The Grid

Category: MCST Governance

  • Fix the process, not the people

    Work request to work order completion in days, not months

    When things go south in an MCST, the council usually changes the managing agent. They start afresh with a new one.

    Why changing your managing agent doesn’t fix your MCST

    Everything starts out well. The building manager is on the ball. Inspections happen regularly. Work requests get a quick response. The council hears from the BM often. Everyone is happy.

    Then familiarity sets in. Standards slip.

    Common MCST management problems after the honeymoon period

    Work requests get delayed or ignored. Some get priority just because the owner sits on the council. The BM signs off without checking if the work is done. Vendors carry out work above the threshold amount, with no formal approval from the majority of voters.

    Residents start to feel targeted. They are told they can’t do something that their neighbours get away with. When issues aren’t settled quickly, the frustration builds. It then turns on the managing agent, or on neighbours.

    Eventually the council changes the managing agent again. The cycle repeats. Only the actors are new. The plot is the same.

    What 50 Singapore MCSTs taught us about estate management

    At Basementgrid, we have studied over 50 MCSTs. What we found is consistent. Changing the people doesn’t solve the problem. It just passes it to the next council and the next managing agent.

    So we built an app to fix the process first. We borrowed from how corporations work. A process keeps things moving. Within it, each person still has room to use their judgment.

    Why an MCST needs a process: there is no founder or CEO

    A company has a founder or a CEO. This person holds the vision and the know-how. Even when staff change, the way of working stays.

    An MCST has no such person. The council changes every year or two. Each new committee starts from zero. Whatever the last council knew often leaves with them.

    That is why an MCST needs a process. The process holds the knowledge. It lets the estate be managed properly day to day. It also lets the estate be handed over easily to the next committee.

    MCST handover: developers hand over the estate, not the process

    The first MCST is created by the developer. At that point, the developer’s job is to hand the estate over to the residents. Whether a management process exists is not their concern.

    So the first council inherits a building with no playbook. They have to work it out as they go.

    Basementgrid gives developers a way to change that. We provide the guidelines for managing estate maintenance, built into an app. The developer hands over the estate with a working process already in place.

    Is the managing agent responsible for improving the process?

    You might think so. It seems reasonable that the managing agent should put the process in place.

    In most cases we have seen, that doesn’t happen. The managing agent is contracted to manage. They come in to do the management part. Improving the way things are done is rarely part of the scope, so it gets overlooked.

    A corporation works differently. Employees are part of the company. They suggest ways to improve the workplace and the process. They have a stake in how things run.

    A contracted party has a different mindset. The same goes for most vendors. They focus on delivering the service. They feel they are paid for what they do, and nothing more.

    So the initiative has to come from someone else. Council members are the natural choice. It is their estate. If they want it run better, they can make the change themselves.

    Report a fault on Basementgrid

    Estate maintenance app for MCSTs: Basementgrid vs iCondo

    iCondo focuses on community, with facility bookings and visitor management. Basementgrid digitalises the estate maintenance process. Every job is tracked and recorded. Responsibilities are clear. If something is delayed or mismanaged, you can trace it back through an immutable activity log.

    Setup takes about 3 minutes. Each role has the minimum it needs to do. Work orders are created and completed by different roles, so no one person controls the whole job.

    MCST management for volunteer councils and small managing agent teams

    We also kept the reality of MCSTs in mind. Council members are volunteers. A managing agent is often just one or two people running an estate of over 500 residents. So Basementgrid has built-in reminders and deadlines. Work doesn’t fall behind quietly. When delays happen, they are on record.

    Council members: fix your estate’s process now

    Don’t wait for the next managing agent to slip. Don’t wait for the next complaint to reach your inbox.

    The estate is yours. The process is yours to set up. And the sooner it’s in place, the easier the next handover will be.

    Here is how to start:

    1. Pick one recurring problem. It could be delayed work requests, or vendor work done without approval.
    2. Raise it at your next council meeting.
    3. Set up Basementgrid in 3 minutes and run that one process through the app.

    You don’t need to change anyone. You only need to change how the work gets done.

    Start with Basementgrid today →

  • Where Did the Money Go? Your Work Order Should Know

    A work order that only records what, where and how a job was done isn’t much use. It’s just a document. So we made the work order do more: approvals, proof of work and payments all happen inside it.

    Who Approved This Spending?

    Work Order Approval MCST

    Many MCSTs need a majority vote before spending above a certain amount. Owners contribute to the maintenance fund every month, and they scrutinise how it’s used. Every dollar needs a proper record, or owners will get upset when they find out about misuse.

    On Basementgrid, a work order is only issued to the vendor once the required votes are in.

    There’s one catch. If no work order is created, the approval step is bypassed, and no software can record spending that never entered the system. That’s why we built payment into the app as well.

    How Was It Paid?

    PayNow QR code Vendor Payment

    We looked at how most organisations actually pay, and built a Billing stage around it. Vendors upload their invoice to the matching work order. From there, you can either:

    • pay directly from the app, using a unique PayNow QR code that carries the work order amount and the vendor’s UEN, and scan it in your bank app, or
    • download the maintenance ledger, tap the work order link to check the proof of work, then have the accounts team make a batch payment.

