What Body Corporate Committees Need in a Roof Quote (Before the AGM)

We do a fair bit of work on apartment buildings and strata complexes around Melbourne — Maribyrnong, Glenroy, West Melbourne, places like that. The roof work itself is the easy part. The hard part for the committee is getting owners to agree to spend the money.

Most roofers hand a body corporate a one-page number and wonder why it sits in limbo for six months. Here’s what actually gets a roof job over the line at an AGM.

A quote your owners can read without you in the room

Owners aren’t tradies. A number on its own means nothing to them — it just looks expensive. A quote that gets approved spells out:

• What’s wrong now — plain English, with photos. “The box gutter behind the parapet has rusted through in three spots and is leaking into units 4 and 7.”
• What we’re doing about it — the scope, section by section
• The materials — Colorbond product, gutter spec, warranty terms
• Access plan — scaffold or EWP, which days, how we manage resident parking and noise
• Staged payments — so it lines up with a special levy coming in, not all up front

When owners can see the problem, the fix and the cost laid out clearly, they vote yes. When they get a bare number, they defer it.

The documents the committee will ask for

Save yourself a round of emails and get these up front from any roofer:

• Public liability insurance certificate (ours is $20M)
• Plumbing licence (108555 for us — needed for any gutter, downpipe or flashing work)
• Workers comp
• Workmanship warranty in writing (we do 10 years)

If a contractor can’t produce these same-day, that tells you something.

Timing the special levy

This is the bit most people get wrong. Big strata roof jobs usually need a special levy, and that money comes in over months. A good contractor structures payments around that — deposit to lock in materials and a start date, progress payments as the levy lands, retention held until you’re happy at the end. We’ve done it plenty of times. It shouldn’t be a problem.

We’ll come to your committee

If you’re a strata manager or committee chair with a roof that needs doing, the easiest path is: we attend a site visit, then turn around a full quote pack within 10 business days — formatted so you can table it straight at your next meeting.

Request a body corporate quote or call Anthony on 0429 103 480. Tell us the building address and roughly how many units — we’ll take it from there.