsections three, a through P out subsections eight through P. Those are the definitions of the scopes of work in the, um, construction licensing statute. And so you basically for money through yourself or others repairing real property that is identified as, as the scope in the statute that is contracting negotiating and bidding for or advertising for these services also constitutes contracting. And so it’s not just enough that you actually sign a deal where you are improving the property. If you are driving in a truck, um, advertising for roofing repairs, and you are not a roofing contractor, you are engaged contracting because you were advertising for those services. So it is important to note that just submitting a bid and advertising from the services also falls within the definition of contract.

Christopher Cobb: (12:07)

So when, when we have our, uh, licenser categories, um, there’s a couple of criteria that you need to fulfill to do in order to get the license. Um, and again, this is foundational, um, for, for everybody, it’s a division one and division two, there are examination requirements that test you on your ability to run a project, your business, and finance acumen and trade knowledge. Uh, the business and finance component of that test is very important. Um, there is a push now to enter into reciprocity agreements with other States where we wouldn’t require other people to continue to take the business and finance portions of the Florida tests, but they would wave in through their, uh, project experience in other licensure until we can get into that with that new law change. Um, last year, um, every contractor has to have experience and, or education or a blend of the two.

Christopher Cobb: (13:05)

And you look at it as a sliding scale. So if you have four years of college, you would need one year of work experience. Whereas if you had no college, you would need four years of work experience. And so did the slides up and down, depending on how much schooling and work experience you have, you gotta be financially responsible, can not have any liens or judgments or, uh, um, are bad credit. Um, the statute provides that six 60 is a credit score. You can bond around a bad credit score, but you need to have good credit. Uh, I used to have to give a disclaimer when I was giving presentations on licensing to, uh, to say that the presentation did not reflect how a CIB would, would vote on an application. And that really comes down to this good moral character section. I mean, cause I’m not on the board anymore.

Christopher Cobb: (13:59)

I can tell you kind of how the board votes on these types of things. And so good moral character is not just being a good person. It means that you, your criminal background is not, um, uh, indicative that you would be committing fraud or assaulting on, um, assaulting customers. And, and what they look for in that is, um, do you have, um, past domestic violence, do you have, um, do you have to register as a sex offender in anywhere? Any part of the state, um, you know, uh, a drug arrest or DUI will not necessarily be a bar to entry to getting a construction license, but if you show an aggressive, uh, past, uh, you’re going to have to explain yourself when you get your, uh, application reviewed by the board and then insurance, you have to have show proof of insurance, right? So CFC, I’ll be just a quick set on the divisions. Division. One is a general contractor unlimited in scope. Uh, there are certain limitations and 49 one one three, uh, that for, for general contractors, such, such as they can put shingles and, uh, uh, Cedar shakes on roofs, on houses that they build from the ground up, but they can’t repair routes. And so there’s certain limitations building contractor again by statue. And then the residential contractor is pretty self explanatory. It’s single family to family, three family homes, not exceeding two stories.

Christopher Cobb: (15:31)

And then real quick, here’s all the division two licenses that, that are currently pursuant to the statute. And you have to know when you’re, when you’re dealing with unlicensed activity and what, where you can work and your, the lines that you can cross. Um, a good example would be the swimming pool of contractors because a residential pool and spa contractor, you would think can only work on residential, but that’s not accurate. So residential pool and spa contractor can actually perform complete renovations of existing commercial pools. And so you need to make sure that you were acting within the scope of your license. The class C air conditioning contractor is an old license. They’re not issuing those anymore, but I think there’s are still a few around. Uh, they are mostly a service service type license, uh, but they’re not issuing any, um, class D or conditioning licenses anymore.