    Either way, the work order exists and the approvals are logged, so the spending is accounted for. It isn’t a pile of WhatsApp screenshots and emails pieced together by managers after the fact.

    To complete the Billing stage, the payer updates the record or the manager marks the work order as paid. That updates the maintenance ledger, which is what you’ll rely on for audits later.

    Was the Work Actually Done?

    Proof of work is submitted in the app and kept permanently in the cloud, so it’s accessible to everyone involved. It doesn’t sit in one person’s WhatsApp chat or email inbox. Each submission is GPS verified and timestamped, so you can show subsidiary proprietors (SPs) that the work was completed on site within a particular period.

    Looking after your estate’s maintenance doesn’t need you at a desk anymore. You can do it from your couch, or on the MRT between everything else on your schedule.

    Not sure how your MCST handles this today? Book a demo and we’ll help you work out where the gaps are.

  • 10 Questions to Ask When Interviewing a Managing Agent

    Managing Agent Checklist

    Hiring a managing agent (MA) is a bit like hiring for a job. You wouldn’t pick a candidate without asking questions and comparing answers, and the same goes for your MA. Price and past work usually carry the most weight, so they are on the list. But many councils stop there and choose after a short chat, then find out the gaps later.

    Council members are volunteers. Most of you have a day job, and few have ever interviewed an MA. Without a way to compare, the decision tends to come down to feel: who was friendlier, who spoke more confidently, who the last council used. A score gives you a more objective way to evaluate each prospect. It also gives the council something to point to when the members disagree.

    A score also helps when owners ask why you picked a particular MA. Some will question the choice, and “we felt they were the best” is a hard answer to defend. If you can show the questions you asked and the scores each MA got, you can tell subsidiary proprietors (SPs) that the decision was objective and not based on personal preference. Even owners who disagree can see how the council reached it.

    We’ve put together 10 questions you can ask each shortlisted MA. Rate each answer out of 10 and add up the score. Maximum is 100. Download the printable checklist (PDF) and bring it to the meeting.

    The questions

    1. Which similar estates do you manage, and can we speak to two of their council members? Which estates left you in the last 2 years, and why?
    2. What is your total fee, what does it cover, and what costs extra (for example AGM, EGM or extra site visits)?
    3. How do you track maintenance work and follow up on requests? What can the council see, and what is your usual turnaround?
    4. How do you check that completed work meets the spec, and who signs it off?
    5. What would you do differently from our previous MA? Please give an example.
    6. How do you plan long-term works, such as repainting or lift upgrades, and advise on the sinking fund?
    7. How do you handle an SP’s request or complaint from start to close? Who replies, and when?
    8. Who will be our building manager, and who covers when they are away? How do you evaluate them, and what if they underperform?
    9. How do you choose and evaluate vendors? Do you have any commercial relationship with them, and what if one underperforms?
    10. How and how often do you report to the council, and how do we get our records if we change MA?

    How to score

    Give 0 to 3 for a vague or generic answer, 4 to 6 for a reasonable answer with no example, and 7 to 10 for a clear process backed by a real example or evidence. If the MA can only say “we take it seriously”, that’s a 3.

    Have every council member at the meeting score separately, then compare. If two members score the same answer very differently, that’s worth a short discussion before you decide. The total won’t make the decision for you, but it will show you where the MAs really differ.

    Tips for running an MA interview

    Send the questions to each MA a few days before the meeting so they can prepare. Ask every MA the same questions in the same order. If the questions change from one interview to the next, the scores can’t be compared fairly.

    Ask for an example whenever an answer sounds general. “Can you tell us about a recent case?” is usually enough.

    Write notes on the checklist as you go, and score straight after each interview. If you wait until the end of the day, the MAs start to blur together and the first and last ones are remembered best.

    After the interviews

    Add up the totals and look at where the scores differ the most. A big gap on one question is often more useful than a small gap in the total. Call the references the MAs gave you and ask them the same questions.

    Keep the filled-in checklists. When owners ask how the decision was made, you can show them the questions, the scores and the reasons.

    MA-interview-questions-and-checklistDownload

  • Why MAs, Councils and Vendors Pull Apart, and What Keeps Them Together

    Why MAs, Councils and Vendors Pull Apart, and What Keeps Them Together

    In the last post I wrote about why estate management collaboration is a three-party problem: the MA, the council, and the vendors. Each party has its own organisation, its own priorities, and its own way of working.

    You could build a work order tool and make the BM’s life easier. You could build an invoice tool and make the vendor’s life easier. Each would work for the one party it was built for, but the problems from that post would still be there, because they sit between the parties, not inside any one of them.

    So we borrowed a playbook from how platforms work, and this is how we build Basementgrid.

    Start From the Destination, Not the Feature List

    We look at the final destination first, which is a job done properly and paid for. Then we choose the route and pick the actors involved. For each actor, we decide the minimum action they need to take at each stop. Then we plan the route with the fewest stops, and the required actions at each one.

