Inspections follow construction from the ground up, each one while the work is still exposed. Footing, slab, framing and rough-in, insulation, final. The permit holder calls them. Work required to be inspected may not be concealed — a building official can order concealed work uncovered at the contractor's expense.
The sequence, and the logic behind it
On a slab-on-grade residence the normal order is footing, slab, framing and rough-in, insulation, final. That is not an arbitrary checklist. Each inspection occurs while the work it covers can still be seen and corrected, and before the next stage buries it.
Read the sequence backwards and it explains itself. Insulation cannot precede the framing and rough-in it is installed around. Nothing follows the final. And the footing inspection has to happen after excavation and placement of reinforcing but before concrete, because the entire point is to verify the bearing surface, the dimensions and the steel while they are visible. Once concrete is placed, none of that is verifiable without demolition.
Who calls them
The permit holder — the contractor of record. The permit is issued to the qualifier, so the duty to schedule each inspection at the right stage travels with it.
Architects and owners may attend inspections, and on many jobs they do. They are not the party the building department holds accountable when one is missed. If your name is on the permit, the inspection calendar is your problem regardless of who else is on site.
When an inspection fails
A failed inspection stops that phase of work until the cited items are corrected and the inspector returns and approves it, usually for a re-inspection fee. That is the whole procedure: correct the noted deficiencies, request a re-inspection, carry on.
What does not work is routing around it. A design professional cannot waive an inspection the building official requires. The building official's authority here does not come from the contract documents, so nobody inside the contract can sign it away.
The expensive mistake: concealing work
Work required to be inspected may not be concealed. When a subcontractor covers rough-in with drywall before it has been inspected, the building official may require the concealed work to be uncovered and exposed so it can be inspected — at the contractor's expense.
The reasoning matters more than the rule, because it generalizes. Concealing work does not shift the burden of proof onto the department. The department does not have to prove the hidden work is wrong; you have to make it possible to verify that it is right. This is the same principle that makes a passed inspection unable to cure work performed by an unlicensed trade — approval verifies what was visible, and it does not retroactively authorize what was not.
Keeping the permit alive
Inspections do a second job beyond verifying the work: they are the evidence that the job has not been abandoned. A permit becomes void when work is never started or is abandoned for the period stated in the code, and the way a contractor normally keeps an issued permit from expiring is by obtaining approved inspections at the required intervals.
A notice of commencement will not help here. It is a lien-law document and has no effect on permit status. See Florida building permit requirements for how the two interact.
Threshold buildings and the special inspector
Some structures carry a heavier inspection regime, and Florida assigns it to licensed design professionals rather than to the department alone.
On a threshold building, the special inspector must be a Florida-registered professional engineer or a licensed architect. The role involves judging structural conformance against an inspection plan, which is professional judgment rather than measurement — a testing lab technician performs tests but does not carry that professional responsibility.
The structural inspection plan itself is prepared by the engineer or architect of record for the project, because it derives directly from the structural design and states what must be verified and when. The special inspector then carries the plan out. Those are deliberately two roles: one writes what verification the design requires, the other performs it.
The private provider alternative
Florida law allows an owner or contractor to retain a private provider to perform plans review and the required building inspections, after proper notice to the building department. The private provider must be a licensed engineer or architect.
The motivation is almost always schedule. What does not change is authority: the building official still issues the permit and may audit the private provider's work. You are buying throughput, not an exemption.
The certificate of occupancy, and what it is not
At the end of the sequence, the certificate of occupancy is issued by the local building official having jurisdiction. It authorizes a completed building to be lawfully occupied and used — a governmental determination that the completed building complies with the permitted documents and is safe to occupy.
It is routinely confused with the certificate of substantial completion, which the design professional issues. That one is a contractual document about the state of the work between the parties. They are different instruments from different authorities, and neither one substitutes for the other.
Two more things do not turn on the certificate of occupancy: retainage and warranty obligations. Those are contract matters governed by the contract documents. The punch list is the mechanism that actually drives release of retainage — it lists items to be completed or corrected before final acceptance, and it is tracked separately from inspections entirely.
Where this shows up on the exam
Inspection sequence questions are among the most answerable on the trade exams if you understand the visibility principle, and among the most missed if you memorize a list. The exam asks when the footing inspection happens and who may serve as a threshold special inspector — questions with a reason behind them.
Drill the inspection questions
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