For strata councils
Your depreciation report flagged the parkade membrane.
Here is what that line item actually means, what the scope involves, how it phases around residents, and what your engineer will require before anyone prices it.
The line item
A membrane on a depreciation report is a structural warning, not a cosmetic one.
When a depreciation report lists the parkade traffic membrane with a remaining service life of a few years, it is easy to read that as a resurfacing job that can wait. It is not. The membrane is the only barrier between road salt, water and the reinforcing steel inside your suspended slab. Once it stops working, chloride-laden water reaches the rebar, the steel corrodes, corrosion products expand, and the expansion forces the cover concrete off from the inside. That is what spalling is.
The financial consequence is the part councils are rarely shown. Replacing a membrane on sound concrete is a predictable, priceable project. Replacing a membrane after five more winters of exposure means the same project plus structural concrete repair — and the repair quantity, not the membrane, is what blows up parkade budgets.
The cost driver on a parkade project is almost never the coating. It is how much concrete has to be cut out and rebuilt first. Every year a failed membrane stays in place, that quantity grows. This is the entire reason a depreciation report flags it early.
The rules
What BC now requires of your strata corporation.
The depreciation report rules changed materially in 2024, and the deferral route councils used to rely on is gone. Strata corporations with five or more lots must obtain a depreciation report on a five-year cycle, and the annual three-quarter vote that previously allowed a corporation to defer getting one has been eliminated.
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Who must comply | Strata corporations with five or more lots. Corporations with four or fewer lots are exempt |
| How often | On a five-year cycle |
| Deferral | No longer available — the annual 3/4 vote to defer has been removed |
| Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley, Capital Regional District | Report required by July 1, 2026 |
| Rest of BC, incl. Southern Gulf Islands and Bowen Island | Report required by July 1, 2027 |
| Who may prepare it | Since July 1, 2025, only designated professionals — professional engineers, architects and architectural technologists, applied science technologists, accredited appraisers, certified reserve planners, and professional quantity surveyors |
| What it must contain | A physical component inventory with 30-year service life estimates, 30-year financial forecasting, at least three cash-flow funding models, the current contingency reserve fund balance, and an executive summary |
Summarised from the Province of British Columbia's published depreciation report requirements. Confirm current details with your strata manager or legal advisor — we install coatings, we are not advisors on the Strata Property Act.
The practical effect for councils in Metro Vancouver is that the deadline has now passed, reports are in hand, and a large number of them flag parkade membranes at the same time. That matters for a reason nobody mentions: when every strata in the region is tendering parkade work in the same window, the councils that scoped early get better prices and better crews.
The scope
What a parkade membrane project actually contains.
Councils are often handed a single number with no breakdown, which makes it impossible to tell a thorough bid from a thin one. A complete scope has six parts, and the ones that get quietly omitted are usually three, four and six.
- Condition assessment and cores
Sounding the slab to map delamination, small cores to establish the existing build-up and thickness, adhesion testing, and a review of drainage and joints. This tells you whether you can overlay the existing system or must remove it — a decision worth a large fraction of the project cost, and one that cannot be made from a walkthrough.
- Removal of the failed system
Mechanical removal of the existing membrane where it is not sound, back to concrete that will take a bond. Diamond grinding or shot blasting to produce the surface profile the new system's manufacturer requires — not a swept floor, a measured profile.
- Concrete repair
Removing delaminated concrete to solid material, cleaning and treating exposed rebar, and rebuilding with a compatible repair mortar. This is the quantity nobody can fix in advance and the one that should be priced as a unit rate against a provisional quantity, measured as work proceeds.
- Joints, drains and detailing
Expansion joints re-detailed, drains reset so the membrane terminates into them properly, membrane turn-ups at curbs and walls, and cracks detailed with reinforcing fabric where movement is expected. Leaks almost always start at a detail, not in the middle of a field.
- Membrane installation
Primer, base coat, intermediate coat in ramps and turning areas, and an aggregate-broadcast wear coat. Applied at documented coverage rates within the manufacturer's recoat windows and ambient limits.
- Line marking and reinstatement
Stall lines, numbers, directional arrows, accessible stall markings and safety striping reinstated to the layout the building actually needs — which is the moment to fix a layout that never worked, since the lines are coming off anyway.
Living with it
Phasing is what decides whether residents can tolerate the project.
No residential parkade can close for three weeks. So the scope we write starts from a different question than how fast can this be done — it starts from how many stalls can this building afford to lose at once, and works backwards from there.