    This isn’t about disturbing the usual process. The traditional flow was drawn up before PCs and mobile phones existed, and a lot of its steps are there because people have always done them that way. Some of those steps are work a phone can do for us now. Cutting stops means less disruption on the way to where everyone already wants to go.

    Three things shape how we decide who does what.

    1. Collaboration Starts by Cutting What Council Members and MAs Have to Do

    The honest truth is that many council and MA members are older, and attention and patience for software tends to be lower than for middle-aged users. They are also the minority on the council and MA side, so it’s almost impossible to ask them to learn a CMMS.

    So we cut what they have to do. Most processes have an AI suggestion and a one-tap action, and we shift the remaining work to the other parties, mainly the vendor manager and technician. The rule is less typing, more tapping. The AI does most of the data entry, and you do the checking.

    2. A Work Order Approval Process That Decides Once, Not Twice

    Take a common setup. The rules say a BM can issue a work order up to a certain amount, but a council member must approve the payment once the invoice comes in.

    If you’ve already set that rule, why approve the same job twice? On Basementgrid, setting the rule is the approval. The council authorises the payment up front, under the conditions they chose. A work order then works a bit like a smart contract. Once the BM has verified the work is done and the vendor has submitted the invoice, those conditions are met and the payment is already authorised. The approver just pays it in the bank app.

    This doesn’t take away the council’s say. If something looks dubious, the council can log their questions in the work order, or stop it before the BM verifies and accepts the work. What we remove is the second approval after everything has already checked out.

    I know some people won’t like this. “Your convenience isn’t everyone’s convenience” is something we say a lot. A process that works for all three parties will always ask someone to give up a habit. Uber didn’t ask taxi companies how they’d like to be disrupted, and we’re taking the same attitude to estate management.

    3. How to Get Vendors, Councils and Building Managers Working Together Without Training

    Every stakeholder belongs to a different organisation. Training doesn’t work, because nobody has an incentive to change how they do things unless they gain something from it. So each step in Basementgrid is pushed along by either a direct incentive or a guardrail.

    • Vendors: This is the simplest. If you want to get paid, follow the system. Show proof of work, submit your invoice, and get paid.
    • Council members: If there’s a red flag, you get notified. You approve works and pay without having to rely on someone else’s opinion.
    • Building managers: You save the paperwork and the time spent on documentation. It’s all in the app, and you only accept the work order once what you required has been submitted.

    Each party gets something in return for doing its part, and the system doesn’t move forward until the part is done.

    Where this leaves us

    None of this is a new idea in other industries. Platforms have worked this way for years. Estate management just hasn’t had one yet, and we’re building it.

    Fix the process, not the people.

  • Tripartite in Action: How Three Parties Get an Estate Maintained

    Tripartite in Action: How Three Parties Get an Estate Maintained

    Every MCST has the same three parties involved in getting a job done: the Managing Agent (MA), the council members, and the vendors. The MA coordinates, the council decides and approves the spending, and the vendor does the work. None of them can finish a job alone, and each one is waiting on the other two at some point.

    A Collaboration Tool for Estate Management, Not Just a Documentation Tool

    That’s why Basementgrid focuses on the actions each party has to take, and not only on documentation and record keeping. A fault gets reported, someone checks it, the vendor sends a quotation, the council approves, the work gets done, and the MA verifies it. Every step has an owner, and the app shows that person what they need to do next. We’re a collaboration tool first. The records are a result of people doing their part, not the goal.

    How an MCST Work Order Moves Between MA, Council and Vendor

    Take a leaking pipe in the basement carpark. The building manager logs the fault and does an initial check. The MA picks a vendor and asks for a quotation. The vendor sends it, linked to that fault check. The council reviews it with the photos and the evaluation in front of them, and approves. The vendor does the work and uploads proof from site. The MA verifies it and closes the job. Nobody has to dig through emails or scroll a chat group to find out where things stand.

    We went this way because of three problems we kept running into.

    Why CMMS Software Only Solves Half the Problem for MCSTs

    CMMS Software Limits

    Most of them are built for the MA, the building manager and an internal tech team. Very few MCSTs have the budget for an internal tech team. So the building manager ends up doing extra work to feed the system, while the vendors and council aren’t in it at all. After a while nobody uses it, and the team is back to spreadsheets and chat groups.

    Why WhatsApp Photos Fail as Proof of Work

    WhatsApp Photos as Proof of Work

    They aren’t GPS verified, so there’s no way to confirm where a photo was taken. They can’t be archived for future reference. And when the MA or council members change, the photos disappear with the old phones and chat groups. A year later, a new council can’t see what was done, when, or by whom. That matters when you’re deciding whether to repair something again or replace it. We wrote more about why vendor proof of work and record keeping keep falling through.

    Why MCST Maintenance Works Get Delayed

    Most MCSTs need a majority vote for amounts above the threshold, so approvals take time. Vendors forget to send the quotation. And when a quotation arrives by email with no reference to the original fault check and initial evaluation, the MA can’t tell what it’s for and has to chase. None of these is anyone being lazy. They’re gaps between people who all have other things to do.

