Renew the structural certificate before the fifth year or the next earthquake

For Group A and Subgroup B1 buildings under Article 139 of the Building Regulations for the Federal District, a Structural Safety Verification Certificate (Constancia de Verificación de Seguridad Estructural) must be registered through the Digital Platform; in it, a Co-responsible for Structural Safety determines, following the verification carried out, that the building complies with the Technical Guidelines; if it does not, the building must be rehabilitated (strengthened, repaired, re-founded) or modified to comply (Article 71, first and second paragraphs, amended 4 October 2024). Until that reform the document was called the Structural Safety Certificate, a name the Regulations still use for current certificates issued under the earlier rule (Articles 68 and 73, section IV).

The certificate is based on exhaustive visual inspections, analytical and field studies, and consideration of damage, age and geotechnical zone, and is prepared under the procedure in the Technical Guidelines; it includes the elements of the structural calculation report in Article 53, section I, item e), except the design of structural members, foundations and connections (Article 71, third paragraph). Group A covers buildings whose structural failure could cause many deaths or a significant hazard from toxic or explosive substances, or which are essential in an emergency, such as hospitals, transport terminals, stadiums and basic-education schools (Article 139, section I); Subgroup B1 includes, among others, buildings over 30 m high or over 6,000 m2 in zones I and II, and over 15 m or 3,000 m2 in zone III (Article 139, section II).

The certificate must be renewed through the Digital Platform every five years, or after an earthquake exceeding 90 cm/s2 of ground acceleration recorded at the SCT accelerometric station of the UNAM network, or when the Administration so determines; in the latter two cases the Ministry of Integral Risk Management and Civil Protection, or failing it the Ministry of Works and Services or the Institute for Construction Safety, publishes the renewal obligation in the Official Gazette (Article 71 Bis). After an earthquake of that size or where there is evidence of damage, the post-seismic evaluation of the Evaluation and Rehabilitation Standard applies; with no structural damage the Co-responsible notifies that the certificate remains valid if it was current before the quake; with light or moderate damage it states the rehabilitation and the Standard's deadlines; with severe damage or total loss it orders evacuation and rehabilitation (Article 71 Ter).

A current certificate is a prerequisite for other procedures: the Safety and Operation Approval of Installations for Group A and Subgroup B1 buildings must be accompanied by it (Article 68, third-to-last paragraph), the use and occupancy authorisation is processed once it is received, where applicable, with the notice of completion of works (Article 70, first paragraph), and a change of use to the activities in Articles 69, 90 and 139 requires it to be current (Article 73, section IV). For schools, the borough also records the information in the School Premises Information System (Article 71 Quater).