Board Resource Center
Building Operations & Capital Planning
Plan preventive maintenance, vendor selection, emergency response, and capital work with practical guidance grounded in Chicago-area building operations.
Published Guidance
Board guides in this topic
Maintenance
September 25, 2026
Vendor RFPs for Condo and HOA Boards: Scope, Insurance, and Controls
Boards do not overpay because vendors are dishonest. They overpay because three bids described three different projects.
Board Operations
September 23, 2026
Association Emergency Planning: A Board-Ready Playbook
A pipe break at 2 a.m. is not the time to look up who can authorize a vendor. Decide the authority, contacts, and communication plan in advance.
Building Compliance
September 21, 2026
Chicago High-Rise Life-Safety Planning for Condominium Boards
Life-safety compliance in a Chicago high-rise is a program, not a filing. Boards need verified requirements, maintained systems, and records that prove both.
Maintenance
September 17, 2026
Snow and Ice Vendor Oversight for Illinois Associations
Snow contracts are signed in September and tested at 4 a.m. in January. Specificity in the contract is what separates the two.
Building Operations
September 13, 2026
EV Charging Requests: A Process for Illinois Association Boards
EV requests are arriving at Illinois associations. Boards that build a written process once handle every future request in weeks instead of months.
Maintenance
September 5, 2026
Capital Planning for Vintage Chicago Condominium Buildings
Older Chicago buildings have character and finite systems. A real capital plan turns unpredictable emergencies into scheduled, funded projects.
Building Compliance
September 1, 2026
Chicago Facade Compliance: How Condo Boards Can Stay Project-Ready
Facade work is expensive, disruptive, and non-negotiable. Boards that plan for it years ahead avoid emergency assessments and scaffolding surprises.
Maintenance
August 28, 2026
Who Pays for a Condo Water Leak? Start With These Documents
Water travels down, and so do disputes. The answer to who pays almost never starts with fairness -- it starts with your declaration.
Building Compliance
August 25, 2026
Chicago Condominium Association Compliance Calendar
Compliance failures in Chicago condominium buildings are rarely one big mistake. They are small recurring deadlines nobody owned. Here is how to build a calendar that assigns every one of them.
Maintenance
August 13, 2026
Condo Repairs in Illinois: What Owners Fix vs. What the Association Fixes
More condo disputes start over repair responsibility than anything else. Here is the three-zone map — what is yours, what is the association’s, and where the declaration decides.
Building Operations
August 13, 2026
Moving Into a Chicago Condo: The Complete First-Month Guide
Condo buildings have moving rules for good reasons — and knowing them turns move-in day from an ordeal into a checklist. Here is the complete first-month playbook.
Board Questions
What boards ask about building operations & capital planning.
Clear scope, clear pricing, and a transition plan your board can evaluate before making a decision.
Who is responsible for a repair, the owner or the association?
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.
What counts as an emergency for an association?
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.
How should a board approach a large capital project?
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.
What building inspections do Chicago associations have to keep up with?
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.
Put the guidance to work
Talk with an association management specialist.
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