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Building Official Training (BOT) Municipal Grant

One-year Building Official Training Municipal Grants will again be offered for the 2026 grant cycle. An announcement will be sent via email to all current building officials, building official organizations and any municipalities that have expressed an interest.

Purpose

The Building Official Training (BOT) Municipal Grant program from the Construction Codes and Licensing Division (CCLD) of the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry (DLI) was created to offer competitive grants to qualified municipalities that want to establish a training program in their municipality’s building code department to train an individual toward becoming a Minnesota-certified building official.

Objective

The BOT Municipal Grant Program provides partial funding and training guidance, through grant requirements, to awardees to establish or continue an existing BOT training program in their municipality. Their training program will provide the full-time building code department trainee with on-the-job training and education in building code enforcement while under the supervision of the municipality’s Minnesota-certified building official. The trainee will begin by serving as a construction code inspector as specified in Minnesota Statutes 326B.135 and must achieve the commissioner’s competency criteria by the end of the first year as detailed in Minn. Rules 1301.1400. The grant program goal for the trainee is to gain a building official-limited (BO-L) or building official (BO) certification. Minnesota Rules 1301.0300 lists how a trainee can accrue certification points.

Application period

The application period is tentatively scheduled to open at the end of September 2025 and be open for four weeks.

The specific dates will be in the request for proposal (RFP).  

Once the application period is open, a copy of the RFP, proposal application and associated documents will be posted at the bottom of this web page. Details about submitting proposals are contained in the RFP and proposal application.

Project dates

Estimated dates for the grant cycle are Jan. 1, 2026, or the date the contract is fully executed, whichever occurs later, until Dec. 31, 2026.
Funding is available through Dec. 31, 2026.

Eligibility

To be considered eligible, all applicants must be a qualified municipality. For the BOT grant, “municipality” is defined in Minnesota Rules 1300.0070 subp. 17 and Minnesota Statutes 326B.103 subd. 9 as a city, county, or town. To be considered qualified a municipality must meet the following requirements:

  1. A municipality must administer and enforce the Minnesota State Building Code by having adopted the code by ordinance in compliance with Minnesota Statutes 326B.121 subd. 2(a)(b).

  2. Education and training must be under the supervision of the municipality’s Minnesota0-certified building official in accordance with Minnesota Rules 1301.0300 p. C (1) and Minnesota Rules 1301.1400 subp. 2 G. A building ffficial-limited can NOT be the training supervisor.

  3. The municipality must be current in their municipal reporting to DLI including surcharge, fee and expense reports.

  4. Applicants must meet the application deadline.

Funding availability

Funding for the BOT Grant program is provided by the CCLD permit surcharge surplus as allowed in Minnesota Statutes 326B.148 subd. 1.

  • Total amount of funds available for the 2026 BOT grant is up to $750,000.

  • The maximum amount of funding that can be requested by any single applicant is $75,000.

  • DLI plans to award funding to approximately 10 applicants.

  • Grants that are awarded will be restricted to one BOT grant per municipality per cycle to either hire a new full-time building code department trainee or extend the training of a previous BOT grant trainee toward a higher Minnesota certification.

  • The awarded funds are not intended to fully fund the trainee position. Grantee contribution is expected.

Informational seminar

A link to an informational seminar recording will be posted here when available.

Questions?

For help with questions about the BOT grant or the application process send emails to bot.dli@state.mn.us.

RFP, proposal application and related materials

Links to those documents will be available here when the grant period opens.