There are two reasons why we need an Administrator
The Unit Titles Regulations 2011 requires that name of the person who "created" your LTMP is recorded in the document. We have published our thoughts on this in the help page relating to compliance.
We need someone who is delegated to edit and be the caretaker of the plan on behalf of the body corporate.
The Role of the Administrator
Apart from the need to appoint someone so that the body corporate complies with the legislation, every body corporate would like to be confident that:
Someone is taking responsibility for accurately recording the body corporate’s intentions regarding long-term maintenance and reporting back with the cash requirements to fund them.
The system this person uses, is robust, accurate and secure.
While it must be secure, owners or other approved persons need to be granted access to the online version and someone needs to manage that process on behalf of the body corporate. See more information on this help page on adding users to your body corporate account.
The system used needs to be accessible and transferable. If the Administrator wants to be relieved of the role, or removed by the body corporate, another person can be appointed to seamlessly take over.
The system is enduring. Despite having the right to edit the body corporate’s plan at any time, the Administrator cannot delete the body corporate account. The data belongs to the body corporate and the current Administrator is only a temporary caretaker.
There are two levels of Adminstrator
We have provided two levels of Administrators - the Primary Administrator and other Administrators. If you want you can have just one, the Primary Administrator. But you can also have many other Administrators who can edit the plan in order to spread the load.
There can be only one Primary Administrators but there can be many other Administrators. While the other Administrators can edit the plan, the Primary Administrator has other duties and accepts the role defined in the legislation as the person who created the plan. However because the Primary Administrator must be able to change over time, our interpretation is that the Primary Administrator is the person who created (or supervised the creation of) the "latest iteration" of the plan.
Changing the Primary Administrator
The Primary Administrator can be changed at any time and the process is managed under the users section in the dashboard for each BC. Any Administrator can make themselves or another user the Primary Administrator.
Who should be chosen to be the Primary Administrator?
It doesn’t really matter who is chosen to be the Primary Administrator. There just needs to be one to satisfy the requirements of the legislation. However, because that person is accepting some responsibility, they should have some authority over what is recorded in the plan.
Note: The person who creates the body corporate account in Plan Heaven is automatically appointed the Primary Administrator and will remain so until someone else takes over.
Think about sharing the duties
The provision to have many Administrators provides for the sharing of the load. For example you might have one committee member getting estimates from one contractor while another committee member speaks with others. The person who manages your finances might be the best one to edit the funding table.
You can also get a contractor to set up your plan - with or without recommendations - and then hand the role of Primary Administrator over to the chairperson.
What we have done is tried to make the system as flexible and useful as possible.
Recording of edits
Because there can be many Administrators who have the ability to edit the plan, we have built an edit time stamp feature which records which Administrator made the last edit and when. This doesn't appear in the printed reports but is displayed in the Plan Settings panel in the dashboard and can be viewed by all Administrators. The names of all Administrators are also listed in this panel.
It's the body corporate's LTMP
Finally, we must remember that it is the body corporate’s LTMP. Not the Primary Administrator’s. The role of the Primary Administrator is to supervise the preparation of a draft LTMP and make it available for adoption at a general meeting of the body corporate. Once the body corporate has adopted the plan, the weight of responsibility will be removed from the Primary Administrator and apart from ensuring the final file in Plan Heaven remains identical to the one approved by the body corporate, the Primary Administrator will have little to do until the next review.
Also if a new Primary Administrator takes over "mid-term", presuming there have been no changes made to the account in Plan Heaven since the plan was approved, they are taking over the body corporate’s approved LTMP and equally will have little to do until the next review.
If you have any feedback or questions please use the feedback form.
The Plan Heaven team.
Disclaimer. Plan Heaven is not qualified in law and any comments made on this website are only the opinion of Plan Heaven and should not be regarded as legal advice. Our comments are merely providing some thoughts on how the legislation might be interpreted and how we go about attempting to meet its requirements. You should not rely on this information in isolation and do you own homework and at all times if you wish to be sure of your position relating to legal matters you should seek advice from a suitably qualified lawyer.