The Importance of Building Condition Assessments (BCA)

Joel Bensette, Construction and Project Planning Senior Manager, OLG

The importance of Building Condition Assessments (BCA), or as I like to call it, ‘building a case for costs,’ is manifold. This subject and the narrative below are what I had in mind. It could be written in a flavor, but the main ingredient is BCA’s help protects an owner from liability, either personal or financial.

"The main ingredient is BCA’s help protects an owner from liability, either personal or financial"

During the pandemic, many buildings were closed, in a ‘leave the lights on,’ or paused state. This, of course, translates to reduced or nil revenue, which only exacerbates the potential for problems and/or building system failures post COVID-19.The inevitable business strategy called ‘do not spend any money’ or ‘recovery mode’ has a shortfall when translated into the language we call asset management.You see, the ugly words of deferred maintenance can quickly turn into business interruption in the absence of, well, a plan. That plan means spending little money for consulting services to best understand where your property investment dollars need to be spent, and a good five-year cost forecast is a benefit to recovering revenue, particularly if additional business interruption are mitigated by this thing we refer to as a Building Condition Assessment.

Why BCA? I have a Property Asset Manager, you say. How about this, ask your property asset manager if they would be most comfortable to have a team of divisional experts (Mechanical, electrical, Building Sciences, etc.) come in and assess the property or properties and provide a plan that details when a building system or equipment within the system may fail or has already failed. Moreover, a plan that says here’s a list of items that you should focus your attention on now and other items that will need attention in subsequent years. Lastly, here’s a cost forecast with inflation for each subsequent year to help with capital financial planning and it includes such changes to codes and laws like AODA and ASHRAE standards. My guess, the answer would simply be a sigh of relief