A Big ABC Win for the Industry

A Big ABC Win for the Industry

On Friday, the Florida House of Representatives took up and passed Senate Bill 360 with bipartisan support.?This industry-backed bill, with ABC as a driving force, will make critical changes to Florida's Statute of Repose AND require a level of materiality for any Chapter 558 Construction Defect Claim tied to the Florida Building Code.?For too long, the industry has been held hostage by the endless abuse of the Chapter 558 Construction Defects process.?This legislation will add much-needed predictability, certainty, and clarity to a currently confused process.?Technically, this bill has one more stop before it can go to the Governor for his signature.?There was a one-word error in SB 360 when the House took it up.?They fixed the issue, voted in favor of it, and will send it back to the Senate for a FINAL vote this week.

More ABC Bills on the Move

Senate Bill 346?- ABC's Public Construction Bill - is on the agenda in its second committee of reference in the Senate this Wednesday.?This bill will amend Florida's Prompt Pay on public projects during the close-out phase.?At the punch list, all money owed, including retainage, must be released minus 150% of the cost to complete the punch list work.?This fix will help ensure contractors and their teams are paid in a timely fashion.?Additionally, on projects with ANY state funding, public entities can not impose hiring, training, and wage rate requirements.

ABC Opposes Senate Bill 7026

Part of SB 7026 would require the Board of Governors to develop new procurement policies for university and college construction to "allow price to be considered much earlier in the process."?Without more explanation or guardrails, we can only presume that price may be THE determining factor.?ABC has opposed and helped to block all versions of this legislation in the last few years because there is no explanation or information as to what this revised procurement process might look like.?We know that when the price is THE factor, it's a race to the bottom with bidding to be followed by change orders and project problems.?This legislation has yet to surface in the House, but given that it has been raised in the Senate, and that there is plenty of time remaining in the session, we should expect this to be the start of the conversation.?We will continue to stay on this issue and offer much-needed industry input and opposition.??

Occupational Licensing Discussions

There are four different versions of legislation filed in this session aimed at cleaning up the results of HB 735 passed in 2021.?That positive effort was aimed at preventing local governments from developing new and unique licenses solely for projects taking place within their jurisdiction.?These licenses are often an effort to require additional fees from the industry. HB 735 said you cannot create new licenses not currently contemplated by the Florida Building Code.?The result of HB 735 has been for Building Departments to say that everyone looking to pull a permit in their jurisdiction must now be licensed as a General Contractor.?The four bills out there all let jurisdictions grandfather in any local licenses they had in place before January 1, 2021.?However, each bill creates a different list of unique local licenses that may continue moving forward after a certain period.?It is the differences between the lists that are currently being debated.?The most important thing to know is, once the lists are negotiated and agreed to, local jurisdictions may not require any other local licenses, NOR may they require individual trades to secure their GC license if they aren't a GC.

Other Licensing Discussions

Senate Bill 1364 (Sen. Collins) - Interstate-Mobility and Universal-Recognition Occupational Licensing Act

This legislation would allow for the reciprocity of contractor licenses among states.?While we typically support streamlined and uniform regulations, building in Florida is very different from building in Massachusetts, Texas, or Nebraska.?The Senate sponsor and his team reached out to ABC to ask for input and feedback and we said at the very least, anyone coming into Florida to work in construction MUST take the exam that our Florida members take.?The Senator amended his legislation in the first committee stop with our request for testing -but this discussion is in the very early stages.?We will continue to monitor, engage, and respond to this issue.?

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