By Dean Lerner, CMCA, AMCA AM , Sudler Prop
y
perty Ma
S, PCAM, CPM M nagemen
Until Something Gets BROKEN
PARTY IT’S NOT A mentt
Most of us have heard this phrase before, “It’s not a party until something gets broken.” Usually that is a way of coping with issues than happen to a host’s home during a gathering. Often the bigger the issue is, the more this idiom makes sense. In property management, the irony of something breaking being equated to validating a “party” makes this most insincere expression true in its perverse meaning. If you consider the day-to-day processes of running a multi-family organization as the party and emergencies as the “something that gets broken,” you will appreciate why property managers prefer their “parties” to be as boring as possible.
Emergencies are going to happen. Machinery breaks, pipes burst, and elevators get stuck between floors. Many emergencies are routine to deal with; however, there are exceptions that require extraordinary effort and planning… think fire, flood and smoke damage. The best way to handle these types of events is advanced planning, on-going training and education.
Having dealt with several major high-rise fires over the past 20 years, I can tell you that events like fires always test the advance work of planning.
Plaza on DeWitt:
I became responsible for the management of the Plaza on DeWitt Condominium Association (POD) in 2003. POD is a 46-story, 407-unit condominium association, converted from a rental apartment building in 1975. It was the first building in the world to implement tubular construction (1965), which is now used in virtually all tall buildings including the Willis Tower, the John Hancock Center and the Burj Khalifa. POD is the tallest building in Chicago clad in travertine marble. On December 10, 2009, the coldest night of that year, a fire broke out in unit 3601; taking the life of 1 dear owner and injuring 12 others. It took 1/3rd of Chicago’s firefighters to extinguish the blaze. The fire, smoke and water damage affected 50% of the units.
36 | COMMON INTEREST® Standing on the street
with the fire still blazing and waiting for the balance of my urgently called team of supervisors, managers, building staff and support vendors to arrive, I tried to calm evacuated residents, coordinate refuge in neighboring building’s lobbies and deal with the media. While waiting for the Fire Commander to turn the building over to us, we began implementing our pre-planned emergency program. A dedicated voicemail line was established. The number was later published for all owners to listen to daily updates on repair progress. We gathered hotel numbers for displaced residences. The lobby, hallways, stairwells and 100 homes were filled with water. Another 100 homes had smoke damage. The management office ceiling was raining
A Publication of CAI-Illinois Chapter
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
