In the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) and American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) standard (ASCE7) , different criteria for a two-step analysis procedure to design podium buildings are provided. However, nonlinear time-history dynamic analysis results show that such designed buildings may not meet the intended seismic performance. A new criterion has been developed at FPInnovations (Chen&Ni,2017&2020). Analysis results show that when the normalized stiffness ratio is at least 10 times greater than the normalized mass ratio, the buildings designed by the two-step analysis procedure can meet the performancere quirement. This InfoNote briefly reviews the two-step analysis procedure, demonstrates the shortcoming of the NBCC and ASCE criteria, and introduces the developed criterion.