    Shared Responsibility Between MA, Council Members and Vendors

    We don’t think any one party should carry all the record keeping or photo taking. Everyone depends on everyone else, so everyone shares the responsibility. The vendor takes the photos on site, and the MA reviews the work and approves it. The council can then make payment with confidence, because they can see the MA’s approval alongside the proof of work. When the burden is spread out, no single person becomes the bottleneck, and nobody is stuck cleaning up after the others. This is also why council members often take the blame when requests fall through. The required actions are mapped into the work process in the app, so nobody has to remember whose turn it is. See how it works.

    Estate Maintenance Is a Feedback Loop, Not a Linear Process

    MCST management work process loop

    Maintenance also doesn’t end. A lift gets serviced, then it needs servicing again. A defect gets fixed, then something else shows up. A linear process that starts with a fault and stops at payment doesn’t fit that, so we built the work process as a feedback loop. What happens on one job, such as the history, the quotation and the proof of work, feeds into the next one. Over time the estate builds up a record that belongs to the MCST, not to whoever happens to be managing it that year.

    Fix the Process, Not the People

    When a job goes wrong, the usual reaction is to blame the MA, the vendor, or the council. Most of the time the real problem is that nobody set up the steps clearly, and each party assumed someone else would handle it. Fix the process, not the people.

    Ready to try it with your MCST?

    Create a workspace and invite your MA, council members and vendors, or book a demo and we’ll walk you through a real job from fault report to sign-off.

  • “It Can’t Be Done” Usually Means “I’m Still Shopping for a Sharper Knife”

    “It Can’t Be Done” Usually Means “I’m Still Shopping for a Sharper Knife”

    It was a hot afternoon in Singapore, over 33 degrees and no air-con. We were talking about MCST record keeping, and how Basementgrid helps an estate manage its asset records. The vendor manager and vendor technician do the reporting and upload the proof of work themselves in the app, which keeps things simple for the building manager.

    The person across from me said, “That’s impossible. We can’t do that.”

    I hear this a lot, and I think it’s how most people react. If something isn’t done the way it’s always been done, it’s assumed it won’t work. That’s just the social norm.

    Here’s how I think about it. Say someone is looking for a sharper knife because he wants to cut meat and cook a meal for his guests. You tell him he doesn’t need a sharper knife, you can get the meal to his guests without one. He says no. He’s fixed on the knife, and the cooking, and the producing of the meal. The goal was never the knife. The goal was a good meal on the table.

    If he stopped and asked a few more questions, he might realise what he really wants is a home-cooked meal for his guests. Then fine, ordering in won’t work, and that’s a legitimate answer. But if he only holds onto the tool he’s hunting for, he’ll keep saying “it can’t be done.”

    The questions that get you out of this are simple ones. What are you actually trying to end up with? What happens today between the job being done and the record being filed? Who touches it along the way, and does each person add something, or just pass it on? When you answer those honestly, “impossible” often turns into “we’ve just never tried it that way.”

    “But What About Audit?”

    Basementgrid does break a few norms. Vendor managers and technicians take part in your record keeping. Council members can update records and make payments, instead of waiting for an accountant to create them. The best objection I hear is audit. But when you actually walk through it, most of those extra steps aren’t needed. A technician uploading proof of work from the job site is closer to the source than someone retyping it into a spreadsheet a week later. The same goes for having your in-house technician or building manager key the job into a CMMS after receiving the vendor’s report. That’s extra work for sure. It starts out well, then dies off a few months later when people get busy and stop keeping up. The extra process was only ever there because that’s how it was done before.

    Think about what an auditor wants to see. Who did the work, when and where it was done, who approved it, and how it was paid. Those are the things Basementgrid records as they happen: GPS-verified photos from the technician, the council’s approval, and the payment. Nobody has to reconstruct the story at year-end, because the record was made by the people who were there.

    We’ve seen the same reaction to the idea that a small estate can run without a managing agent. I wrote about why a 20-unit condo doesn’t need one, and for many councils the first response is the same: “that can’t work.” The numbers say otherwise.

    Sometimes “It Can’t Be Done” Is Right

    So what are we really solving for? Traditional CMMS software was built for internal teams with a facilities department, trained staff, and someone whose job is to maintain the system. That isn’t an MCST. An MCST is run by volunteer council members, with work done by an uncle-led contractor who runs his business off a phone, and managed by an MA company where most of the staff are retirees. Hand any of them a heavy system and they’ll say it can’t be done, and they’d be right. It can’t be done with that system.

    So the next time someone tells you it’s impossible, ask what they’re trying to achieve before you argue about the tool. Sometimes the answer is that they need a different tool. Often the goal was reachable all along and the norm was in the way.

    Want to see how it works in practice? Book a 15-minute demo or visit the help center.

    Keep reading from the Basement

  • Council Members Get the Blame When Requests Fall Through. Here’s Why It Keeps Happening.

    Council Members Get the Blame When Requests Fall Through. Here’s Why It Keeps Happening.

    Trust, but Verify

    Say you ask a colleague to fix a few errors in a document before it goes to a customer. You trust them. They’re capable, they said they’d do it, and you have your own work to get on with.

