While a building manager may seem like an extra expense, they can help you minimise costs in the medium to long term.
Onsite building managers are there to monitor, enhance and protect your investment; the building is their business. A building management role is multi-faceted, and the cost of employing a single building manager can be significantly less than contracting individual roles simultaneously.
So, What Do Building Managers Do?
In a snapshot, they’re responsible for making sure all communal areas of the block are kept in good order — things like maintaining garden and recreational areas, ensuring communal lighting is working, maintaining lifts and stairways, maintaining carparks, ensuring foyers are kept clean, arranging repairs and maintenance on foyer and carpark doors, ensuring move-ins and move-outs are done according to protocols and without disrupting residents — and the list goes on. An effective building manager will have a team of people around them that can deal with any issue and meet whatever needs might arise.
Where the Savings Come From
Having a building manager removes hassles and saves time for strata managers and owners corporations. It means:
- Lower repair costs. Our building managers have previously established relationships with tradespeople and contractors. It’s also their job to ensure contractors are providing good value for money.
- Peace of mind. Our building managers are in charge of organising maintenance and repairs, and ensuring they’re completed swiftly, effectively and to a high standard while causing minimal disruption to owners and tenants. They also manage preventative maintenance activities to extend the life of assets, increase productivity, improve overall efficiency and reduce maintenance costs. It’s more cost-effective than costly reactive repairs.
What Can You Expect From a BMA Building Manager?
- Increased security measures
- Health and safety compliance, with a sharp focus on building and fire safety
- Regular inspections of common areas to ensure they’re maintained to a high standard
- Sourcing and managing professional maintenance staff, tradespeople and contractors
- Knowing the ‘ins and outs’ of the building, with a focus on having it operate at its peak at all times
- Efficiencies and cost savings realised through our procurement initiatives
- Budgeting support and an understanding of the intricate daily management of a building
- State-of-the-art technology to assist with managing the building effectively
The Cost That Pays for Itself
The pattern across all of this is the same: the cost of a building manager is visible in the budget, while the savings are spread across everything that doesn’t go wrong — the reactive repairs avoided through preventative maintenance, the contractor invoices kept honest through established relationships and oversight, the assets that last their full lifespan instead of failing early, and the time strata managers and committees get back. For most larger schemes, that trade is comfortably in the building’s favour.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does a building manager reduce repair costs?
Two ways: established contractor relationships that secure better rates and honest pricing, and oversight that ensures work is done properly the first time. A building manager also catches problems while they’re small — a slow leak fixed this week costs a fraction of the water damage it becomes next year.
What is preventative maintenance and why is it cheaper?
Preventative maintenance means servicing assets on a planned schedule rather than waiting for them to fail. It extends asset life, avoids the premium cost of emergency call-outs, and prevents the collateral damage that failures cause — a maintained pump is a service invoice; a failed pump can be a flooded basement.
Is a building manager cheaper than contracting individual services?
Often, yes. A building management role is multi-faceted — one arrangement covering maintenance oversight, inspections, contractor management, security and compliance can cost significantly less than contracting each of those roles separately, and it comes with a single point of accountability rather than several.
How do we know if the cost is worth it for our building?
Look at what the building currently spends on reactive repairs, emergency call-outs and unmanaged contractor work — and what the committee’s time is worth. Larger schemes with significant plant and facilities almost always come out ahead; for smaller schemes, a part-time or visiting arrangement can capture most of the benefit at lower cost.
Spend Less on Your Building, Not More
Building Management Australia is a Sydney building management firm — not a strata agent. Preventative maintenance, contractor oversight, procurement efficiencies and catching problems early is core building-management work, and we handle it alongside your strata manager.
If your building’s repair bills keep surprising you, request a proposal at bmaus.com.au or email Andrew directly at andrew@bmaus.com.au.
About the Author
Andrew Veron is the founder of Building Management Australia (BMA), an independent Sydney building management firm established in 1995. BMA is a building management company — not a strata agent — providing on-site and visiting building management, facilities management, concierge, cleaning and valet services to residential, commercial and mixed-use properties. Over the past 30 years, Andrew and the BMA team have managed buildings across the Eastern Suburbs, North Sydney, Inner Sydney, Parramatta and the Sydney CBD, with assets currently valued in excess of $3 billion under management. Because BMA is independent of any strata management firm, committees receive unbiased advice and transparent contractor relationships. Reach Andrew at andrew@bmaus.com.au or bmaus.com.au.
This article is general information only and is not financial advice. Costs and savings vary with each building’s size, condition and management arrangements; owners corporations should assess their own circumstances when making budgeting decisions.
