Milestone inspections and SIRS: what reality capture can and cannot do

Reality capture does not satisfy Florida's milestone inspection requirement and no drone company can perform one. That work belongs to a licensed engineer or architect. Anyone selling you otherwise is selling you a problem you will discover later.

What capture does is make that professional faster and better supported, and give the association its own documentation. Smaller claim than the marketing usually makes. Worth considerably more than it sounds.

What the requirements say

Florida requires a milestone inspection of residential condominium and cooperative buildings three habitable stories or taller. The inspection is generally due by December 31 of the year the building turns 30, measured from the certificate of occupancy, and every 10 years after that. A local enforcement agency may require the first inspection at 25 years where local circumstances, including environmental conditions such as proximity to salt water, justify it.

There are two phases. Phase 1 is a visual examination of the building's structure by a licensed engineer or architect, looking for evidence of substantial structural deterioration. Phase 2 is required only if Phase 1 finds it, and may involve destructive or non destructive testing.

Separately, associations with buildings three habitable stories or taller must have a structural integrity reserve study covering specified structural and building components, which then informs reserve funding.

Source: Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, condominium inspections guidance, and Florida Statutes 553.899 and 718.112. These requirements have been amended repeatedly since 2022 and some deadlines vary by building and by local enforcement agency. Confirm what applies to your building with your engineer, your local building official and your association counsel before relying on any summary, including this one.

Where capture genuinely helps

The surfaces the engineer cannot easily reach

Phase 1 is a visual assessment. On a twenty story building on the beach, a meaningful share of the structure being assessed is fifteen stories in the air. Getting a person there means a lift, a swing stage or rope access, all of which are expensive, slow and disruptive on a property full of guests.

High resolution imagery of every elevation, every balcony edge, every railing connection and every roof plane gives the engineer detailed documentation to review before deciding where a closer look is warranted. It does not replace their judgment. It aims it.

Quantities the reserve study is built on

Reserve studies rest on component quantities. Roof area by section. Facade area by elevation. Balcony count and deck square footage. Railing linear footage. Coating and paint areas.

Those numbers get estimated from drawings that may not match what was built, or scaled off a plan that has been through three renovations since. Measured off a correctly scaled point cloud, they are what is actually there. Across a twenty year funding plan that difference compounds into real money.

A dated baseline the association owns

Once the building has been captured, the association has a record of condition on a specific date that does not depend on which engineer, contractor or management company is involved this year. Capture it again in three years and the two datasets compare directly. That is how change gets measured instead of remembered.

Thermal on roofs and envelope

Radiometric thermal flown in the right conditions identifies moisture in a roof assembly and anomalies in the envelope. It tells a roofer where to open a section. It is a targeting tool, not a conclusion.

What capture cannot do

Being clear about the limits is what keeps the tool useful.

It is not the inspection. Phase 1 is performed by a licensed engineer or architect, and that is the end of that sentence. It does not see inside anything, so reinforcement condition, embedded corrosion and concrete strength all require testing rather than photographs, which is exactly what Phase 2 exists for. It cannot assess structural adequacy, because a point cloud shows geometry and whether that geometry is safe is an engineering judgment. And it does not certify anything. We deliver capture data. Certification belongs to the licensed professional of record.

How boards actually use it

The pattern we see most often is straightforward. The association engages its engineer for the milestone inspection. Separately, and usually earlier, it captures the building so the engineer has documentation of the hard to reach surfaces going in, and so the board has measured quantities for the reserve study and for scoping whatever repairs come out of it.

The capture is a fraction of the repair scope it informs, and a very small fraction of the cost of assessing owners for a scope that turned out to be estimated wrong.

Talk to your engineer first

Before commissioning capture, ask the professional who will perform the inspection what documentation of the elevations and roofs would be useful going in, what resolution they need to see the conditions they care about, what format they want it in, and whether any areas should be covered more densely.

Capture commissioned with the engineer's input is worth several times capture commissioned without it. We are glad to be on that call, and we would rather be on it than not.