    But you still open the file before you hit send. Maybe they fixed three of the four errors. Maybe they fixed it in the wrong version. Maybe they got pulled into something else and never touched it. If the customer finds the mistake, they won’t email your colleague. They’ll email you. Your name is on it, so you’re the one who needs to check.

    Trusting someone to do the work doesn’t mean you skip confirming it’s done.

    Why Council Members Take the Blame

    I’ve spoken to many past MCST council members, and a lot of them say the same thing. They feel unappreciated. When something in the estate isn’t fixed, the tenants and residents come after them. Over time they stop seeing why they’re on the council at all. All they see is the downside, so they quit.

    I think this is very common, and the cause is uncomfortable. A request made by word of mouth usually isn’t followed up. A resident mentions a broken light to a council member, who mentions it to the building manager in passing, who says “will do”. Then everyone gets busy and it’s forgotten. Nobody was lazy on purpose.

    The one who feels it is the person who asked. They don’t know the request got lost. They only know it never got fixed, and they blame the council member.

    So there’s either no system to track requests, or there is one and nobody uses it. Most estates have been told at some point to log everything in the system. Few actually do, because most people don’t like writing things down. That’s just human nature, and no reminder from the council will change it.

    How Basementgrid Differs from Other CMMS Tools

    Most CMMS tools assume the team will log things diligently. They’re built for internal teams with a facilities manager who’s paid to fill in the system. An MCST depends on outside vendors, volunteer council members and a building manager who might be juggling several estates. The system only works if everyone remembers to use it. When it doesn’t, you get what we call ghost maintenance: work gets done, but nobody records it in a way the MCST can trust.

    We took the opposite approach: make the system easier than not using it.

    • Reporting a fault takes a photo and a line of text. Scan the QR code at the location, or let the building manager snap it on site.
    • Every role has one job at each stage, so a work order moves from the building manager to the council, to the vendor, and back to whoever verifies and pays it, without anyone having to chase. If it sits too long, reminders go out automatically. Here’s how the 5 roles work together.
    • Payment is tied to proof. The technician clocks in with GPS and submits photos taken on site (no uploads from the photo library). Work above the council’s approval threshold needs an approver’s sign-off before it goes ahead.
    QR code payment is tagged to approved work order amount and vendor UEN

    Nobody has to believe a status update. The record is there to check. That’s “verify” built into the process, so council members don’t have to chase every request themselves. It’s also what we mean by “Fix the process, not the people.”

    Can Basementgrid Protect Council Members from Legal Liability?

    The other thing I hear is fear. Council members are volunteers, yet they can be accused of breaking the law, or of not acting on something they should have. That’s a lot to carry for an unpaid role.

    I want to be careful here. Basementgrid can’t take away legal responsibility, and we aren’t a law firm. What it does is give you a record. When someone asks “did the council know?” or “what did you do about it?”, you can show:

    • when the issue was reported, and by whom
    • who it was assigned to and when
    • who approved the spend, at what amount, and when
    • what proof of work was submitted
    • that lift servicing, fire safety and warranty deadlines were tracked, with reminders sent before they lapsed

    Without a record, you’re relying on memory and a WhatsApp scroll. With one, you can show that the council acted in good faith and followed a process. The record also stays with the estate when the MA or the council changes, so the next council doesn’t inherit gaps.

    Start with One Work Order

    If you’re a council member thinking of quitting, the problem probably isn’t you. It’s that you’ve been holding the follow-up in your head. You can set up a workspace in about 3 minutes and run a first work order with your existing vendor. Book a 15-minute demo or try it free.

  • The Other 30%: How a Self-Managed MCST Handles Accounts, AGMs and Minutes Without an MA

    The Other 30%: How a Self-Managed MCST Handles Accounts, AGMs and Minutes Without an MA

    In our last post we went through the 70% of a managing agent’s job, which is maintenance coordination, and why a system can do most of it. The other 30% is admin: the books, the AGM, and the council meeting minutes. This is the part people assume they need an MA for, so let’s go through it.

    Good news: none of it needs a full-time person. All three can be outsourced or largely automated, and the costs are lower than most councils expect.

    1. Accounting: hand it to a firm that does this all day

    This is the easiest one. Plenty of accounting firms in Singapore already specialise in MCST bookkeeping, for example WLP and STAC. You send them the paperwork, they keep the books and prepare the financial statements.

    It’s also what smaller MA companies do. A small MA doesn’t have enough clients to justify a full-time accounting staff member, so they outsource it too. The logic is simple. An accounting firm with dozens of MCSTs as clients can charge each one less, because the work is repeatable and they spread their overhead across all of them. A single condo, or a single small MA, can’t get that economy of scale on its own. So when you outsource directly, you get the same deal the MA would have gotten, minus the MA’s markup.

    As a rough guide, budget about $600 a month for the bookkeeping, plus about $1,000 a year for compiling the financial statements.

    The accounts also need to be audited every year, so include that in the budget too. For a 128-unit estate, the audit costs about $1,000 a year.

