Residential condominium buildings in BC have historically not funded their long-range capital reserve accounts to adequate levels. The owners in this form of common interest community have generally been ill-prepared financially for the renewal of their major capital assets such a roofs, boilers, and elevators. New legislation has been introduced with the intent of shifting these communities toward a proactive approach to asset management and condominium corporations are now required to commission a reserve study to enable the ownership to make informed decisions about appropriate replacement reserves.
The challenge for local consultants is the establishment of a standard for quantifying the extent of underfunding based upon a formula that returns a realistic and defensible estimation of capital costs over long-range forecasts. This paper explores the methodology that was developed as part of a longitudinal study to gain insight into the funding requirements associated with 600 buildings at various stages in their respective lifecycles, ranging from one-year old buildings to heritage buildings over 100 years old.
This paper was presented at the 2013 Joint Conference of the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET) and Institute of Asset Management (IAM).