How a reserve study is built

Seven stages, from the first call to a signed study and the portal that comes with it. Most of it is work you never see, which is the part worth describing: a study is only as good as what was actually looked at, and most of the looking happens before anybody writes a number down.

1. 1

   You reach out

   Five fields: the association name, roughly how many units, and where to reach you. An analyst replies within one business hour during business hours, not a scheduler and not a call centre.

   Start a proposal

2. 2

   We quote and propose

   We pull the public records ourselves: the registration, the parcel data, the permit history and the statutory clock that applies to you. What comes back is a preview of your own property with real component estimates, priced, with the scope and the fee attached. The fee is fixed and it does not move unless the scope does.

   See what a study costs

3. 3

   You engage us

   You sign in the browser and pay the deposit by bank transfer or card. The balance is due at delivery. Public entities on net-30 terms are accommodated; tell us at proposal time.

4. 4

   We study the property before we arrive

   A desk review of what is out there before anyone drives to it: the plat, the imagery, the prior study if there is one, the governing documents, and the components they imply. It produces a checklist your board corrects, and that correction is the last point at which a wrong fact is cheap.

5. 5

   We walk it and document everything

   Drone and ground capture. Roofs, upper envelope and large site areas are photographed from above rather than estimated from the parking lot, and everything reachable on foot is measured and photographed where it stands. A roof seen from the ground is an assumption; a roof seen from above is an observation. Every observation is recorded on our own field tooling as the analyst walks, with each photograph attached to the component it evidences. Nothing is written up from memory afterwards, which is where detail is normally lost.

6. 6

   We analyse and audit

   Component lives and conditions go into our own engine: over six hundred component types, priced against hundreds of cost sources rather than one national average, with each category escalating on its own measured series. Then every condition rating is checked against its own photographic record before the study is signed. Findings that cannot be evidenced do not ship. While that runs you get the First Findings card, within 48 hours of the site visit.

7. 7

   We deliver

   The complete written study, signed and delivered as the document of record: the thing your lender asks for, your insurer asks for, and your successors read. It comes with a portal carrying the same analysis, which your board can open and work through without another invoice. The study stays frozen because that is what it is for; the portal is how the board actually uses it.

   Explore a sample study