Commercial and HOA
Exterior work for HOAs and property managers: bid packages, phasing, resident notice
A forty-unit community is not a large house. The work is decided by documents: a takeoff, a submittal package, a phase map and a notice chain. The crew only executes what those documents already settled.
- Comparable bids need
- One takeoff, one written scope, one unit-price sheet
- Submittal carries
- Series, profile, exposure, physical colour chip, certified label
- Daily rule
- Every wall opened in the morning is dried in before the crew leaves
- Notice chain
- Community at award, building ahead of phase, door hanger per unit
Start here
A community project needs a written scope before it needs a price
Three bids against three different assumptions is not a comparison. It is three guesses.
On a single house, a contractor can walk the elevations, write a scope and price it in the same visit. On a forty-unit community that sequence breaks, because each bidder builds a different scope from the same walk-through: one prices tear-off to sheathing, one prices cladding over the existing, one carries trim and one does not. The board then compares three totals that are not measuring the same wall.
The fix is that the community issues the scope and the bidders price it. It does not need to be an architect's specification. It needs a takeoff, a written description of the work, a unit-price sheet and a stated list of exclusions. Every bid then comes back on the same rows, and the differences that remain are real.
What follows is what we ask for when a manager or a board calls, and what we supply when they do not have it yet.
Step one
The takeoff: counting the community before anyone quotes it
A takeoff is the community's own inventory of what is being replaced, and it is the document that makes bids comparable. At minimum it carries:
- An address and building list, with an elevation letter per face so a note can be filed against Building 7, elevation C rather than "the back of the one near the mailboxes".
- An opening schedule per unit: size, operation type, and whether the opening serves a bedroom and therefore has to keep an emergency escape and rescue opening.
- Cladding quantities by elevation, plus trim, corner boards, soffit and fascia (the underside and edge of the roof overhang) as separate lines. Those three are where scope quietly disappears.
- The existing substrate and cladding, noted where it can be seen, and noted as unknown where it cannot.
- Known problem locations: staining below a window, cupped boards, a chronic leak the manager has been logging for two years.
Then a unit-price sheet, which is the part boards most often skip and most often need: a rate per window by size band, per square of cladding by profile, per lineal foot of trim, per sheet of sheathing replaced, per lineal foot of band or sill repaired. Those rates turn every later surprise into arithmetic instead of a negotiation.
Step two
The submittal package an architectural committee can actually approve
Committees do not reject product. They reject incomplete paperwork, and then the calendar slips a month.
A submittal that gets approved on the first pass contains the things a reviewer needs to picture the finished wall and to check it against the community's own standards:
- Manufacturer, series and profile for the cladding, with the exposure stated. The visible height of each course is what the eye reads from the kerb, and it is the number that makes a re-clad look right or look wrong.
- A physical colour chip, not a screen render and not a printed swatch. Colour on a monitor is not colour on a north wall.
- Trim profile, width and colour, including corner boards, window surrounds and the fascia. A matched field colour with the wrong trim width still reads as a different building.
- Window frame colour inside and out, grid pattern, and whether grids are between the glass or applied.
- The certified rating label for the window configuration being proposed, so the reviewer is looking at numbers rather than adjectives.
- The manufacturer's warranty document, whole, not summarised.
One more line belongs in the submittal and is almost always missing: how the colour is going to be held constant across phases. Factory-applied finishes are matched in production batches, so releasing the whole community's colour in one order, and recording the colour name and batch reference in the close-out file, is what keeps phase one and phase three looking like one community.
Step three
Phasing an occupied community, one building at a time
Residents are living behind the wall while it is open. That single fact drives the whole schedule, and it produces one rule the crew does not get to negotiate: every wall opened in the morning is dried in before the crew leaves. Barrier, flashing and a temporary closure where a unit is not yet set. Nothing stays open overnight, including over a weekend and including when the forecast is clear.
