Building inspection register: the guide for Quebec restaurants
What it is, who has to keep one, what an entry contains, and what makes it different from a food-safety inspection. Written to be read once and put down.
Every value quoted here is read from the same sourced rules that prepare the registers. Nothing on this page is reworded.
What the building inspection register is
It is the written trace of the checks and maintenance done in an establishment: what was done, when, by whom, and the record that proves it.
It is not a certificate you obtain once. It is something you keep: the standard quoted below names the obligation, and the register is the evidence of it, day by day.
Taken as written from the rule that prepares the registers. Cited, never restated.
Who has to keep one
The person who runs the kitchen is the one who keeps the register: they are the one who books the maintenance and receives the service records. Our rules name who performs each obligation, and for this one it is the following.
The building's owner and the restaurant's operator are not always the same person, and that is where the question gets complicated. A lease can put the alarm and the emergency lighting on the landlord and leave the hood and the extinguishers with the operator. Read your lease before concluding anything.
We will not settle your case for you and we do not claim we could. To find out who answers for what in your building, the Régie du bâtiment du Québec is the authority to ask: they are the body that publishes the regulation quoted on this page.
The obligations, and the ones we show with their caveat
They do not belong on this page, and that is deliberate: each has its own, with the standard quoted as written, the interval, the person who performs it and the evidence that stays on file.
No single establishment carries all 12: the hood-cleaning variants exclude one another, and the cooking type decides which one applies.
Some carry no interval that can be quoted as a legal deadline. We show those with their caveat, word for word, rather than with a reassuring number. It is the most useful part of those pages.
The edition in force, and the transition period
The building regulation was updated and a transition period applies. Here is what the Régie says about it, word for word: we do not summarise it, we do not reword it, and we draw no countdown from it.
Une période transitoire de 18 mois est prévue à partir du 17 avril 2025. Les dispositions du chapitre VIII, Bâtiment, du Code de sécurité, telles qu'elles se lisaient avant le 17 avril 2025, peuvent être appliquées jusqu'au jour qui précède le 17 octobre 2026 et peuvent respecter la précédente version ou la nouvelle édition de ce chapitre.
Quoted in French, as published by the Régie du bâtiment du Québec: the French text is the one that governs.
What an entry looks like
An entry answers four questions and nothing more. This is the format tigidu keeps — ours, not an official form — and it is made to be read by someone with ten minutes, standing in your kitchen.
No example date is written on this page. A register is filled with what actually happened in your building, and a specimen padded with invented dates would be the exact opposite of what we keep.
It is not the same thing as a MAPAQ inspection
Two different things go by the same word in a kitchen. The one this page is about concerns the building and fire safety: that is the standard quoted above, and the Régie du bâtiment du Québec is the body that publishes it.
A MAPAQ inspection is about food safety. Different body, different subject, different file. Keeping one does not replace the other. We describe the procedure of neither: we only name who handles what.
The source, at the Régie
The regulation quoted on this page is published by the Régie du bâtiment du Québec. Their page is free, it is authoritative, and it is more current than any summary — ours included. Go and read it.
And tigidu, in all this
We build the register in advance for every food establishment in Montreal, from the City's open data, with the standard quoted on every line and the caveat wherever the rule carries one. You add the dates and the records.
What tigidu does, on one page →
Data: City of Montréal · MAPAQ. Rules: Safety Code ch. VIII, NFPA, CAN/ULC. Rules verified on Aug 21, 2026. Regulatory journal →
The operator remains solely legally responsible for the establishment's compliance. Tigidu is a record-keeping and coordination tool — not a contractor, an inspector, or legal advice.