A building manager is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of a building or property. Some benefits of having a building manager include:
Maintenance and repairs: A building manager can ensure that the building is properly maintained and repairs are carried out in a timely manner. This can prevent minor issues from becoming major problems that can be costly to fix.
Safety and security: A building manager can help ensure the safety and security of the building and its occupants. This can include implementing security measures such as surveillance cameras, alarm systems, and access control systems.
Tenant satisfaction: A building manager can help ensure that tenants are satisfied with their living or working environment. This can include addressing concerns and complaints promptly, and ensuring that common areas are clean and well-maintained.
Cost savings: A building manager can help identify cost-saving opportunities by implementing energy-efficient measures and negotiating with vendors for better pricing on maintenance and repair services.
Compliance: A building manager can help ensure that the building is in compliance with all relevant regulations and codes, including building codes, fire safety regulations, and health and safety regulations.
Convenience: Having a building manager working for you on or off-site can provide convenience for tenants by allowing them to quickly and easily report issues or concerns, and have them addressed in a timely manner.
Overall, having a building manager can help ensure that the building is well-maintained, safe and secure, and that tenants are satisfied with their living or working environment.
Proper cleaning of strata buildings is all-important to presentation and in turn, value (you don’t show a dirty house when you have it on the market, and buildings/communities invariably always have property on the market for sale/rent) – poorly maintained common areas that you can see, can well mean poorly maintained areas you can’t see (roofs, plant/equipment, etc).
Whilst having an all-important role to play in the value of a building, cleaning is also one of the lowliest paid professions and it can be hard to tie those performing the duties (who are often transient, casual workers) to the outcomes of the building and the organisation they work for.
Furthermore, many cleaning companies practice wage theft (which there have been recently publicised crackdowns on). I have heard of some cleaners being paid as little as $15 an hour (close to half the minimum wage). There is a common practice of sub-contracting in the cleaning industry where in some cases the cleaning contract is sub-contracted multiple times over and whilst a cleaner might cost $50 per hour they are seeing less than $20 of this. This practice is abhorrent and must cease.
Strata and Community schemes which don’t make relevant inquiries to ensure the cleaning companies they use are paying award wages are complicit in the above practices.
We use a handful of cleaning companies in Newcastle and the wider Hunter region to clean the schemes we manage and we are happy to recommend them as we know as they:
pay at least minimum wage;
supervise, encourage and properly train their staff;
ensure their staff wear uniforms (so residents have some assurance that someone new onsite works for the cleaning company they employ);
use commercial-grade cleaning products;
respond quickly to issues raised by building managers, ourselves and the committee; and
offer a range of additional cleaning services, such as pressure washing and window cleaning.
I spoke with David Kent of Skyline Contracting to get an understanding of what goes into an hourly cleaning cost and he gave me the following information:
“We charge $55 an hour and a breakup is below: • $26.03/hour for a Casual Cleaning Employee (Casual is very common in this industry); • Super is $2.47 per hour; • Cleaning Long Service Leave (Special Government program to ensure cleaners get LSL because the trend is cleaners change companies regularly and never have the opportunity to earn LSL) is mandatory and needs to be put away at 1.7% of all ordinary earnings ($0.44 per hour); • Workers Compensation Insurance & Public Liability Costs (difficult to calculate per hour but we pay $15-16K per year.); • As part of this price we cover all chemical costs required to perform all our normal duties. Depending on the chemicals required for the job sometimes we could consume one $10 bottle of chemicals across a month. Or we could use a $60 bottle of chemical across 2 shifts; • In our pricing, we supply all the necessary equipment to complete the job. We also spend money on a regular basis to retag equipment, clean filters, replace certain parts and service our petrol-powered equipment to ensure our equipment is reliable, safe to use and won’t let us down while providing a service to our clients; • This applies to our fleet of vehicles, we need to ensure safety by maintaining our vehicles and making sure we can arrive at jobs promptly. The above price covers all our travel expenses; • Under our employment is our Cleaning Manager. They are responsible for ensuring our team of cleaners are always trying to do the best job they can and always trying to improve. They are responsible for Never-Ending Education & Training, Maintaining Team Morale, Speaking with our Customers, Empowering our Staff as well as looking for ways to grow our team. • We pay for some awesome software to efficiently track our clients needs, our workloads and make it easier for the team to provide awesome service – $310.00/month; • Premises to run our team from for office staff, storage of chemicals/consumables and to safely store our equipment/vehicles/trailers. A conveniently located workshop where we can all meet at the start of the day, liaise with each other, pack any extra equipment/chemicals we need for the day and somewhere to maintain our equipment. • Marketing…. • We want to have enough left in our budget that if we need to stay a little longer to leave the place looking fabulous we don’t need to rush off and we can ensure our clients will be happy after every visit. • Then, of course, leave some money to remain profitable“
Until we have robots cleaning the buildings we manage, we will continue to seek out the best in the cleaning business – ethical companies that treat their staff fairly and apply the same level of client care that we do.