    2. MCST AGM: outsource the hosting, and budget for the paperwork around it

    An AGM has a lot of moving parts. Someone has to prepare the agenda and resolutions, host and chair the meeting, and write the minutes afterwards. Most volunteer councils don’t want to do all of that, and a chair who isn’t experienced can make a long meeting even longer.

    You can outsource it. For example, A4 International offers a service to conduct and chair the AGM or EOGM at around $1,000 per year.

    Read the fine print, though. That fee doesn’t cover preparing the AGM documents, distributing the AGM booklet, technical support, or the presentation slides. Set aside another $500 to $800 for those. So a realistic AGM budget is about $1,500 to $1,800 a year, and that’s for a fully outsourced meeting.

    3. Council meeting minutes: record, transcribe, let AI draft, secretary confirms

    This is the one that’s changed the most recently. Here’s the workflow:

    1. Record the council meeting and run it through a transcription tool such as myminutes.ai.
    2. Feed the transcript into an AI tool like Claude and ask it to turn the transcript into a formal set of minutes.
    3. The council secretary reads it, corrects anything that’s wrong, and confirms it before it gets sent out.

    Step 3 matters. The AI drafts, but a person still signs off on what goes on record. That’s the same check you’d want on minutes written by hand.

    What used to take an MA staff member hours of note-taking and formatting now takes a fraction of the time. The output is also arguably more consistent, because the format doesn’t change depending on who was taking notes that month.

    What it adds up to

    Here’s what the admin side costs per year when you outsource it, using the figures above:

    ItemCost per year
    Bookkeeping ($600 x 12 months)$7,200
    Financial compilation$1,000
    Audit (128-unit estate)$1,000
    AGM chairing and hosting$1,000
    AGM documents, booklet distribution and slides$500 to $800
    Total$10,700 to $11,000

    Council meeting minutes aren’t in the table because the cost is small. A transcription tool and an AI subscription cost far less than what an MA charges for the same job, and the secretary’s review time is free.

    Compare that total with what you’re paying an MA today. If the MA’s management fee covers more than this list plus the maintenance side, you have a clear number to bring to your next council meeting.

    Putting it together

    Between the 70% from the last post and the 30% here, there isn’t a piece of a managing agent’s job that a self-managed council can’t cover. Maintenance runs on a system, accounting and AGMs go to specialists you pay directly, and minutes take minutes instead of hours.

    Will it be the right call for every estate? No. Some councils really don’t have anyone with the time, and that’s what the MA option is for. But the choice should come from what your council needs, not from a belief that the law or the workload forces you to hire one.

    If you want to see how the maintenance side works, book a demo or get started here.

  • Your MA Recommends the Work, Does the Work, and Signs It Off. Who Checks?

    Your MA Recommends the Work, Does the Work, and Signs It Off. Who Checks?

    Have you heard of the principal-agent problem? It shows up whenever one person hires another to act for them, and the two don’t want exactly the same thing. The agent usually knows more than the principal and can’t be watched all the time, so the agent’s choices end up suiting the agent a little more than the principal. In an MCST, the council is the principal and the managing agent is the agent, which makes MCST managing agent oversight harder than it looks.

    The MA advises and executes the work

    In most professions, the person who recommends what to do is not the person who does it. You hire an architect to design and a contractor to build. You hire a consultant to recommend and someone else to implement.

    In an MCST, the MA does both. It tells the council what needs fixing, which vendor to use, how much it should cost, and when to do it. Then it runs the job, checks the work, and processes the payment. Planning and execution sit with the same organisation, so nobody is positioned to ask “did we really need to do this, and was it done properly?”

    When the same party writes the brief, delivers the work and signs it off, the council ends up reviewing a conclusion rather than an analysis.

    MA fees don’t reward the best advice

    Consulting firms charge well because they are paid for the quality of the advice. MA fees in Singapore are not set up that way. The work is operational and the fees are modest. Where there is a year-end bonus or a performance target, it is usually tied to keeping the account, not to whether the estate is better off.

    So the advice that is easiest and safest for the MA often differs from the advice that is best for the estate. Sticking with the familiar vendor avoids friction. Recommending the bigger job can be easier than defending a smaller one. Not raising an awkward issue keeps the relationship smooth. None of this requires anyone to act in bad faith. People respond to the incentives in front of them, and the council would do the same in their shoes.

    MCST council members are volunteers with little at stake

    A company’s board has a reason to care. Directors are paid, hold shares, or have a reputation riding on the outcome. Even in charities and religious organisations, volunteers get something back, whether it’s a sense of purpose, a community, or a cause they believe in.

    MCST council members mostly get none of this. There’s no pay and no equity. Whether the estate is run well or badly is rarely felt personally, beyond the usual annoyances every resident has. Most are busy people who took the role because someone had to. It’s not realistic to expect volunteers like this to dig into quotations, chase defects, and cross-check invoices on top of their day jobs.

    So the principal who is supposed to keep the agent honest has the least time, the least information and the least reason to do it. That is the dilemma.

    What actually helps: independent MCST council oversight

    We don’t think the answer is replacing the MA or asking council members to try harder. People change MAs all the time and the same problems tend to follow. Our view is to fix the process, not the people.

