What QualiFind actually does

Why a directory is not enough

The obvious version of this business is a list. License holders on one side, companies on the other, a search box in the middle. It would be quicker to build and worth very little, because the hard part is not finding somebody. It is knowing whether the person or the company in front of you is what they say they are.

A license number in a list tells you nothing. It is the same number whether the man behind it is honest or not.

What we check on a license holder

• Identity, against a government-issued ID, through a specialist verification provider. Not a name typed into a box.
• The license against the state record. Number, class, certified or registered, status, when it was first issued and when it expires.
• The same search run against the person's name as well as the number they gave us, because those are different searches and they return different answers.
• Any discrepancy between what was declared and what the state holds, surfaced rather than smoothed over.
• Self-declared disclosures on safety, credit and insurance, which a person reads.

The third one is the one that earns its place. A license number search returns the license you were handed. A name search returns what is filed under the person. Those are different answers, and the difference is the reason we run both rather than trusting the number we are given.

What we check on a company

• That the entity is real, active, and registered where it says it is, against the Division of Corporations.
• That the officers and registered agent on file are the people we have been dealing with, understanding that Sunbiz shows what was filed rather than what is true today.
• Workers compensation against the Division of Workers' Compensation coverage database, which is built from what carriers filed, rather than against a certificate somebody emailed us.
• Insurance certificates read rather than filed. Named insured, coverage, limits, dates, and whether the entity on the paper is the entity being qualified.
• Whether the company verifies insurance on its own subcontractors. Under Florida Statute 440.10(1)(b) a contractor who sublets work is liable for compensation to the subcontractor's employees unless that subcontractor has secured it, and 440.10(1)(c) makes requiring that evidence a legal duty rather than good practice.

Nothing is introduced to a license holder until that is done, and where something comes back unclear we say so rather than hoping it resolves itself.

What is automated, and what is not yet

We would rather be plain about this than let a page imply more machinery than exists.

• Automated today: identity verification, and the license lookup against the state's published file, which we pull every morning. DBPR refreshes that data weekly, so the file is the state's own record rather than a form somebody filled in, but it is not live and we do not pretend it is. Anything time-critical gets checked against the portal.
• Not automated yet: everything else. The company checks, the disclosures, the document reading, the discrepancies and the decision. A person does all of it. We are building toward more, and we will say so here when it changes rather than in advance.

Three things we expect to keep doing by hand for as long as we are doing this at all.

• Reading a document. One of the first insurance certificates through this system had already expired, and we had nothing checking dates at the time, so it reached us looking fine. A person opening the file caught it immediately. We check expiry automatically now, which is exactly why the harder half stays with a person: whether the policy names the right entity, and whether it covers the work actually being done.
• Judging a discrepancy. Somebody licensed decades ago who writes the wrong year on a form is remembering. Something else is going on when a license has been left off entirely. Only a person can tell those apart, and only by asking.
• The conversation. What a company actually builds, who is on its sites, and what would make a qualifier walk away. None of that is on a form, because nobody would write it down.

What we ask of both sides

The verification takes two sittings rather than one long one. Identity and license first, because those are what make somebody a qualifier. Company, documents and declarations second. Every step is saved as you finish it, so stopping halfway costs you nothing.

And we ask people to be straight with us, for a practical reason rather than a moral one. We check the state record against your name. Something left off is likely to surface as a discrepancy, and a discrepancy is a much worse start than the thing it was hiding.

What we do not do

• We do not give legal advice and we do not draft the agreement. That is a Florida construction attorney's work and we will tell you so.
• We do not tell you what structure you must use. For a first company the requirement is the affidavit of final approval authority under Florida Statute 489.119(2)(b)1. For an additional one, Rule 61G4-15.0024 sets out what the Board will accept as evidence that you can supervise it, and approval is the Board's under 489.119(6). We will show you the rules. Which of them applies to your situation is a question for your attorney.
• We do not pass a license holder's contact details to a company that has not been through its own side of the same process.
• We do not tell either side that a check passed when it is still sitting in front of a person waiting to be read.