Common patterns are quarter-level phases on larger parkades, single-bay phases where parking is already tight, and night work on ramps and entrances where a daytime closure is impossible. Finer phasing means a longer overall calendar and a slightly higher price, because crews mobilise and demobilise more often. That is a real trade-off and councils should make it deliberately rather than discover it.
The other half of phasing is communication. Residents tolerate disruption they were told about and resent identical disruption they were not. A phase plan issued to owners in advance, with dates and stall numbers, prevents most of the complaints a parkade project generates.
- Typical phasing
- Quarter-level or single bay
- Ramps & entrances
- Night work available
- Return to traffic
- 24 hours per phase, typical
- Access
- Maintained throughout
Your consultant
What the engineer will require before anyone prices the work.
On a full membrane replacement, expect your building envelope consultant or structural engineer to produce a specification, drawings marking phase areas and repair zones, and a tender package that makes every bidder price the same scope. During construction they will typically require pre-installation substrate sign-off, documented ambient and substrate conditions, coverage rate records per phase, adhesion testing, and a deficiency walk before each phase is accepted.
We work to that documentation as a matter of course, because a manufacturer warranty that cannot be evidenced is not worth the paper. If your consultant has already specified a particular system, we install exactly what is specified. If we think a specified system is wrong for the deck we are standing on, we will say so before the work starts rather than after it fails.
A council question worth asking every bidder: what do you do when the repair quantity comes in over the provisional allowance? The answer separates contractors who have run strata work from contractors who have not. It should involve the consultant measuring and verifying, not a phone call telling you the price went up.
Questions
What strata councils ask us.
Our depreciation report says the membrane has five years of life left. Do we have to act now?
Not necessarily act, but plan now. A depreciation report gives a remaining-service-life estimate from a visual review, not a guarantee. Five years is enough time to budget properly, get a condition assessment done, and phase the work — which is the difference between a planned project and a special levy. What you should not do is treat it as five years of nothing required, because the concrete repair scope underneath a failing membrane grows every winter it stays exposed.
Do we need an engineer, or can we just get contractor quotes?
For anything beyond a small localised repair on a suspended slab, get a consultant involved. An engineer or building envelope consultant produces a scope that all bidders price identically, which is the only way a strata council can compare quotes honestly. It also protects the council under its section 72 repair obligations. We will tell you when we think a job genuinely does not need one — but on a full parkade membrane replacement it almost always does.
How much of the parkade has to close, and for how long?
That is set by phasing, not by the size of the parkade. We commonly work quarter-level at a time, sometimes single bays, so residents keep access throughout. Each phase area is out of use for the duration of that phase's prep, repair, membrane build and cure. Ramps and entrances that cannot close during the day get done at night. The total calendar duration is longer when you phase more finely — that is the trade you make for keeping the building working.
Why is the concrete repair quantity an allowance instead of a fixed price?
Because nobody knows the true extent of delaminated concrete until the old system comes off and the slab is sounded. Any contractor who gives you a fixed spall quantity before demolition is either padding it heavily or setting up a change order. The honest structure is a unit rate per square foot of repair with a provisional quantity, measured and verified by the consultant as the work proceeds. Ask every bidder how they handle this — the answers will tell you a lot.
Can we do the parkade in stages across two budget years?
Often yes, and for many strata corporations it is the right answer financially. Splitting by level or by zone across fiscal years spreads the cost and can avoid a special levy. The caveats are that mobilisation gets paid twice, prices move between years, and you want the worst-condition area done first rather than the most visible one. We will lay out the scope in a way that splits cleanly if that is the direction the council wants.
What happens if we do nothing?
Water keeps reaching the reinforcing steel. Corroding rebar expands, forces the cover concrete off, and what was a membrane project becomes a structural concrete repair project at several times the cost. That is the actual reason depreciation reports flag membranes early — not because the coating looks tired, but because the coating is the only thing protecting the structure underneath it.
Related
Go deeper.
Parkade waterproofing
How we install traffic-bearing membranes on occupied buildings, phased so the parkade keeps working.
Learn more →Coating systems compared
Tremco, Sika, MAPEI and BASF traffic membranes — what actually separates them, and how we choose.
Learn more →Concrete repair
Spall and delamination repair, rebar treatment and compatible repair mortars.
Learn more →Next step
Send us the depreciation report page.
Email the relevant pages and a few photos of the deck. We will tell you what the scope likely involves and whether you need a consultant before we would quote it.