RENEWING A LICENSE

It’s that time again. Time for Florida contractor license renewal!  Unless your license is brand new, you should have received a renewal notice in the mail from the DBPR.  There are two parts to the process of renewing any Florida construction license:

1. Paying the renewal fee 
2. Completing the requisite CEU courses

Let’s start with the CEU hours.  The vast majority of you will need to do 14 hours to renew your license, as the state requires 14 CEU hours for each 2 year renewal cycle.  For those of you that will have been licensed for less than 2 years at the time of renewal (8/31/12 for Certified Contractor, and Certified Electrician or 7/31/12 for Home Inspector or Mold) your CEU requirements are less:

• People licensed as a Home Inspector, Mold Remediator or Mold Assessor are not required to do any CEUs at all for this renewal cycle.  
• Certified Contractors and Electricians are required to do 7 hours if they received their license between 8/31/10 and 8/31/11 and are exempt from CEUs for this cycle if they received their license 9/1/11 or later.  

We are sure you’ve been bombarded with offers from different education providers; there are many options available both online and classroom.  Just keep this one tidbit in mind when you schedule your courses:  No classes taken prior to 8/31/12 will be rolled over to the 8/31/14 renewal cycle. So if you take more hours than you need, you’ll be gaining knowledge, but won’t be gaining a head-start on the future renewal cycle.

Now onto the fee payment.  About a year or so ago the DBPR upgraded their online system, so unless you’ve been onto their website pretty recently you’ll probably have to re-register your information with them. The state has more condensed instructions here:

 https://www.myfloridalicense.com

There are also tutorials available on DBPR website: 

• How to set up a username/password:   https://www.myfloridalicense.com/vo/Registering-as-a-New-User.pdf
• How to link your license to an online account:   https://www.myfloridalicense.com/vo/Linking-an-Exisiting-License.pdf

So anyway, once you’re logged on, it looks like this:

 Click on the license you’d like to renew from those listed on the right.  

Then you get this screen:

• Select Renew from the options shown. 
• A disclaimer screen explaining CEU information pops up.  Read it, and then select Next.
• A screen with your name, birthday and SSN pops up.  Select Next.
• A screen with your main address pops up (see below).  If you’d like to change that address, click the “main address” button and you’ll be able to update.  If you’d like to add an additional address (license location, license mailing) or add an additional phone number, click “add”.  Otherwise, select Next. 

• A summary page pops up confirming any changes and providing the information that will be saved into the system.  Read and if all is good select Next, otherwise select Previous to make changes.
• Complete the Attest Statement by selecting “Yes” and the pressing Submit.

A payment screen pops up showing what you owe to renew.  Click PAY NOW to complete the transaction OR click SUBMIT ADDITIONAL APPLICATIONS if you have more than one license that needs to be renewed.

You have the option of paying by credit card or electronic check.  To pay by credit card you will need to provide the name on the card, card type, card number and expiration date.  Once you have entered that information, select next.  The card will then be processed and a confirmation number will be provided.  You may want to print this screen for your records.

That’s it!