It's mandatory
The legislation requires that your LTMP states the estimated age, life expectancy and cost of replacement of each item covered by the plan. See our help page on compliance and this help page on entering data for more information.
Do it last
In order to save time, you should look to edit this table last or at least after all of your items have been set up.
We have set up defaults
The items in the age, life and cost of replacement table (age table) are derived from the items list. Every time you create an item, it will appear in the age table. At the same time the age and life columns in this table will be populated with default values. So if you wait until after you have set up all of your items, your age table will be half complete.
Establishing the age
Establishing the age of an item is easy. It will be the number of years since the building was built. We’ve set up a default based on the "year built" field you filled in when you first opened the body corporate account. You should edit this field for every item that has more recently been replaced.
Establishing the life
The life of each item requires a bit more thought and we have set up a default that sets the life as being at least 15 years from the start date. This is so the life is always longer than the standard 10 year plan and therefore the item is not scheduled for replacement unless you edit it.
However, you should edit this field according to what you expect the real remaining life to be and with some elements you might find information on the manaufacturer's website or when it comes to something like a lift, your contractor will probably be able to advise you.
But remember that if the remaining life is less than the period covered by your plan logically you should have the replacement of this item included as a job. We suggest that if the item is clearly not going to be replaced in foreseeable future, you make the remaining life at least a few years longer than the period covered by your plan, otherwise your going to have to come back next year and edit it. That’s why we used a minimum of 15 years as a default.
How to estimate the cost of replacement
The cost of replacement is the most difficult to estimate but you have a few options.
Get a contractor to estimate. You might even find the right information on the manufacturer's website. Of course if the item isn’t going to be replaced in the next few years, don’t expect a contractor to waste their time giving you anything detailed. But as an example, your average experienced roofer could look at your roof and give you a pretty accurate number in a matter of couple of minutes.
Borrow a copy of Rawlinsons New Zealand Construction Handbook. That’s the bible quantity surveyors use. We say borrow because it wouldn’t be a very wise investment to buy one for this one project. But maybe you’ve got a mate who is a QS.
Guess. If you or one of the other owners have building experience, you can wander around the building and come up with some fairly accurate estimates. And if you’re out by 20% on the replacement of the cladding with a further life of 30 years (and who says anyway), it really isn’t material. However, we need to put in a disclaimer here, if the item or element is up for replacement during the period covered by your plan, you should get quotes or estimates because now you’re dealing with real cash. It’s only when it is highly unlikely that the item will be replaced in the foreseeable future, that you can be a little more relaxed about the accuracy of the replacement cost.
A combination of all of the above
Note also that the Cost of Replacement field does not require numbers and will accept free text. So feel free to use the greater than sign or n/a, and this will come in handy when you have to try to estimate the cost of replacing something such as the plumbing systems. After all what are you going to replace? All of it? some of it? Some you won't be able to replace without pulling the building down.
However, because it's free text you will have to put a $ sign and commas in your values such as >$100,000.
If you have any feedback or questions please use the feedback form.
The Plan Heaven team.
Disclaimer. Plan Heaven is not qualified in law and any comments made on this website are only the opinion of Plan Heaven and should not be regarded as legal advice. Our comments are merely providing some thoughts on how the legislation might be interpreted and how we go about attempting to meet its requirements. You should not rely on this information in isolation and do you own homework and at all times if you wish to be sure of your position relating to legal matters you should seek advice from a suitably qualified lawyer.