Missing alteration agreements, found during a roofing project.

Over roughly two decades, 11 of 68 owners in a townhouse community were permitted to cut skylights into the roof. The bylaws required the owner to carry maintenance and repair costs for the alteration. Everyone involved understood the arrangement at the time. None of the agreements ended up on file.

Eight of those 11 units have since sold, and no alteration agreement appeared on the information certificates. In the meantime the corporation had paid for leak repairs into units, which quietly established a practice that contradicts the bylaw. Now a full roof replacement forces the question: who pays to reinstall a skylight, and who owns it afterward?

Alteration agreements are only half the record. The other half is physical: where the penetrations are, when they were cut, what flashing detail was used, which ones have leaked, and what was done about it. A binder of signed forms with no condition history still leaves council guessing at the negotiating table.

This is the pattern behind most contested strata projects. The dispute is not really about the skylights. It is about the absence of a continuous, dated record of what changed on the building and who was responsible for it. Once councils and managers turn over a few times, institutional memory is the only record left, and it does not survive a tender.

The letter writer's advice to other councils is worth repeating: take control of your records, and build a summary that says what exists and where it is held. A practical version of that inventory includes:

• Every alteration approval, indexed to the strata lot and the date.
• Original drawings, as-built changes, and any engineering letters.
• Warranty documents and the date each warranty expires.
• Depreciation reports and every update since the first one.
• Repair history by system, with invoices attached to the location.
• Photographs of each alteration and each repeat repair area.

A SENTiNEL Asset Protection Program builds the physical half of that inventory and keeps it current. Documented penetrations, dated photographs, and repeat-issue tracking across the eleven building systems give council something to point at when an alteration question surfaces years later. Legal interpretation of the agreements themselves stays with a strata lawyer, which is exactly what the column recommends before a funding vote.

A major capital project is the natural reset point. Before the tender goes out, get the condition record current, list every owner alteration touching the scope, and confirm in writing what happens to each one after the work is done. Decisions made with a documented record cost less than decisions made under scaffold rental.

If your building is heading into a roof, envelope, or membrane project and the alteration history is thin, an assessment now is far cheaper than the dispute later.