Common Questions

What does a building management team provide an owners corporation?

Someone who is there, and who cares about the building.

A building is somebody’s home, and it needs looking after — not just fixing when it breaks. The front door, the lift, the lights in the car park, the plant nobody ever sees. All of it ages, and all of it does better when someone is paying attention.

That is what a building management team is. Someone on site who knows your building: its plant, its quirks, and the people living in it. Who notices the thing that is starting to go, not just the thing that has gone. Who meets the contractor at the door, watches the work, and knows whether it was done properly. Who is still there next year, and the year after, so the building’s history isn’t lost every time something changes hands.

Residents get a person, not a call centre. The committee gets someone who keeps them and their owners corporation manager in the picture, so nobody is guessing.

Some things stay with the owners corporation and its manager — levies and budgets, insurance, breaches and meetings. We work alongside them, not in place of them.

What it looks like at your building depends on your building. Some want a caretaker who cleans and manages the place. Some want a concierge desk around the clock. Some want scheduled visits and a number that always answers. That part is a conversation, not a package.

What’s the difference between a building manager and an owners corporation manager?

The owners corporation owns the job. We each help with a different part of it.

In Victoria an owners corporation carries real legal duties. It has to repair and maintain the common property — the lifts, the lobbies, the gardens, the services running through the building. It has to insure the place. It has to hold meetings, keep proper records, collect fees and look after the money, have rules, and have a way of settling disputes. Larger ones have to plan and fund their maintenance years ahead. That is a lot to sit on the shoulders of a committee of volunteers.

An owners corporation manager helps with the corporate side of it: the levies and the budget, the insurance, the meetings and minutes, the records, and the paperwork that comes with being an owners corporation.

We help with the building. Repairing and maintaining the common property is one of the owners corporation’s largest duties, and it is the one that happens on the ground — the plant, the contractors, the things that break, the things that are about to, and the safety measures that have to be tested and recorded. That part is ours.

So the owners corporation manager looks after the corporation, and we look after the building. Most buildings have both. They work best when the two talk to each other, which is why we keep your owners corporation manager in the picture rather than working around them.

What’s the difference between a building manager and a property manager?

Who we work for.

A property manager works for one owner. They look after that owner’s apartment — finding a tenant, the lease, the rent, the condition reports, and repairs inside the front door. If you rent your apartment out, your property manager is yours.

We work for the owners corporation, which means everybody. Not any one apartment, but the parts of the building that belong to all the owners together: the lobby, the lifts, the car park, the corridors, the gardens, the plant and the fire equipment.

So if something inside your apartment needs fixing, that is your property manager, or you. If the lift is out, the car park gate won’t open, or the light in the corridor has gone, that is us.

In practice the two work alongside each other constantly. Property managers ring us about access, keys and fobs, move-ins, and the building rules their tenant needs to know. We are glad to take those calls. A tenant who understands how the building works is easier for everyone, including the tenant.

What are the owners corporation rules, and why do we ask you to follow them?

Every building has rules. They are made by the owners corporation — the owners of the building, together — and they exist for one reason: so everyone living here can enjoy their home without being disturbed by somebody else enjoying theirs.

That is what quiet enjoyment means. It is not about silence. It is the idea that your home is yours to live in peacefully, and that the same is true for the people above you, below you and next door. Most of the rules are just that idea made practical.

Booking a move is a good example. Moving in or out means lifts held, doors propped open, trolleys through the lobby, and a real chance of damage to lift interiors, walls and floors that every owner then pays to repair. A booking means the lift is protected, the loading dock is free, nobody else is trying to move at the same time, and someone knows you are coming. It takes a few minutes and it saves the building money and everyone else a difficult afternoon.

Where do we come in? The owners corporation makes the rules and asks us to apply them day to day, fairly and the same way for everyone. We are the ones here, so we are the ones who see it. That means we will tell you what the rules are, help you work within them, and follow up when something is not right. The formal steps, like breach notices, stay with the owners corporation and its manager.

Mostly it does not come to that. Most problems are somebody not knowing, or not thinking, and a quiet word sorts it out. If something is bothering you, tell us. That is what we are here for, and we would far rather hear about it early.

What is an Occupancy Permit?

It is the document that says your building can be lived in.

A building surveyor issues it when the building is finished, and attached to it is a list that matters more than most people realise: every safety measure the building is required to have, how often each one has to be checked, and the standard it has to be kept to. Fire equipment, alarms, emergency lighting, exit doors, smoke control, and so on.

That list is the backbone of a building’s compliance. It is what the annual essential safety measures report is reported against, and it is the first thing anyone asks for when something goes wrong. If your building predates the requirement, a building surveyor can issue a maintenance determination instead, which does the same job.

Most committees never see it. We think you should — it is your building’s rulebook for staying safe and lawful, and everything we do on the compliance side starts there.

What are the standards behind it?

The Occupancy Permit says what has to be maintained. The standards say what maintaining it actually means.

Each measure on the permit is tied to a standard — fire protection systems to AS 1851, for instance. The standard sets out what gets tested, how often, what a pass looks like, and what has to be written down. Without it, “the fire system was serviced” is just a sentence on an invoice.

This is where a lot of buildings quietly come unstuck. The servicing happens, but not to the frequency the permit calls for, or the records are not kept in a form anyone can produce later. Our job is to make sure the work matches the permit, the standard, and the paperwork — and that the evidence is there when a council officer, an insurer or a new committee asks for it.

What is a long-term maintenance plan?

It is the owners corporation’s ten-year view of the expensive things.

Under the Owners Corporations Act, a tier one owners corporation — more than 100 occupiable lots — and a tier two, with 51 to 100, must prepare and approve one. Smaller owners corporations can choose to, by resolution, and plenty do. The plant does not care how many lots there are.

The plan looks ahead at the major capital items — lifts, air conditioning and heating plant, and the like — and records what condition each is in, when it is likely to need repairing or replacing, what that is likely to cost, and how long it should last once it is done.

The point of it is that nobody is surprised. A lift does not fail without warning; it gets slower, and it gets more expensive to keep running, and then one day it is a special levy nobody budgeted for. A plan turns that into a number the owners corporation can put money aside for.

The plan belongs to the owners corporation, and the owners corporation approves it. It is usually put together with your building management team and the right consultants. That is work we do: the condition of the plant, what has been repaired and how often, what the contractors are telling us, and what it all means for the years ahead. Good plans are built on what is actually happening in the building, and we are the ones there to see it.