Building Operations & Capital Planning

The declaration decides, not intuition. Generally the association maintains common elements — roof, facade, structure, common risers, boilers, elevators, hallways — while owners maintain what sits inside their unit boundaries. Limited common elements such as balconies and assigned parking often carry their own rules. Because declarations vary building to building, the reliable answer comes from your own recorded documents rather than from what a neighbor was told.

Anything threatening people or property that cannot wait for business hours: burst pipes, no heat in cold weather, flooding, elevator entrapment, fire and life-safety alarms, roof or facade failures, and loss of power to common areas. Call 911 first for anything life-threatening. A building without heat in winter is genuinely an emergency, not a next-morning work order, and should be reported to a 24-hour line rather than an office voicemail.

Scope before price. Have an engineer or architect define the work in writing, then bid that written scope so the proposals a board compares describe the same job. Confirm funding — reserves, assessment, or a loan — before signing. Build in inspection milestones and retainage. Most capital projects that go badly went wrong at the scoping stage, when three bids described three different jobs.

Depending on the building’s height, age, and systems, obligations can include facade inspection under the city’s critical-examination requirements, annual elevator inspection, life-safety and alarm testing, backflow-prevention testing, and boiler inspection. Deadlines vary by building rather than following one calendar, so the practical safeguard is a compliance calendar maintained by the association with the responsible party named against each item.