Speaker 1: (16:24)

And

Christopher Cobb: (16:24)

Then here’s a bunch of specialty licenses that have been created, uh, there’s cell tower, industrial contractors, Marine, there’s a irrigation licensed. And so these are all pursuant to the, uh, board rule. And so these licenses were created were in the industry would come to, um, the, uh, CIL Bay and ask them to create a license. Now, these, these licenses are not, um, many of them are not mandatory. They’re they’re voluntary, but, um, in summit respects, if you’re going to be doing this work, like the Marine specialty contractor, if you’re going to be doing that work, you need to get that light. All right. So let’s get into the more practical nature of the construction license. So applying for the ability to qualify an additional business head of the, as something that happens quite often, and it’s basically, you want to take your license and park it with another company such that you are not only qualifying company a, but you’re also qualifying company B. And sometimes

Speaker 1: (17:27)

The license can,

Christopher Cobb: (17:29)

Can be used. If, for example, if I had, um, a pool license and a, um, residential license, um, I would be qualifying an additional business entity with that license. And so that those are the easy, easy situations to address, but, but, but what happens a lot of times is you’ll have a contractor. Who’s, let’s say a general contractor, and they have a buddy who wants to get into the construction industry and they enter into some kind of arrangement where he’s just going to qualify also the, the company of his buddy. And so basically the one general contracting license would be qualifying two separate and distinct entities. And, and this is where the rules really provide some clarity as to under what circumstances you can do that in order for that general contractor to qualify the second entity, they must meet the above categories here. They have to either have 20% or more ownership, or they have to be a W2 employee of the company.

Christopher Cobb: (18:39)

And the term employee has very significant legal, uh, very significant legal meaning, other evidence to ensure control over the construction. Um, I, in my time on the board, I only saw one matter that actually fell under that, uh, scenario. I have generated a qualifier agreement that I think would probably meet the, uh, the, uh, scrutiny of the CIOB, uh, to qualify in company. But you’re going to be asked a whole host of questions, uh, by the board. The easy way is to either make sure you have that 20% ownership or that you are a W2 employee. Uh, that’s, that’s the easy way. Can you, if what if you had 10%, 10%, you could qualify another company, but, but the, the 20% or more, and the W2 employee, those you’re gonna, you’re gonna need to go to the board and explain to them in person at a hearing as to why, how you can control the operations in business as a 10% owner.

Christopher Cobb: (19:44)

And that’s what they’re really looking at. They’re willing, they’re looking at what is your level of control, because if you’re going to be the primary qualifier, if you will remember that definition, that you’re responsible for all of the construction activities and all of the business activities of the company, well, how can you as a 10% owner control all of the business activities of a company. And so those are the kinds of things that they will flush out, and you can solve that by having an fro appointed, but, but you will have to explain yourself to the board. Um, you, again, as the qualifier of an additional business, have final approval over all operations and no payments from that new business can be 10 99, that’s renting your license and it is illegal. And so if you’re going to go help your buddy, and you’re going to qualify his company, and he’s just going to pay you under a 10 99, you’re renting your license, uh, that is, do not do that.

Christopher Cobb: (20:38)

Um, that is that it’s a big no-no. Uh, if in fact, if you say how the board will ask you at the hearing, how will you be paid, uh, by the new company? And if you say 10 99 it’s grounds for automatic denial. And so you need to know that going in, meet the set statutory requirements, and you shouldn’t be fun if there’s going to be your third company, that you’re going to qualify. You have a mandatory CIOB appearance, regardless if you own a hundred percent of all the companies. So that’s, that’s something that you should be aware of as well. The definition of employee is very important. Like I said before, an employee is defined as a person who receives compensation from, and it’s under the direct supervision and control of an employer who regularly deducts FICA, withholdings, and workers’ comp you do not deduct FICA withholdings, and workers’ comp from 10 99. You just, you don’t. So you do not meet that, that, that category. That is a very, very important distinction and is one that the CIOB members take very seriously. So make sure that if you’re going to be a W2 employee, it’s going to be a W2 employment scenario and not a 10 99

Speaker 1: (21:49)

Vendor. Another

Christopher Cobb: (21:51)

Aspect of a qualifying another company is if you want to enter into a joint venture. So you have to actually create the business entity and, and the business entity needs to have the joint venture agreement. You can obtain authorization from the CIA lb prior to bidding to submit the bid, because remember if you’ve been for work and you don’t, and you’re not qualified, you are unlicensed. And so you can actually get authorization under joint venture to submit a bid. Um, the junk joint venture must be qualified by a license holder eventually, and all members of the joint venture must sign a document saying that the license holder has permission to sign the contract. And once the joint venture wins the bid, it has 90 days to make it, uh, it has, it has 90 days to be qualified, which means you need to file your application very quickly, um, because you probably won’t be, um, at least 60 days before you get onto the board hearing calendar to give, get qualified. And so, so make sure you have that application ready to go. If you’re going to go to the joint venture,