    The idea is simple: give the council an independent record of what’s happening, one that doesn’t depend on the MA telling them. Information is power, and right now most of it sits on one side of the table.

    Basementgrid acts as that independent layer, an operating system for the estate that sits alongside whoever the current MA is. Around 70% of an MA’s work is day-to-day maintenance coordination, which we’ve written about here. That work runs through the app:

    • Every job has a record. A work order is raised, assigned to a vendor, and tracked through each status, so the council can see what’s happening without asking.
    • Spending above the council’s threshold needs approval inside the app. No more “I thought you approved it” and “I thought you knew” after the fact.
    • Vendors submit quotes and invoices in the system. The amounts and documents are on file, and the invoice is matched against the approved work order.
    • Proof of work comes first. Vendors clock in with GPS verification and submit photos and a completion record before the job can be reviewed and paid.
    • The history stays with the estate. If the MA changes, the records don’t leave with them.

    The MA still does its job, and that part is light: creating work orders and verifying completed work in the app. What changes is that the work now leaves a trail the council can see. Council members don’t have to review every job. They just have to know that the information is there when they want it, and that approvals actually passed through them.

    That’s the part that closes the gap. The MA can still advise and execute, but it no longer does so in a way the council can’t see. The volunteers don’t have to become experts, because the process does the watching.

    If you’re on an MCST council and want to see how it works, you can set up a workspace in about 3 minutes and run a first work order with your existing vendor. Book a 15-minute demo or check the help centre.

    FAQs

    What is the principal-agent problem in an MCST? It’s the gap between what the council wants and what the managing agent has an incentive to do, made worse because the MA both advises and executes.

    How can an MCST council oversee its managing agent? By keeping an independent record of work orders, quotes, approvals and proof of work, so the council doesn’t depend on the MA to report what happened.

    Do we need to change our MA to fix this? Usually not. Changing agents tends to carry the same problems over unless the process itself changes.

  • The 70% Problem: Why Most Condos Think They Need a Managing Agent (They Don’t)

    The 70% Problem: Why Most Condos Think They Need a Managing Agent (They Don’t)

    BCA is pretty clear about this on their own site: a Managing Agent “may be employed” by an MCST — it’s optional, not a requirement under the Building Maintenance and Strata Management Act. The council is empowered, and expected, to manage its own affairs. What trips most councils up isn’t the law. It’s that maintaining shared property — lifts, pools, water tanks, cleaning, security, landscaping — genuinely takes a system to run well, and most self-managed estates never build one.

    We broke this down before: an MA’s job is roughly 70% maintenance coordination and 30% admin work (books, minutes, AGMs). We briefly covered how to handle the 30% with outsourced bookkeeping and AI-assisted minutes. This article is about the 70% — the shared-facility maintenance most councils assume needs an MA’s staff to chase. It doesn’t. It needs a system.

    And it’s worth being precise about what “system” means here. Basementgrid isn’t a checklist you hand your building manager and hope he ticks off. A checklist still depends on someone remembering to open it, fill it in honestly, and flag it if something’s wrong. The maintenance process — schedules, thresholds, sign-offs, proof of work — is built into the platform itself. It’s not a document your BM checks. It’s the thing that checks on your building for you. That’s the difference between hoping your BM caught something and actually having eyes on every lift, pool, and vendor whether or not anyone remembered to look.

    1. Lifts: The One Thing You Can’t Afford to Get Wrong

    Monthly Lift Maintenance

    Lifts are the one area where the compliance stakes are highest and the least optional. BCA requires all lifts to be maintained by a BCA-registered Fixed Installation contractor, at a minimum monthly if no manufacturer schedule applies, plus an annual inspection and test by that contractor with an independent examiner present. Get this wrong and it’s not just a fine — it’s a safety issue and it affects your Permit to Operate (PTO).

    On Basementgrid, every lift is set up as an asset with its own digital record: commissioning date, warranty status, and a full history of every work order raised against it. When the monthly service or annual test comes due, the reminder goes to whoever’s tracking compliance instead of living in someone’s head or a shared spreadsheet. And because every WO ties an amount to a specific piece of work, the council can see that the invoice paid to the lift contractor actually matches what was issued and done — not just “lift maintenance, $X” on a bank statement with no paper trail behind it.

    2. Cleaning Contractors: Paying for a Checklist, Not a Promise

    Cleaning contracts usually promise a scope — daily lobby cleaning, weekly common corridor mopping, quarterly deep clean — that nobody actually checks against. Basementgrid lets you build a custom checklist matched to what’s in the contract, whether it runs monthly or quarterly, so the contractor has a defined list to complete rather than a vague expectation, and the council has something concrete to hold them to.

    Once the cleaners mark the checklist complete, it goes to the BM for review before anything gets billed. If the BM isn’t satisfied, they can reject it and send it back for rework — no invoice goes out until the BM actually accepts the work. Only once it’s accepted can the cleaning vendor submit their invoice. Every step, checklist completion, rejection, rework, acceptance, is timestamped, so there’s no after-the-fact argument over whether the work was done properly or on time.

