Compliance
Florida Milestone Inspections and SIRS in 2026: What Boards Actually Have to Do
If you sit on a Florida condominium board, or manage one, the last four years have been a continuous exercise in reading legislation that keeps changing. Here is the current state of the requirement, stated once, plainly — and an honest account of what a drone can and cannot do about it.
The requirement
Florida Senate Bill 4-D, passed in 2022 in the aftermath of Surfside and refined by HB-913 in 2024, requires a milestone inspection for condominium and cooperative buildings three stories or taller.
- 30 years from the date of certificate of occupancy for inland buildings.
- 25 years for buildings within three miles of the coastline.
- Every 10 years thereafter.
Running behind it is the Structural Integrity Reserve Study — a visual condition assessment paired with a 30-year reserve funding plan. The SIRS must cover the roof, the structure, waterproofing, exterior painting, the foundation, plumbing, electrical, and windows and exterior doors. Under HB-913, associations coordinating their SIRS with a milestone inspection had the deadline extended to December 31, 2026.
The part nobody explains clearly
A milestone inspection is performed in two phases. Phase 1 is a visual examination of the building by a Florida-licensed engineer or architect. If Phase 1 finds no substantial structural deterioration, the process ends there. If it does, Phase 2 follows — destructive or non-destructive testing to characterize what Phase 1 found.
Almost the entire cost and schedule risk in this process lives in how Phase 1 gets done. Historically that has meant swing stages, boom lifts, or a rope-access crew working the elevations over a period of weeks, coordinating unit-owner access, at a cost that lands squarely on the association.
Where drone capture fits — and where it does not
Let us be exact about this, because there are vendors in this market who are not being exact about it.
What a drone does is capture the visual documentation the Phase 1 assessment relies on — and it does that better than a person on a swing stage can. In a single mobilization, a drone documents 90–100% of the building envelope at consistent standoff distance and consistent resolution: every elevation, every balcony line, every parapet, every expansion joint, geolocated and timestamped.
What that changes practically
| Dimension | Swing stage / lift | Drone envelope capture |
|---|---|---|
| Schedule | 3–8 weeks | 1–3 days |
| Envelope coverage | Sampled elevations | 90–100%, all elevations |
| Unit-owner disruption | Balcony access coordination | Notice only |
| Repeatability in 10 years | New scope each cycle | Identical flight lines |
| Fall exposure | Carried by the association | None |
That last row is the one boards under-weight. Every hour a person spends suspended off your building is an hour of liability the association owns.
The privacy question, answered before it is asked
The first objection at every board meeting is balcony privacy, and it is a legitimate one. The answer is procedural, not technical: fly the envelope at fixed standoff with the camera oriented at the structure rather than into it, give unit owners written notice ahead of the flight window, and remove incidental interior visibility before delivery. Associations that send notice a week ahead have a very different meeting than associations that do not.
What a board should ask a capture vendor
- Will you coordinate directly with our engineer of record, and can you match their Phase 1 scope?
- Is your output indexed by elevation and floor line, or is it a folder of photographs?
- Are your flight lines repeatable for the ten-year re-inspection cycle?
- What is your airspace authorization status for our specific address?
- Do you sell any remediation service that your findings could generate work for?
That last question matters more than it sounds. A capture vendor that also sells concrete restoration has an interest in what the imagery shows. We do not sell restoration, engineering, or roofing — and on a document a board will use to justify a seven-figure assessment to unit owners, that independence is the whole point.
Documenting a building for milestone or SIRS?
We work directly with engineers of record across both coasts. Send us your Phase 1 scope and we will match capture parameters to it.