What It Takes to Be an Approved Contractor on a Florida School Campus

Building or renovating a Florida public school isn't like taking on a typical commercial job. Before a contractor ever picks up a tool, there's a public procurement process to win the work, a design standard beyond the Florida Building Code to build to, and a state-mandated background screening process just to get crews through the front gate. 

Districts don't have the luxury of hiring a contractor who has to learn this on the fly. Every delay caused by an unprepared contractor is a delay that affects students, staff, and a campus that has to keep operating. Here's what actually separates a contractor who's ready to work on a Florida school campus from one who isn't.

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Getting the Work: Competitive Bidding Through the School Board

Florida school boards don't hire contractors the way a private commercial owner does. Under Florida Statute 1013.45, school boards can deliver construction projects through several methods — competitive bids, design-build, construction management, or program management — each with its own prequalification, selection, and negotiation procedures set by the board. 

There's also a day-labor option for smaller in-house work, but it's capped by statute (currently in the neighborhood of $280,000 for construction, renovation, or remodeling, adjusted annually for inflation), which means anything beyond routine maintenance has to go through a formal procurement process.

A few things a contractor has to get right just to compete for the work:

• Understanding which delivery method the district is using for a given project. The qualification criteria and negotiation process differ across competitive bid, design-build, and construction management

• Meeting the district's own prequalification requirements, which are set locally within the state framework and can vary from one county to the next

• Working with a registered architect on the project, which state law requires for school construction beyond minor renovations under a certain dollar threshold or relocatable facilities

Designing to a Different Standard: SREF-Aware Plan Review

Florida public schools aren't designed to the Florida Building Code alone. They're also designed to the State Requirements for Educational Facilities (SREF) — a separate set of Florida Department of Education standards that govern things like classroom configuration, corridor and site circulation, and safety and security elements specific to school campuses. SREF sits on top of the building code, not in place of it, and a design that satisfies the FBC but misses an SREF requirement doesn't survive plan review.

That matters for a contractor because SREF compliance isn't just an architect's problem. A contractor who understands SREF can flag a conflict during preconstruction — before it turns into a redesign, a rejected permit, or a change order eating into the district's budget. A contractor who doesn't know SREF exists finds out about it after the plans bounce back.

Getting Onto Campus: Jessica Lunsford Act Screening

Even after a contract is signed and the design is approved, there's one more requirement standing between a crew and the job site: Florida's Jessica Lunsford Act. Any contractor personnel who will be on school grounds while students are present, or who will have direct contact with students, has to go through Level 2 background screening — fingerprint-based criminal history checks submitted through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Cleared personnel are issued a district security badge; anyone who isn't screened has to be escorted by badged school staff the entire time they're on campus.

For a contractor running a full crew, this is a real scheduling and logistics factor, not paperwork to handle after the fact:

• Every worker who'll set foot on campus during school hours needs to be enrolled and cleared before they can start — that lead time has to be built into the project schedule, not squeezed in at mobilization

• Subcontractor crews need to be tracked and badged the same way as direct employees, which means managing screening status across every trade on the job

• Clearance doesn't last indefinitely, so a contractor working across multiple school projects over time has to keep re-screening on their radar

Why This Matters to a District

None of this is optional, and none of it is negotiable once a district selects a contractor. What it means in practice is that the districts doing the selecting are looking for a contractor who already has procurement, SREF, and Jessica Lunsford Act compliance built into how they operate — not one who's encountering any of it for the first time on their campus.

We're proud to say Maloney Construction checks all three boxes — and we're excited to share that we've been selected to work with Charlotte County Public Schools on various campus projects. Being trusted with a school district's facilities is a responsibility we take seriously, and we're looking forward to bringing the same standard of work to their campuses that we bring to every commercial project across Florida. 

If your district is planning a construction or renovation project, contact our team to talk through your scope and procurement process.