    3. Security: From Watchman to Watch System

    Security: From Watchman to Watch System

    If your estate has a stationed guard, patrols usually turn up faults that never get logged anywhere formal — a broken gate sensor, a flickering corridor light, a leaking pipe in the basement. On Basementgrid, the guard can report a fault directly during patrol, and it converts straight into a work order that goes to the right vendor. The guard can hold the role of raising the WO itself, so a fault gets logged the moment it’s spotted rather than waiting for the BM to be free to do it. Acceptance of the completed work still stays with the BM, so the guard’s job is just to flag it fast, not to sign off on it. That split keeps the BM’s workload lighter without losing the checkpoint that matters. For anything above a set spending threshold, it doesn’t go out automatically — it needs a majority vote from council members first, using the same approval threshold that already governs other spending on the platform. Small stuff gets fixed fast; anything material still needs the council’s sign-off.

    Worth noting too: CCTV is increasingly the new guard. The Singapore Police Force itself has been moving in this direction in our own neighbourhoods, expanding its PolCam network to more than 200,000 cameras with officers running “virtual patrols” from a command centre rather than relying solely on boots on the ground. If your estate is weighing whether it still needs a stationed watchman or concierge, that’s the direction worth considering — CCTV coverage feeding into a system like Basementgrid, rather than a person whose only record of a patrol is their word for it.

    The one gap CCTV alone doesn’t close is telling a false alarm from a real one before it escalates. For that, the best bet is still a resident volunteer in the community, someone who can eyeball the footage or the site itself and confirm whether it’s worth acting on, rather than every alert automatically triggering a callout.

    4. Water Tank Washing: The Annual Deadline Nobody Remembers Until It’s Late

    Annual water tank washing

    This one has real teeth. PUB requires every MCST with a water storage tank to engage a Licensed Plumber to inspect, and where needed clean, disinfect and certify the tank at least once every 12 months. Miss the deadline and it’s an offence under the Public Utilities (Water Supply) Regulations — a fine of up to $10,000, or up to 12 months’ imprisonment, or both. PUB sends reminder emails, but they explicitly tell MCSTs not to rely on that alone.

    Basementgrid tracks each tank’s certification date and reminds council members well ahead of renewal, not the week it’s due, so there’s enough runway to engage a Licensed Plumber and get it done instead of scrambling against the deadline.

    5. Swimming Pool: One Missed Test Away from a Compliance Headache

    NEA licenses swimming pools as Aquatic Facilities, and licensees have to send water samples to an SAC-accredited lab and submit results to NEA on a regular cycle — monthly submissions are the norm, alongside daily on-site testing for things like pH and chlorine. It’s easy for this to quietly lapse when it’s sitting on a pool contractor’s checklist and nobody’s cross-checking it. Basementgrid tracks the pool contractor’s testing and submission cadence against what NEA expects, so the council can catch a missed cycle before it becomes a compliance problem instead of finding out after the fact.

    6. Landscaping, Pest Control, Electrical: Proof They Actually Showed Up

    These are lower-stakes but higher-frequency — monthly visits that either happen properly or quietly don’t. Every vendor clock-in on Basementgrid is GPS-verified against the property, so there’s a real record that the landscaper, pest control technician, or electrician actually showed up rather than just submitting an invoice. Anything they flag as needing repair goes through the same work order flow as everything else — one process, not a different tracking method for every vendor type.

    7. Other Vendors: Never Start From Zero Again

    Need a new contractor for something that doesn’t fit an existing category? Every vendor that’s registered on Basementgrid, across any estate, can be searched and asked for a quote directly through the platform instead of starting from a WhatsApp recommendation and hoping. We’ve written more about how the vendor side of Basementgrid works if you want the full picture.

    No Ghost Maintenance: Every Job, Traceable End to End

    Tie all seven together and the pattern is the same process, repeated: a designated council member acting as building manager creates the work order, assigns it, and verifies the work with proof uploaded by the vendor — all from a phone, no separate system per vendor type, and no reliance on anyone remembering to check a list. Once a WO is issued, its details are locked — scope, amount, vendor, can’t be quietly edited after the fact by either side, so there’s no room for a dispute over what was actually agreed.

    Basementgrid Work Order Workflow

    And it closes the loop all the way to payment. Residents can submit a work request in the app; the BM approves it and issues it to a vendor. Once the vendor finishes and uploads proof, the BM verifies it, and the invoice generates a PayNow QR matched exactly to the work order amount and the vendor’s UEN. Council members scan and pay — no manual reconciliation, no guessing whether an invoice matches what was actually approved. If something stalls, the activity log shows exactly where, so nobody’s left wondering if it’s the BM, the vendor, or the council holding things up.

    Still need someone to actually be the BM? That’s fair — not every council has a volunteer with the time. Book a demo with us and we’ll put you in touch with a Managing Agent who already runs on Basementgrid, so you get the system without needing to find the person yourself.

    Prefer to set it up yourself first? Get started here.

    Next up: the other 30% — bookkeeping, AGMs, minutes, and compliance paperwork — and how a self-managed council handles that without an MA either.