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Every building is spending down an asset. The roof, the lifts, the membranes, the paint and the plant all have a service life and a replacement cost, and the only question is whether the owners corporation is collecting for them or deferring them. A maintenance plan is how you tell. A plan that is stale, generic or never reviewed does not tell you anything — it just makes the building feel prepared while the gap grows.
New South Wales requires every strata scheme to prepare a ten-year plan for its capital works fund, and from 1 April 2026 every new or revised plan must use a mandatory standard form. That is a significant change: it makes plans comparable, it makes gaps visible, and it removes the option of a plan that says whatever its author chose to include. Fair Trading also provides a capital works fund planner through the Strata Hub.
Governed by the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, administered by NSW Fair Trading.
Not the summary in the AGM papers — the plan. If nobody can produce it, that is the finding.
In Quarter: Upload the plan you already have and Quarter reads it into a costed schedule of items, lifecycles and due years. From there it projects the fund thirty years out and tells you the annual contribution that actually funds it.
Plans prepared or revised from 1 April 2026 must use it. A plan that predates it is not invalid, but the next revision has to comply.
If the costings predate 2021, they understate the work by a compounding margin.
This is the entire exercise. The plan implies a rate; the budget sets one. The difference is your deferred liability.
In Quarter: The plan's required contribution feeds the budget, and approving the budget raises the levies from it — so what owners pay is derived from the plan rather than from last year's number plus a bit.
A revised plan on the standard form, from an inspection, not a desktop update.
A plan that does not change the budget has not done anything.
The most common NSW situation, and the most expensive.
Updating the numbers without inspecting the building misses condition, which is the point.
It is designed to expose gaps. Use it that way.
Most buildings have something. Far fewer have a plan that reflects the building as it actually is, costed at what work actually costs now, and matched to what the levies actually raise.
A plan is only as good as the maintenance record behind it and the budget in front of it. Quarter connects the three.
What the plan said would happen, and what actually happened. The gap between them is the most useful number a committee has.
Budget from the plan's contribution rate rather than from last year's figure plus a bit.
Where a review is required, it is tracked as an obligation with a date, not a good intention.
Repairs, quotes, invoices and warranties attached to the thing they were for, so the next plan review starts from evidence.
What the fund holds, what the plan says it needs, and the difference — visible, so a levy increase is a conversation rather than an ambush.
General information about New South Wales, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with NSW Fair Trading or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in New South Wales and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