Christopher Cobb: (23:01)

And also finally on qualifying an entity, sometimes the qualifier may decide that though he, he or she no longer wants to qualify an entity and they pull their license or change the status that organization may not engage in any contracting, um, activities. Um, they may, um, obtain a certificate to continue work that was already in, um, uh, in place. Uh, and they had 60 days to find a new, uh, qualifier, no new contracts until that qualifier is, is in place. So they have a short window of time to continue to work, to try to find a qualifier and to finish projects are already going on

Speaker 1: (23:44)

The next, the

Christopher Cobb: (23:46)

Next important, I think more practical aspect of licensure is what happens when you find yourselves in discipline. And a lot of that is tied with unlicensed activity. And so we need to have an understanding of unlicensed activity. And again, that goes through the scope, the scope that I went through earlier, you got to make sure that you’re working within your scope. And so there’s a statute that says, as a matter of public policy contracts entered into by unlicensed, contractors are enforceable in law inequity. And what that means is that if you’re an individual and you need to have a license and you don’t have a license, it’s unlicensed activity, same thing with the company. If the business is unlicensed, if it doesn’t have a primary or secondary qualifier. Now, when you look at licensure, the business tax license that you have to get, or the occupational license that you have to get from the County is not considered unlicensed activity.

Christopher Cobb: (24:34)

These are, we are talking about a certified situation or a registered contractor scenario. So it’s the state licensure for the extra to actually perform the work. And you might want to know the w w well, what date am I is this analysis? Cause I’ve got all this work that I need to get going. And, and I’ve got contracts lining up and people are calling me. I need to get my license while the effective date for licensure on licensure. That is determined on the date of the contract. If there is no contract, it’s the date of first performing the work. And so those would be effective dates. Um, if you don’t have a license and you, and you have a material supplier who has provided materials, the, your unlicensed status will not affect the lien rights of downstream suppliers and subcontractors so long as they are properly licensed with the work they need to be doing as well.

Christopher Cobb: (25:29)

And the doctrine of impairing electing does not apply. And so, um, what that means is, um, if a homeowner or a customer approaches you and they know that you are not licensed, but they go through the work anyway, and then they don’t pay you. Um, you cannot as a defense to that one, your contracts unenforceable because you aren’t, you don’t have the license whenever to you can’t go after the homeowner and say, they knew I was unlicensed and they hired me anyway. Uh, when you balance those harms, the harm is the unlicensed activity is the greater harm that a whole homeowner taking advantage of that scenario. And so the, the, yeah, well, he knew I was a licensed, uh, defense does not fly, uh, in has zero application in unlicensed activity cases. There are eight possible legal ramifications for unlicensed activity. They are loss of your contract rights, no liens or bond rights.

Christopher Cobb: (26:29)

There was a statute buried in the tort section of the Florida statutes that actually will provide treble damages. So if you damage a homeowner for $10,000 on a roof, and you’re not a licensed roofing contractor, that’s now $40,000 dam, uh, damage model, um, there’s violations for the building code administrative sanctions, uh, criminal penalties. It is actually a crime unlicensed activity is a crime, uh, and you can be arrested for it. The, uh, local jurisdictions run sting operations all the time, uh, to pick up and arrest unlicensed activity. And so, um, you can, you can be arrested for it. There is a claim for discouragement of all the money, uh, because your contract is unenforceable in law, inequity, and, and it’s certainly unfair and deceptive trade practices do hold yourself out as somebody with a license when you don’t have a license. And that’s not only just for conducting contracting, but it’s also for performing work that is outside of the scope of your current license.

