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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 strata company 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.
Western Australia's 2020 reforms made a ten-year maintenance plan compulsory for schemes of ten or more lots, or where the building's replacement value exceeds $5 million. Many WA schemes caught by that threshold still do not have one, and typically find out when a buyer's solicitor asks. The plan has to set out the anticipated work, the expected life of the building elements and the reserve fund contributions that follow from them.
Governed by the Strata Titles Act 1985, administered by Landgate.
Ten or more lots, or over $5 million replacement value. Check both.
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.
If there is not, this is the highest-priority item on the strata company's list.
A plan built from ages rather than from an inspection will be wrong about the things that matter.
The plan implies a rate. Check what you actually levy.
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.
It funds capital work. Using it for operating costs empties both funds at once.
With the quorum organised, because a levy change needs a valid resolution.
In Quarter: Book the year's meetings once — the AGM and the committee meetings around it — and Quarter carries the notice periods, the agendas and the invitations from there. The insurance renewal and the plan review sit on the same calendar, so the year is visible rather than remembered.
Common, and discovered at the least convenient moment.
It is a separate fund for a reason.
Several years of cost inflation, unaccounted for.
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 Western Australia, not legal or financial advice for your building. Legislation is amended and grant programmes open and close — check the current position with Landgate or the administering body before you act on anything here.
Tell us about your building in Western Australia and we will show you exactly how Quarter would run it.
