This one is for the strata councils, property managers, and depreciation-report consultants who are figuring out who to hire. Most of you have already learned the hard way that the cheapest bid is rarely the cheapest job. The questions below are the ones I'd ask if I were on the other side of the table.
Before we start, a disclosure: I'm one of the contractors you'd be asking these questions. I'm fine with that. If the answers I give don't satisfy you, hire someone else. The right contractor passes this list. The wrong one doesn't.
Why strata garage doors are different
Three reasons.
- Cycle counts are 10x to 100x residential. A 40-unit townhouse with a shared parkade door sees 40,000+ cycles a year. That's a residential 10,000-cycle spring failing every 3 months.
- Liability allocation is murky. Is the door common property? Limited common? Strata lot? Section property? The answer determines who pays. If you don't know going in, you'll fight about it after.
- The BC Strata Property Act imposes specific obligations on the council that don't apply to single-family homes. Depreciation reports, special-levy thresholds, contingency reserve fund minimums, the 3/4 vote rule for capital expenses. The contractor needs to know these exist.
The ten questions
1. Are you licensed and insured for commercial work, not just residential?
Most residential garage door companies carry $2M general liability. That's fine for a house. For a strata, you want $5M minimum. Ask for the certificate of insurance with the strata corporation named as additional insured. If they hesitate, end the call.
2. Are your technicians employees or subcontractors?
WorkSafeBC coverage follows employment status. If the tech is a subcontractor and they get hurt on your property, the claim path can land at the strata's feet. Employees with WorkSafeBC clearance letters are the clean answer. Ask for the clearance letter dated within the last 30 days.
3. What's your response time guarantee for a non-functional garage door?
If a 40-unit parkade door fails and 40 cars can't get out at 7 a.m., the response time is the only thing that matters. "We'll be there sometime today" is not an answer. A real number, in writing, with the contract penalty for missing it. Our standard is 12 to 18 minutes within service area. If the contractor lives in Abbotsford and your building is in Yaletown, that math doesn't work.
4. Will you provide a quoted price before the work, or do you bill time-and-materials?
Time-and-materials is how the cheap bid becomes the expensive bid. A reputable strata contractor will quote a flat rate for known work and a clear hourly for unforeseen scope, with a maximum before stop-and-call-the-council. Get both numbers in writing.
5. What's your spring spec for a high-cycle door?
If they say "10,000-cycle, that's what we always use" — wrong answer for strata. Minimum spec for a shared parkade door is 25,000-cycle. Better is 50,000-cycle commercial. A contractor who tries to install residential-grade springs in a strata application is either underbidding deliberately or doesn't know the spec. Either way, not your contractor.
6. Do you carry parts inventory, or is everything ordered after diagnosis?
A real strata contractor stocks the common high-cycle springs, cables, rollers, and openers used in your building's spec, so a failure is a same-day fix. "We have to order it" means three to fourteen days of a non-functional door and a hundred angry strata members. The right answer is "yes, we carry these parts on the truck."
7. How do you handle limited-common vs common property repairs?
If a unit owner's individual garage door (limited common) fails, the strata may or may not pay. The contractor should bill correctly — to the strata for common, to the unit owner for limited common per the strata's bylaws — without you having to micromanage it. Sloppy billing is how strata councils end up arguing with their own contractor in front of unit owners.
8. Have you worked with a depreciation report for garage doors before?
Under the SPA, every BC strata of 5+ units must have a depreciation report every five years. The garage door system is a capital item in that report. Your contractor should know what gets listed (door panels, opener, motor, springs, tracks, sensors) and what useful life numbers are reasonable. If they've never read one, they don't know what the council is operating under.
9. Will you participate in the depreciation report update or annual maintenance schedule?
Some councils want their door contractor to walk through with the depreciation consultant. Some want a quarterly written maintenance report. Some want both. A real contractor says "yes, here's the fee, here's the cadence." A sketchy one says "we just service when called."
10. What happens if the work you do doesn't pass inspection?
Two-year labour warranty minimum on strata work. If a spring you installed fails inside the warranty window, the re-service is free. If the labour warranty is less than 2 years, ask why. The answer should be "it's not less than 2 years, that's standard."
The cautionary tale
I'll tell this one with a placeholder name because it's a real story and I'm not going to make anyone identifiable. Let's call her Hilary, like "Hilary the Strata President" — not a real person.
Hilary's 32-unit townhouse complex in Burquitlam — 2010 build, you can see where this is going — had a shared parkade door with builder-grade 10,000-cycle springs. The springs failed in March 2023. Hilary's previous council had signed a maintenance contract with a low-bid contractor who installed residential-grade springs the first time. They failed again in June. They failed again in October.
By the time Hilary called us, the council had spent $4,800 on three failed installs and the parkade door was held up by a 2x4 prop while 32 units rotated through who got to park inside. The contractor had stopped returning calls. The strata management firm was "working on it."
We swapped to 25,000-cycle commercial-grade springs with sealed bearings, did the cable replacement properly, and balanced the door to spec. Total: $2,400, one visit, two hours. The strata spent $4,800 to learn the lesson, then $2,400 more to actually fix it. That's the cost of asking the wrong contractor the wrong questions.
The depreciation report update later that year reclassified the door from "residential" to "high-cycle commercial," which changed the contingency reserve allocation by $1,200 a year going forward. The questions on this page would have caught all of it on the original bid.
The honest version
Strata councils are unpaid volunteers running a small corporation in their spare time. The Strata Property Act expects you to know procurement law on top of bylaw enforcement on top of insurance renewals on top of your day job. You can't be experts in every trade. The ten questions above are the cheat sheet so you don't have to be.
If you're on a council and you're putting a garage door contract out for bid, copy these questions into your RFP and watch which bidders flinch. The ones who don't flinch are the ones to interview. The door doesn't lie, and neither does a clean COI.
Call before noon if you want me on your shortlist.