Christopher Cobb: (27:27)

So you either have the license or you don’t, if you do have a license and you’re a roofing contractor doing pool work, you’re working outside of your license. That is licensed activity as well. And then Taylor Morrison is the Taylor Morrison is the case that sets the timeframe for when, uh, you need to determine whether you’re licensed or unlicensed as the date of the original contract. So that is set in, in, uh, in a case law. Okay. And then finally, if you find yourself in the unenviable position of having a homeowner or customer file a complaint against you, um, there’s a SIM there, they process that you will go through, you will receive a copy of the complaint. They will provide you with an opportunity to respond. Um, the department is conducting its investigation. Um, I think that you need to be very, very careful about what you say to the department, uh, when you’re being investigated, it is a quasi criminal Plaza judicial system, and these prosecutors, um, know what they are doing.

Christopher Cobb: (28:31)

And I have seen lawyers draft long and really well-written letters that were trying to explain their client’s conduct that only resulted in adding four or five more charges because the lawyer said too much. And so you need to be very careful what happens is, um, there is an investigation, the investigators will report back to the department. Uh, if the department, uh, closes the investigation, it goes away. If the investigation remains and goes to the next step, it will be sent to a probable cause panel to members of the, of the licensing board will look at the investigative file and determine whether probable cause exists for a violation, um, Mo more times than not. If you’re at the probable cause panel, you won’t, other than knowing that there was a complaint, you, you probably won’t know that you’re at the probable cause family. It is private and confidential.

Christopher Cobb: (29:34)

So it is not public record. If they probable cause panel determines that you have committed a violation will file a formal investigation, a formal administrative complaint, and you will receive what is called an election of rights. And you have three options. You have the option to admit everything. You have the option to request an informal hearing in front of the board, which means I admit all the facts, but I want to present to the board as to why I should have my penalty mitigated, or you can dispute and deny the charges. Um, my recommendation on officially to everybody here is that you initially dispute the charges and file the petition for formal administration, uh, uh, w with the department of administrative hearings, you can always enter into settlement arrangements or whatnot, but I had seen contractors who stick it in a drawer and they get disciplined.

Christopher Cobb: (30:32)

I’ve seen contract tractors, try to think that they are smooth and can, and can talk the way out of this. And they end up getting hammered in front of the board. And so you should choose to deny and, and let, let your attorney handle the process from there. Because at that point, you’re engaged in full litigation with the state on your license. So you’ll go through the Doha hearing, and I’ve got the, the, the possible range of penalties from dismissal of the complaint all the way through revocation of your license. Um, and, and with the administrative, um, matters come some appellate rights. And so it’s, it’s not the end all. And be often, once the board acts, you have appellate rights. And so very quickly some grounds for discipline of the license. These are the most common that I saw. The top three are probably the most egregious financial mismanagement, valid liens, not satisfied in 75 days.

Christopher Cobb: (31:29)

And abandonment those three, those top three will, will open you up to a, uh, recovery fund, uh, claim in which case, uh, the state will actually pay the damages and then come after you for reimbursement. Um, and if you don’t reimburse the state, you lose your license forged, um, affidavit’s and false. Affidavit’s, that’s a, that’s a no-no, um, deposit, no work or deposit. And don’t pull permits for the, the, the, the appropriate statutory time that can lead to discipline civil judgements proceeding on a job without a permit. And actually one that’s buried in the administrative code is discouraging the service of a notice to owner. So if you’re a contractor and you have a downstream trade, and you say, you tell them that they better not serve a notice to owner on, on the company, on your customer, that is actually grounds for CIOB discipline and failing to honor a written warranty is also one that’s buried in the administrative code as well. So if you have a written warranty and you’re not honoring it, or you’re not investigating in handling it, then you can be disciplined for it. And this some information about the homeowners recovery fund, if, if, if that abandonment financial mismanagement or liens results in disciplinary against disciplinary action against you, the homeowner or customer can file a petition to get a recovery from the homeowners recovery fund. Um, and these are some, some, these are some, uh, um, considerations that deal with the, with the, with the recovery fund.