I separately spoke with Kaleb Paten at Pacific Maintenance Group about their approach to the cleaning business:
“As innovation and technology become more common and essential in all aspects of building management it’s imperative that buildings select a company that is focussed on providing the highest standards of cleaning.
Buildings often have daily cleaning requirements (or require attendance multiple times per week) and as such, the cleaners are the eyes and ears on the ground to relay important information back to the strata/building manager and the committee so that any issues may be attended to promptly (this isn’t just left to residents).
It is the ongoing theme that ‘cleaning will be automated by bots’ and yes, some areas of cleaning will be completely outsourced to robotic technologies. We saw this technology at the 2019 ISSA cleaning expo in Melbourne and this seems the best solution for open space cleaning (e.g. shopping centres).
We believe that the cleaning of strata buildings and community schemes will largely continue to be undertaken by humans who can clean to the highest level and effectively communicate outcomes to their business and the community.
In a business where there are so many moving components, changes to scope are frequent and it pays to have a well-spoken, well-trained professional onsite who will be able to perceive and help generate the best outcomes for the community.
For this Industry to further grow and make progress, there needs to be a transparent and humane approach to improvement.
Companies undercutting other competitors and making a profit ONLY by bringing in illegal labour will be the first exposed, it’s approaching 2020 and modern slavery is unacceptable, these companies will be the first to go as the consumer market seeks transparency and exposes malpractice.
As consumers, it’s key that we understand who will be the persons undertaking the work we are asking the cleaning company to perform and the conditions under which they work.
Progress comes from collaboration, let’s get rid of the companies who exploit people, let’s have open communication with clients and suppliers and let’s be open with pricing and educate on why costs are what they are.”
It was great to get collaboration from both David and Kaleb on this blog, which is an effort to help educate our clients and the wider market to understand the potential differences between what they are paying for and what they are receiving.
Any strata building is complex. In a single day, there might be a range of issues requiring the input of professional managers and specialist contractors.
The average size of strata schemes has increased dramatically in recent years; whilst 40 lot buildings used to be considered large strata schemes (and contain c. 80-100 residents), it’s now common to see 300+ lot strata buildings, with potentially over 600-800 residents. This isn’t only a Sydney/Melbourne metro phenomenon – it’s an urbanisation issue impacting Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Newcastle, Canberra, Adelaide, etc.
This has changed the landscape for strata and facility management and there are constant calls for higher skill levels than were once required. These communities are complex, have massive budgets and the skills, software and contractors required to manage them are comparable to that required for very large commercial buildings. This is also a time of machine learning and soon we will (hopefully) say goodbye to repetitive/mundane administrative tasks which pain the strata and facility managers of today.
Additionally, strata committees used to be able to do a lot of legwork at a building and it was common to see them made up with people who had time, rather than specific skills. Successful strata committees of today are made up of experienced professionals who have owned in multiple buildings, are experienced and knowledgeable about their obligations and functions in sitting on a committee and know the benefit of solid independent management and advice.
It’s now more common for smaller buildings to have the input of both a strata manager and building manager, as these buildings understand the benefit of an onsite professional and their input in the context of the complex facility which the owners are expected to manage.
The strata manager of the future is a relationship manager and master administrator supported by a well-resourced, technologically abled and specialised head office – they understand that they need to help buildings make good decisions and they arm them with the appropriate information to do so and they ensure transparency, accountability, compliance and process. They are great at communication by myriad means, cost planning and running meetings.
