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This week, UrbanTec hosted a live webinar led by company president Tim Erickson, bringing together condo board members from across Calgary and the surrounding area for an in-depth conversation about financial risk, governance, and long-term planning.
The session covered a lot of ground, from rising insurance deductibles and deferred maintenance to reserve fund gaps and contractor management. What tied it all together was a straightforward question that Tim returned to throughout: where does avoidable cost actually come from, and what can boards do before it becomes a problem?
Tim opened with something that resonated across the room: the conditions condo boards are navigating today are genuinely different than they were even five years ago.
Construction and maintenance costs have climbed. Timelines have stretched. Insurance has become significantly more complex, with deductibles reaching levels that would have seemed unusual a decade ago. And a large portion of Calgary’s condominium buildings are now moving into major capital replacement cycles, with roofs, membranes, building envelopes, and underground services no longer abstract future concerns.
At the same time, governance expectations have increased. Owners are more engaged. Legislation continues to evolve, and the scrutiny applied to board decisions has grown considerably.
All of this lands on volunteer boards, people who are doing their best with real constraints on their time and expertise.
The webinar covered several areas where boards tend to feel the most financial pressure, and the pattern that emerged was consistent.
Deferred maintenance is among the most common contributors to long-term cost. It rarely begins as a careless decision. A repair gets identified, a board makes a reasonable choice to delay given budget pressures, and the issue sits. Over time, scope expands. What was a manageable project becomes something significantly larger, and the flexibility that existed at the start is gone.
Insurance deductibles were another focal point. Premiums have increased, but as Tim noted, the more pressing issue is the deductible exposure. A single claim is often manageable. Two or three within the same year, which does happen in buildings with recurring water loss events, can create real financial disruption. In most cases, that exposure has not been fully planned for, which leaves boards reacting rather than responding.
Contractor and project management also came up in detail. Tim was direct on this point: most major cost overruns are not the result of bad luck. They come from unclear scope, selecting contractors based on the lowest number without fully understanding what the work involves, and limited oversight during execution. The change orders start appearing, and the original budget becomes a distant reference point.
The reserve fund is designed to be the foundation of long-term capital planning. What the webinar addressed is the gap that often forms between what the reserve study says and what is actually happening in the building.
A study can be technically accurate and still fail to reflect reality if the timing does not align with actual project needs or if funding has not kept pace with decisions made along the way. That gap is where difficult choices are born, and where special assessments tend to originate.
Special assessments were addressed directly during the session, and Tim was careful to frame them fairly. They are not always avoidable. Unexpected failures happen. Multiple insurance claims can land in the same year. Costs can shift quickly, as many boards experienced during the pandemic. But what the data consistently shows is that delay tends to make these situations significantly worse. A project deferred with good intentions can grow in both scope and urgency until the options available to the board are far more limited than they were at the start.
One of the more candid sections of the webinar addressed fiduciary duty not as a legal concept, but as a practical standard.
Are board members acting in the interest of the corporation? Are they taking the time to make informed decisions rather than deferring to what feels comfortable? Are they avoiding unnecessary delay when action is clearly needed?
Tim’s observation was measured: what we typically see is not poor decisions. It is delayed ones. And the logic behind those delays is usually understandable. Waiting another year, gathering more information, avoiding additional pressure on owners. These are not unreasonable instincts. But compounded over time, they tend to increase both cost and risk in ways that become harder to reverse.
The webinar drew a clear distinction between reactive and proactive governance. Reactive governance does not announce itself as a problem. It looks like reasonable caution. It sounds like sensible restraint. And it tends to accumulate quietly until the pressure becomes visible.
The boards that manage their buildings well, Tim noted, tend to share a few traits. They plan several years ahead rather than reacting to what arrives on their doorstep. They align reserve funding with actual work rather than with an outdated report. They work with capable managers and communicate consistently with owners.
That last point matters more than it sometimes gets credit for. When communication is clear and ongoing, decisions become easier to implement. Resistance drops. Expectations are managed in advance rather than addressed after the fact. And when a difficult decision does need to be made, the groundwork has already been laid.
UrbanTec hosted this webinar because these are the conversations that do not happen often enough in formal settings. Boards are working hard with limited resources, and the goal was never to highlight failures. It was to offer some clarity on where avoidable cost and risk tend to originate, and what proactive governance actually looks like in practice.
If your board is working through any of the issues raised in this session, we are always glad to have a conversation. Reach out to us at hello@urbantec.ca.