Around that rule, a workable phase plan settles four things before mobilisation:
- Building order, published as a map with dates, so a resident can see their building on a calendar rather than ask the manager every week.
- Staging and lay-down, agreed in writing: where material lands, where the dumpster sits, and which parking spaces come out of service on which days.
- Access routes and overhead protection at entrances that stay in use while work is overhead.
- Working hours, including the earliest hour a nail gun is allowed to start, which is a community rule rather than a construction one.
Phasing also lets a board split the work across budget years without leaving a mismatched community for a decade, provided the colour and the product are locked at the start, which is the point of the submittal file.
Step four
Resident notice runs at three levels, in this order
Most complaints on a community exterior job are notice failures, not workmanship failures.
- Community notice at award. The phase map, the calendar, the scope in plain language, and one phone number. Sent by the manager, not by the contractor.
- Building notice ahead of the phase. Dates for that building, parking changes, and what residents need to do before the crew arrives.
- A door hanger per unit the day before. Arrival window, expected duration at that unit, the tasks the resident owns, and the same phone number again.
The resident tasks are short and they matter: clear a few feet of floor inside each affected opening, take down blinds, shades and anything sitting on the sill, secure pets away from the work area, and unlock side gates. A crew that arrives to a latched gate and a barking dog loses the morning, and that lost morning lands on the schedule everyone else is reading.
Where units are tenant-occupied rather than owner-occupied, the notice period for entry is set by the lease and by state landlord-tenant law. That is the manager's call and not ours; we build the schedule around the date the manager gives us.
Step six
Close-out: the documents that outlive the crew
The board that hired the contractor will not be the board that makes the first warranty claim.
- A photo log keyed to building and elevation, including the openings while they were open. That file is the only evidence that the flashing was installed the way it was specified.
- Warranty registration per unit, filed with the manufacturer. Registration is frequently what starts the term running, and an unregistered product is a harder claim years later.
- The colour and product record (series, profile, exposure, colour name and batch reference), so a repair in year eight can be matched instead of approximated.
- Leftover material, labelled and stored where the manager can find it, with the quantity written down.
- A per-building punch walk, signed as each building finishes, rather than one walk at the end of a nine-month project.
- The labour warranty, naming who takes the call and what they need in order to open a service request.
Handed over as one file rather than as a folder of emails, that package is what turns a completed project into an asset the next board can actually manage.
For the scope side of a community project, our page on commercial and multi-family exteriors covers how we take that work on.
Board and manager questions
What boards ask us before the scope goes out
Manufacturer, series and profile with the exposure stated, a physical colour chip rather than a screen render, trim profile and width, window frame colour inside and out, the grid pattern, the certified rating label for the window configuration proposed, and the manufacturer warranty document in full. Add one line stating how colour will be held constant across phases, because that is the question the committee asks second.
Yes, and it is the normal way a community funds this work. The condition is that the product and the colour are locked in the submittal file at the start, with the colour name and batch reference recorded, so a building finished in the third year still matches a building finished in the first.
By treating dry-in as a daily deliverable rather than a milestone. Any wall opened in the morning is closed the same day with the weather-resistive barrier lapped, the flashing set and a temporary closure where a unit is not yet installed. Nothing is left open overnight, over a weekend, or because the forecast looks clear.
Next step
Tell us how many buildings and we will write the takeoff
Send the address list and any problem locations the manager has been logging. We will walk the community, produce the opening schedule and the quantities (with trim, corner boards, soffit and fascia as separate lines), and hand the board a scope document it can issue to every bidder, including bidders that are not us.
- Opening schedule and cladding quantities by building and elevation
- A unit-price sheet for the repairs nobody can see yet
- A submittal package assembled for the architectural review, not after it
Prefer to talk it through? The shop line is (775) 391-8487, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Request a free community estimate
Request received
We will call you back on the number you gave us to set a measure visit. If you would rather talk now, the shop line is (775) 391-8487, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.