Permitting Assistance Miami
Permitting assistance Miami homeowners actually need is not a faster line at the counter. It is a licensed contractor whose certification the building official checks before the permit is issued, and who stays on the hook through every inspection until the permit closes.
What permit help means when the contractor is the one filing
Permitting assistance Miami property owners find online splits into two offers that look alike and are not. One is a paperwork service that moves an application through a counter. The other is a licensed contractor signing for the job itself. Gaven only does the second.
Every Gaven project runs under one master permit, filed under our own Florida Certified General Contractor's license, on work our own crews are building. The permit is not something we sell you. It is what lets us start.
What Gaven's permit work covers
What it isn't
What actually happens at the counter
Homeowners picture the permit as a form and the building department as a queue. It is neither. A permit is a credential check first and a schedule second, and both halves attach to a licensed person.
Six phases, one licensed team
The permit does not sit in its own silo. It runs through the same six phases every Gaven project runs through, and it touches four of them.
Discovery
We walk the property and identify which jurisdiction reviews the work. Municipal review inside an incorporated city is a different path from unincorporated county review, and the schedule changes with it.
Design and scope
Drawings, structural engineering where the scope needs it, and a written scope. Applications fail review for missing detail far more often than for anything controversial.
Permitting
Master permit filed under our license, sub-permits mapped to the trades beneath it, reviewer comments tracked and resubmitted. You are told what is pending and why.
Demolition and rough trades
Nothing gets covered before the inspection that has to see it.
Finishes and installation
Cabinetry, stone, tile, fixtures and trim, with trade finals called as each scope completes rather than stacked at the end.
Punch and closeout
Punch list, building final, permit closed. The job is done when the record is clear.
The license is the difference
The Certified General Contractor tier is the license class authorized for essentially any residential structure scope in Florida, and it is the credential a building department verifies before it accepts a filing. That is why the permit conversation and the license conversation are one conversation.
Florida law does allow a property owner to pull a permit in their own name under the owner-builder exemption in Chapter 489, and on a small single-trade job that is sometimes sensible. What it does not do is delegate anything: the inspections, the code compliance, the sequencing and the liability move to the owner along with the permit. The right to file and the responsibility do not come apart.
Our record is checkable before you sign. The number above is verifiable on the state record at MyFloridaLicense, and the permit history behind it is public: 500+ projects since 2015 · 37+ BuildZoom-verified permits. Liability and workers' compensation certificates issue before any crew reaches the property.
The permit is a phase, not a product
Filing and closing a permit is one phase inside a full-scope build, which is the only way we sell it. Kitchens, bathrooms, additions, whole-home remodels and ground-up construction all run through the same license — see our general contracting work in Miami.
Permits, filings, and who is responsible
QIf Gaven pulls the permit, whose name is on it and who does the building department hold responsible?
The permit issues to Gaven as contractor of record, under our Florida Certified General Contractor license, and the department holds that license responsible for the work it covers. That is the practical difference from a permit in your name: inspections are called against our record, a correction notice comes to us, and the compliance history attaches to the license rather than to you and your property. It is also the reason we will not file one for work we are not building.
QWill you file permits for a project another contractor is building?
No. In the City of Miami, processing permits for someone else's project is a registered permit expediter's work, a role the municipality requires registration for under Ordinance 14279 and Florida Building Code 105.6.5. We are not registered as one, and we file only for projects our own crews build.
QIs there free help with permits in Miami-Dade?
Yes, and we would rather you know about it. Miami-Dade runs a Homeowner and Small Business Permitting Assistance program and states plainly that there is no cost associated with the advisory. What the county will not do is obtain the permit for you — it answers that question directly, and the answer is no.
QIf I pull an owner-builder permit myself, what changes about the inspections and the liability on a multi-trade Miami renovation?
Everything downstream of the filing. As permit holder you schedule and meet every inspection, own the sequence between trades, absorb the cost when a step is taken out of order, and become the responsible party on the property's permit record. On a single-trade job that is manageable. On a renovation running framing, electrical, plumbing and mechanical against one schedule, that coordination is the job.
QHow soon after I pay a deposit does a Florida contractor have to apply for the permit, and how soon does work have to start?
Florida Statute § 489.126 sets both clocks for residential work. A contractor who takes more than ten percent of the contract price as an initial payment must apply for the permits within thirty days of that payment, and begin work within ninety days of the permits being issued. The statute names its own exceptions — it does not run where the work requires no permit, and it yields to just cause or to a written agreement for a longer period — but absent one of those, the deadlines are enforceable rather than a courtesy.
QWhat happens to a permit that never gets its final inspection, and who is left holding it when the job is over?
It stays open against the property record, so it follows the property rather than the contractor who opened it. Open permits surface later at inconvenient moments: at sale, at refinancing, or when the next application on that address is reviewed. That is why closeout is a contract phase for us and not a favour at the end.
QCan you handle just the permit if I already have my own trades lined up?
No. Filing a permit for work we are not building would put our license behind a schedule and a standard of workmanship we do not control, in a lane we are not registered for. We take full-scope projects, where the license that files the permit is the one standing behind the work.
QAre you licensed and insured?
Yes. Gaven Constructions is a Florida Certified General Contractor, license CGC1524886, verifiable on the state record at MyFloridaLicense. General liability and workers' compensation certificates issue before any crew reaches the property, and our permit history is public on the BuildZoom registry.
Start with the scope, not the paperwork
The permit follows the project, so the useful first conversation is about what you are building. Tell us the scope and we will tell you which permits it needs and what the inspection sequence looks like, before anything is signed. Permit fees are set by the jurisdiction, not by us.
Last updated August 2026.