A Florida Structural Integrity Reserve Study is your association's capital plan.

Where the requirement lives.

The requirement is in Section 718.112(2)(g), Florida Statutes, and the Legislature has amended it more than once since 2022. Association counsel is the right source for what it requires of your association and when. What follows is the engineering and the arithmetic.

The study pairs two things: a visual inspection of specific building components, and a funding analysis that states what each component will cost to repair or replace, when that money will be needed, and what to reserve each year to have it ready.

The component list, item by item.

The study covers a named list of building components. Read as a list of things that go wrong on a coastal building, it makes sense:

• Roof. The most predictable large expense a building has.
• Structure. Load-bearing walls and the primary structural members and systems.
• Fireproofing and fire protection systems.
• Plumbing.
• Electrical systems.
• Waterproofing and exterior painting. On the Gulf, this is not cosmetic. Paint and sealants are the envelope's first defense, and deferring them is how water reaches the structure.
• Windows and exterior doors.
• Other high-cost items tied to the components above.

Each component gets three findings: a condition assessment, a remaining useful life, and a replacement or repair cost. Those three findings, across the whole list, are the study.

How a study becomes a funding calendar.

Here is the mechanism in its simplest form. If the roof has 12 years of life left and will cost a stated amount to replace, the study divides that cost across those 12 years and tells the association what to reserve annually. Do that for every component, add the columns, and the study produces a year-by-year schedule: what to collect, what will be spent, and when the big years land. A good study lets a board see, this year, that two major components come due in the same future year, and start smoothing that peak now, through phasing or planned maintenance that extends a component's life. It is how a special assessment that would surprise 300 owners becomes a line item they watched coming for a decade.

A cost book is not your coastline.

Two studies can look identical on the shelf and be very different documents. The difference is where the numbers came from. A study priced from a national cost database reflects an average building in an average place. Your building is not average. It sits in salt air, in a hurricane wind zone, in a county where restoration contractors are booked through peak season and mobilization on an occupied Gulf-front tower costs what it costs. A study priced from real local restoration work, recent bids, actual contracts, and completed projects on the same coast produces numbers a board can budget against. Priced from a book, the same study produces numbers a board gets surprised by. The arithmetic is fine either way. The inputs are not.

What a board should look for.

• Who performed the visual inspection, and are they licensed to evaluate what they looked at?
• Where do the cost figures come from: a national database, or local projects the firm can name?
• Does the study agree with your milestone inspection findings, or do the two reports describe different buildings?
• Will the preparer walk the board through the funding schedule and take questions, or just deliver the binder?
• If the study finds something that cannot wait, does the firm have engineers who can act on it?

A SIRS done well is the association's capital plan, priced honestly and updated on schedule. The binder is just where it lives.

How we run a SIRS.

Our studies are led by a licensed community association manager who also holds Reserve Specialist and Professional Reserve Analyst credentials, with the inspection side carried by the firm's licensed engineers. That pairing matters, because the two halves of a SIRS are different professions doing different work on the same building.

1. Scoping call. Age, address, stories, unit count, and whether a milestone inspection has been done recently. That last question can change the scope, because the two inspections look at overlapping parts of the building.
2. Component inventory and site observation. Every component on the list is inventoried on site and given a condition assessment, a remaining useful life, and a cost.
3. Local cost basis. Costs are built from restoration work on this coast rather than from a national cost book, so the numbers survive contact with a real bid.
4. Funding schedule. A year-by-year calendar showing what to collect, what gets spent, and where the peak years land.
5. Board presentation. We walk the board through the schedule and take questions, in language a board can act on.
6. What happens next, if something cannot wait. When the study turns up a condition that needs attention now, the same firm can carry it into repair design, bidding, and Contract Administration. You are not handed a finding and left to find someone else.

Many associations schedule the study alongside their milestone inspection so the board pays for one mobilization and gets two reports that agree with each other.

Common questions.