Buildings

The lot register says who owns what. This screen says what the buildings themselves are: when each one went up, how tall it is, what it's clad in, what's on the roof, and whether the envelope has been rainscreened or repaired. Owners, buyers, insurers and contractors ask a council these questions constantly, and the answers are usually buried on the first page of a depreciation report.

SettingsBuilding. Council and managers only.

One card per building

Many strata plans cover more than one civic address — a townhouse complex, a tower with a separate podium, a development built in phases. So this is a list of buildings, each with its own card and its own answers. A complex whose first phase was reclad and whose second was not has two different answers about rainscreen, and one form for "the building" could only record the wrong one.

To add one, type its street address (and city, if you like) under Add another address and press Add building. The rest of its details go on its own card once it exists.

To remove one, use the Remove button at the foot of its card. It's offered only when you have more than one building — a corporation always keeps at least one.

Three ways to fill it in

You can use any mix of these. Whichever you use, nothing is saved until you press a button.

1. Type it

Each card is a form. Every field is optional — fill in what you know, leave the rest, and press Save this building.

2. Fill in from the registry

If your strata plan number is on the Corporation tab, the screen offers Fill in from the registry. The SearchStrata registry already knows the civic addresses filed under many BC plan numbers, and for some buildings their year built, storeys, construction, roof and rainscreen too.

Pressing it:

• adds any address you don't have yet, as a new card;
• fills in empty fields on the buildings you do have, where the registry knows the answer;
• never overwrites anything you've entered. Where you and the registry both have a value, yours stands — you're the source of record for your own building.

A notice then says what happened, for example 2 addresses added, 1 building filled in. For a very large complex, only the first 25 buildings come back with details; the rest arrive as addresses for you to complete.

If it can't help, it says why instead of failing quietly:

3. Read from your documents

Each card has a Read from documents button. It searches the corporation's document library — a depreciation report opens with a building description, so that's usually where the answers are — and proposes values for the year built, storeys, construction, roof, rainscreen and address.

1. Press Read from documents on the building's card

   The read is for that one building. If your documents describe several buildings, read each card separately.

2. Check each proposal against its source

   Every proposal names the document and page it came from, as a link. Open it — a sentence about one elevation of one phase is not necessarily true of this building.

3. Tick the ones that are right, then press Use the ticked values

   Only ticked values are written, and only to the fields they name. Anything you leave unticked keeps whatever the field already held.

Values the documents don't state plainly — "circa 1970s", "probably rainscreened" — are left out rather than guessed at. If nothing comes back, the card says so: Nothing to read yet means no documents are uploaded or indexed, and Nothing stated outright means the documents don't say it clearly enough. Either way, type the answers in.

A read uses one AI action. Like every AI feature here, it only proposes — a person decides.

What each card holds

The choices in these lists come from the registry, so they match what it accepts. If the registry can't be reached, the screen falls back to its last copy of the lists, and the Rainscreen hint says the date they were last confirmed.

Rainscreen and remediation belong together. Rainscreen records the wall as it stands today; remediation records what was done to it. An older building with a full rainscreen was almost certainly remediated, and a buyer reading either one alone can draw the wrong conclusion.

The form refuses one combination: a year remediated earlier than the year built. A repair can't predate the building.

Blank means "not recorded"

Every field starts blank, and blank never means "no" or "none". It means nobody has said. Where the true answer is none — no elevators, no rainscreen — record it; leaving it blank is a different statement.

Older free-text answers are kept

Construction and roof used to be free-text boxes. If something you typed then doesn't match any of today's choices, it's listed under the question as Also recorded here and kept every time you save. It is not shared with the registry. Tick the nearest option if one fits.

Sharing with the registry

Nothing on this screen leaves ManageStrata unless your council chooses to share. That choice is one checkbox — Share these facts with the public strata registry — at the foot of the bylaws form on the Corporation tab, and it covers the corporation and all its buildings. How sharing works →

Each card says whether that building can be shared:

• Matched to the registry — its facts can be shared.
• Not matched to the registry yet — its cladding, roof and rainscreen stay here. Press Fill in from the registry to match it.

After a save, the banner at the top says what happened — for example Saved. 2 facts were offered to the public registry. 3 stayed here because their buildings are not matched to a registry record yet, or that sharing is off and nothing was sent. When everything already went on an earlier save, it simply says Changes saved.

Every add, save, removal, registry fill-in and accepted document read is recorded in the audit trail.