A 40-year recertification is not a general contracting job. The county requires a licensed structural engineer to specify every repair; the repair contractor executes under that stamp; and the closeout package — engineer re-inspection report, permitted as-builts, county signoff — has to clear the building department before the recertification is granted. A general contractor who manages subs and coordinates schedules is not the right fit for that process. A structural restoration specialist who self-performs the concrete, post-tensioning, and waterproofing trades under an established engineering-of-record relationship is. The board's job during contractor selection is to verify the difference.
Question 1: Do they self-perform the structural trades?
Ask the contractor directly: do your concrete repair crews, rebar crews, and post-tension crews work for your company, or are they subcontractors? The answer determines your accountability structure for the entire project. A general contractor who subs the structural trades has no direct control over the crew that is repairing your balcony soffit or your parking deck tendon. When a repair fails reinspection, the GC points at the sub. The sub points at the engineer. The board absorbs the delay and — on a time-sensitive county compliance project — the fines. A contractor who carries the structural trades in-house has one chain of command from field crew to project manager to principal. That accountability is not a soft preference; on an occupied building with a county deadline, it is a scheduling and liability fact.
Question 2: Can they read the repair specification?
Before inviting a contractor to submit a scope proposal, hand them the engineer's repair specification — or, if the Phase 2 report has not arrived yet, the Phase 1 deficiency inventory — and ask them to walk the building with you. A qualified restoration contractor will map each deficiency to a repair method, identify potential scope items the report may have underestimated based on what they are seeing in the field, and ask about the tendon system and concrete mix design if the drawings are available. A contractor who reads the report primarily as a quantity takeoff and asks mostly about the timeline and mobilization date does not have the technical depth this scope requires.
Question 3: What is their contract format?
Concrete deterioration is almost always worse than Phase 1 or Phase 2 characterizes from the surface. Selective demolition exposes what the visual inspection and nondestructive testing could not fully map — more corroded rebar, deeper chloride penetration, more delaminated concrete cover. That is not a surprise; it is the nature of the work. A lump-sum-only contract on a concrete restoration project converts that reality into a change-order dispute. The correct contract format for this scope is a hybrid: a lump sum for the defined scope, with agreed unit prices for concrete repair quantities discovered during demolition. That structure gives the board a fixed baseline and a transparent mechanism for the unknowns. Any contractor who resists agreed unit prices is telling you how they intend to handle the scope growth.
Question 4: Have they closed a 40-year submittal in Miami-Dade?
The county recertification closeout package is specific. It requires the engineer of record's stamped re-inspection report confirming every item from the original deficiency list has been resolved, the permitted as-built drawings, all interim inspection sign-offs, and a final county inspection before the building department issues the recertification. A contractor who has not assembled this package before will be learning on your project. Ask the contractor: name the last 40-year recertification project you closed in Miami-Dade. What engineer was on record? What was the scope? When was the county closeout completed? Those questions have verifiable answers.
Question 5: How do they communicate with residents in an occupied building?
Recertification repair work in an occupied condominium requires advance notice to residents before access to individual units, dust containment at every work area, coordination with building staff for elevator and common-area access, and a resident communication cadence that matches the construction schedule. Boards that do not ask about this during contractor selection discover the gap when a resident calls the property manager because a crew showed up unannounced at 7 a.m. Ask the contractor to describe their resident communication protocol and who is responsible for it. The answer should be specific, not a general assurance that they handle occupied buildings all the time.
- Verify that the contractor self-performs structural trades — concrete, rebar, post-tensioning, waterproofing — not a general contractor managing subs
- Request a building walk with the engineer's repair specification in hand; a qualified contractor reads the spec, not just the quantity takeoff
- Require a hybrid contract: lump sum for the defined scope plus agreed unit prices for concrete quantities discovered during demolition
- Ask for specific Miami-Dade 40-year closeout references — project name, engineer of record, closeout date
- Confirm the resident communication protocol is documented and assigned to a named individual on the contractor's team