HOA Maintenance Plans
As a young engineer, the most valuable lesson I learned early on was not to try to remember everything but know where to find the answers. It is no different for a new condo board or property manager. The Community Association Institute (CAI) has gone to great lengths to provide community leaders with a wide range of resources needed to operate a successful condominium or HOA complex. When it comes to the critical task of maintaining the common assets of the community the first step should be downloading and reviewing CAI’s “Best Practices: Community Association Maintenance” off the web site at https://foundation.caionline.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BestPracticesCAMaintenance.final2_.pdf
All condos great or small; tall or long; simple or complex need a Maintenance Plan. No exceptions. The principal fiduciary duty of all condominium leaders is to Maintain, Protect, and Enhance. The only way to successfully implement such a plan is to create a Maintenance Program to implement the Plan in an efficient and cost-effective manner. A well written program will help to define the roles and responsibilities of both the association and homeowner as well as assure a connection between the Maintenance Plan and the recommendation of the most current reserve fund study. There is no need to start from scratch or re-invent the wheel. It is all spelled out in the aforementioned best practices report containing recommendations on developing plans, programs, and checklists.
It is not surprising some established condominiums do not have a Maintenance Plan. When developers turn over a condo complex to a new board often only drawings, specifications, and equipment manuals are provided, but no plan. A manual of how to tie all this data together is nowhere to be seen. A Maintenance Plan is so vital to a community’s future success some states (California, Minnesota, Oregon) require it by law. But the most important reason is to save money. These savings come from the community’s future financial stability; reduction in board turnover; higher property values; reduction in risk leading to lower insurance costs; and reduced reserve fund needs.
Simple Vs. Complex
Like people, all condominiums and HOAs are unique but they fall into two categories, Simple and Complex. Simple condos have inventories of common assets of primarily building envelopes and exterior infrastructure like roadways and landscaping found in the CC&R’s (covenants, conditions & restrictions) and site plans. The assets come with maintenance manuals and warranties. Other sources of asset information come from property managers, maintenance contractors, and reserve study engineers. Management tools can be limited to spreadsheets and bookkeeping software.
Complex condos on the other hand typically include mid and high-rise structures often with master associations rather than horizontal and low-rise multi-plex units. Complex condos share common systems such as mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and elevators. They have more extensive systems for security; communication; life safety; recreational facilities; and other amenities. As these communities have larger budgets with more systems to monitor, they need both preventative and corrective maintenance programs.
Preventative maintenance can include predictive maintenance using technical data analysis from sensors or field data to monitor for warning signs and prescription maintenance to establish estimated schedules to anticipate failure dates of component failures to compliment season maintenance schedules for periodic repetitive repairs and servicing. These complex condos have a more comprehensive schedule of inspections, photo inventory, and infrastructure reviews.
Also monitored is the community’s corrective maintenance history of component repairs due to premature failure such as buckling sidewalks; roof leaks; and mechanical failures. Similarly recorded are items falling into the deferred maintenance category as these are the most likely candidates causing premature failures, safety problems, and avoidable expensive repairs.
The catastrophic failure of the Florida high rise building in Surfside has added a new dimension to maintenance and reserve fund planning. In the past, long term inspections were limited to 30-year structural studies and occasional infrastructure reviews. Now most condo maintenance professionals recommend much shorter inspection intervals for both non-structural and structural common components. Non-structural include fire and life safety as well as MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) systems.
Structural components include both primary load bearing building elements and assets not directly supporting the building such as awnings and decks. Benchmarks to help in defining the scope of structural inspections can be found in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publications: “Guidelines for Structural Condition Assessment of Existing Buildings” and “Guidelines for Condition Assessment of the Building Envelope”.
So where to start? As with any task it starts with leadership. The board needs to find and support a committee chair to form a team of volunteers dedicated to developing a Maintenance Plan and subsequent program of implementation. This often requires the board to establish a Charter defining the committee’s scope and responsibilities while creating the culture of the importance of planning ahead. As JFK said many years ago, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”
Written by Jack Carr, P.E., R.S., LEED-AP, Senior Consultant Criterium Engineers
Published in Condo Media