As noted, many of the traditional strata functions are becoming automated, however the role of the strata manager is expanding and diverging into that of the facility manager.
Strata companies with FM capabilities are ahead of the curve, as they understand and have close involvement in:
asset maintenance/management. Compiling asset registers, advising on and arranging routine preventative maintenance.
Community building
Sustainability and energy/water management
Emergency planning and relief/management
Prompt communication with occupants by different means
Focus on building security
Can assist with economies of scale
Defect management
Development advisory – how will people live in the asset?
Ensuring contractors have undertaken work correctly, assessing the payment of invoices
Remote access and management
Ultimately, strata and facility management (in both strata and community schemes) will converge, with most full-service strata companies having an inhouse facilities management business to truly support the strata living experience and expectations of today’s occupiers.
The strata management company of tomorrow (that wants to manage the communities of tomorrow) is well versed in facilities management, with the inhouse skills to manage the building fabric and the ever changing needs of its occupants.
Solar is fast becoming the in-demand sustainability and energy efficiency initiative for strata buildings in the Hunter region.
Once a building has considered and undertaken ‘low hanging fruit’ efficiency upgrades to lighting, HVAC, etc. – solar is generally the next pillar for consideration.
We all know that the climate in the Hunter region is fantastic year-round, with (300) sunny days per year; this, in turn, makes for fantastic solar energy production.
We have helped arrange the installation of solar at a number of buildings we manage and we’ve had fantastic support from the owners and results for the owners corporation in doing so.
Strata buildings in the Hunter, Lake Macquarie, and Newcastle region have features that lend themselves well to the installation of solar:
Flat roofs without plant and equipment, on buildings with a relatively large footprint (there are not many towers in the area like you find in Sydney metro areas);
limited over-shading from other buildings (e.g. commercial buildings like you get in many parts of Sydney) and trees;
Relatively limited demands on common property power – lighting, garage doors, lifts, HVAC – thus a rooftop solar system is generally able to offset this completely;
Payback periods as short as 4-5 years based on current power charges – this will shorten again if rates continue to rise (which they likely will with the closure of power plants);
The indicative lifespan of solar systems of c. 25 years, with very little maintenance;
Ability to reduce demand on the grid, which can be stressed during summer when people are running air-conditioning and other appliances; and
A greater focus on cleaner/smarter energy than there’s ever been.
The process for getting solar on your building is relatively simple:
Strata Committee arranges for assessment by a solar installer (make sure you find one that has done strata work previously). There may need to upgrade to the electrical board and wiring to allow for solar;
Provided the building is suitable (some are not due to the shape of the roof, over-shading, plant and equipment on the roof or the orientation of the roof), competitive quotes are sought based on a suitably sized system for the building.
We suggest having an independent third party such as Sustainability Now or Wattblock (here’s a great white paper that WattBlock did on solar – certainly more informative than this particular blog) – tender the work and give a recommendation (there are so many types of panels and inverters and you want to ensure what you are getting is suitable);
Work out how the system will be funded – special levy or out of existing funds (what has worked well at other buildings is using capital funds to purchase the system and then allocating additional funding in future years to repay the system cost from the savings in electricity in the administrative fund);
Put relevant motions to a general meeting for funding and the addition of solar to common property; and
Once agreed by the meeting, proceed with the work and start experiencing the amazing cost benefits of solar.
Committees and managers should ensure that the solar system is monitored so that you know it’s producing power. There’s nothing worse than having an expensive solar system on your roof which has tripped and nobody is any the wiser. There are now SIM solutions for this at a minimal cost and an alert goes to the strata/building manager/retailer or committee if the system isn’t operating as it should.
There are also some alternate models out there involving leasing the solar equipment and the lessee being able to provide occupants clean power at a discount.
Battery storage technology is getting better year-on-year as well, so there’s every prospect of mating battery with solar to ensure that a building will only draw power from the grid in off-peak periods.
It’s also noted that strata schemes made up of townhouses can likely obtain all the benefits of solar on a per-lot basis (or potentially group together for the installation of a larger system with battery technology – there’s every opportunity for an off-grid development in the Hunter of this type in years to come).
At Bright & Duggan and Cambridge Management Services, we would be happy to have a chat with anyone about the process and the benefits.
