Paying for it
Most sinking fund forecasts never anticipated this. Here is how committees usually end up funding it, and what makes each option defensible.
The technical decision on concrete cancer is usually easier than the funding decision. Concrete Cancer Brisbane provides the scope and the costing; this page is about what committees do next, because it is the part that stalls.
Sinking fund forecasts are built from expected component lives — roofs, lifts, paint, plant. Structural remediation of reinforced concrete is not a scheduled renewal and is rarely modelled, so a building that has diligently followed its forecast for twenty years can still meet a six-figure remedial cost with nothing set aside for it. That is not a failure of the committee, and it is worth saying so at the meeting.
Cleanest where the balance allows it. Worth checking the forecast still holds afterwards for genuinely scheduled items, because emptying the fund for concrete can create a second problem two years later.
The common answer for larger jobs. Needs a resolution and it needs owners to understand what they are buying — which is where the scope and the cost of deferring do the persuading.
Spread over several years and funded from increased ordinary contributions. Legitimate provided staging is prioritised on RISK — anything overhead first — rather than on what looks worst from the street.
Some bodies corporate can borrow for capital works. It converts a large one-off into a manageable annual cost and it has real costs of its own. A body corporate manager or lawyer should advise, not us.
Three documents, in this order: an inspection report showing the extent, a written scope showing what will be done, and two or three quotes priced on that same scope. Owners object to numbers they cannot check. They agree to numbers with working behind them, particularly when the alternative is set out with its own price — see what happens if you do nothing.
It also helps enormously to separate the safety items from the durability items in the scope. A committee will approve isolating a drummy soffit over a car space immediately, even while it is still arguing about the full programme, and doing so removes the most urgent risk from the table.
We are not lawyers, accountants or body corporate managers, and nothing here is advice about your scheme's finances or obligations. It is what we see committees do. Confirm the specifics with your body corporate manager.
Most of the stock affected is the 1960s–80s walk-up belt and the bayside strip, where salt air reaches the steel faster.
Tell us what the concrete is doing. We will arrange an inspection and a written scope your committee can actually price.