Speaker 4: (33:06)

Um, you

Christopher Cobb: (33:09)

As a contractor are obligated to have warning language. If you’re doing residential work to have this warning language in your contracts, if you don’t have this warning language in your contracts, and you were doing residential work, you run the risk of getting disciplined. It’s a minor violation, but it can be disciplined. Nonetheless, there are also under chapter seven 13, a specific lean warning that you need to provide owners. And that’s a little outside the scope of this presentation, but it’s again, another set of warnings that need to be sent. If you’re doing residential work in the state of Florida. And to wrap up, there’s been a few new laws and developments, uh, recently. So th this is not so new, but it’s about four years ago, five years ago, the recovery fund added the division two contractors back in. And so for all the division two contractors listening, you need to have that warning language in your contracts as well.

Christopher Cobb: (34:13)

And so it used to only be division one. And as of 2016, division two has been added back in. So you are now subject to recovery fund claims. Uh, there was, uh, there was a lightening of the, uh, um, experience requirement, and instead of, um, sculpt schooling, um, if you have received an honorable discharge from active duty, uh, in the United States military in any branch, um, you can use that military experience to get a license as part of your, um, education, um, criteria. Instead of showing in college, you can show after military experience, you still have to have one year as a foreman in the trade, but you can use your military experience to offset some of the, uh, um, educational requirements. And very recently, this past year, the, the opportunity, the opera, um, occupational freedom and opportunity act was entered, was entered by the legislature in Florida.

Christopher Cobb: (35:10)

And it basically, it’s starting to loosen the, um, requirements to become a licensed in the state of Florida. And it affects, uh, contractors, architects, engineers, building inspectors, and home inspectors. And so chapter four 55, which deals with your practice act was amended to require the board and the DBPR to enter into reciprocal licensing agreements with other States, which means you, there may be an Avenue for you to go out of state to get a license through one of these agreements. And so this is, this is actually being drafted and discussed right now. I, I actually submitted the first version of a reciprocal agreement to the construction licensing board last week, and it was approved and it’s with the state of Louisiana. And so there is a reciprocal licensing agreement that is being discussed right now, um, between Florida and Louisiana, and it’s in the way by way of a endorsement and an examination endorsement.

Christopher Cobb: (36:09)

And so that’s something that’s happening right now. And so just keep, keep your, uh, keep your ears out for further developments on that chapter 49 was changed. Um, the inquiry inconsequential work, otherwise known as the handyman exception, the amount of the work value was increased to $2,500. It used to be a thousand and that that inconsequential work value has increased to 25, 2,500, um, changes for the time to upgrade your license has, has, uh, have been relaxed. Uh, if you have a four-year degree in construction with a 3.0 or higher, you only need to take the business and finance part of the test. You don’t need to take the project management and contract administration, uh, parts of, of tests. And so that’s again a lightening of the standards, uh, because you are demonstrating the education through your four year degree and in high GPA, and then application by Norseman.

Christopher Cobb: (37:10)

Um, this section allows out of state contractors, uh, with a license to, and who can demonstrate the tech technical competence to get, um, a Florida license. And so part of the reciprocity that we’re trying to establish with other States is that if an out-of-state contractor has this ability to come in, well, we want Florida contractors, the ability to go out. And so we enter into these agreements that allow that two-way path. Uh, and so again, those are, those are currently being drafted and debated and discussed right now at the, uh, at the department level. And so that concludes my presentation and, uh, I have some contact information here, and I understand we may have some questions, but, uh, thank you for your time. And I appreciate the appreciate your attention.

Kathryn Barona: (38:07)

Thanks so much, Chris. Um, if anyone has a question right now, just put it in the chat box there for Chris and or afterwards, you can email him there. Of course. Um, thank you so much for your time today, Chris. I know that our viewers got a lot of good information and help out of this, and, um, we will be emailing the recording of this, to all the attendees and people who registered. So

Speaker 1: (38:36)

Look out for that, um, by Monday. And, um, I think anyone out there not seeing any questions yet, but, um, that was a great presentation. Definitely.

Christopher Cobb: (38:55)

If, if anybody has any questions, my email’s right there, send them on and I’ll be glad to address them.

Speaker 1: (39:06)

Sounds good. Then that concludes our webinar. And thanks for everyone’s time. We’ll be signing off now.