Questions to ask any after-hours phone option for a strata portfolio

Whether nights are covered by a manager on an on-call rotation, an answering service that passes calls on, or an AI voice desk, the same questions decide whether a resident at 2 a.m. gets a real answer.

The eight questions

1. Does every call get answered at any hour?
2. Who decides what counts as urgent, and where is that written down?
3. What happens when the on-call person does not reply, and how long before a backup contact is tried?
4. Can it reach your approved vendors, and under what spending limit?
5. When there is immediate danger, is the caller told to call 911 first?
6. Does the resident hear what happens next before the call ends?
7. What does your team receive in the morning, and is it one report or a stack of messages?
8. Can it show you the owners' notice the Act requires after emergency spending? Section 98 of the Strata Property Act says owners must be told as soon as feasible.

How rushproof answers them

rushproof builds an after-hours desk for property teams. Its answers follow the order of the questions above.

1. Yes. rushproof answers your emergency line at any hour.
2. Water at a listed building is an emergency. Fire, smoke, gas, an injury or someone trapped means 911 first.
3. Each person is rung in turn and asked to press 1 twice to accept. If no one accepts, managers and the office are rung for 3 more rounds, about 25 minutes.
4. rushproof rings the plumbers on your list. It does not track spending limits.
5. Yes.
6. Yes. Water callers also get the shut-off steps by text, and a tracker link once someone accepts.
7. One email at 7:02 a.m. Vancouver time.
8. rushproof does not write the owners' notice. It keeps printable incident reports you can work from.

rushproof does not replace emergency services, building professionals or your management judgment.

You can test it on your own portfolio first. We load your buildings, plumbers, on-call managers and office numbers into a live desk, then run one made-up overnight leak through it. You call the desk, test the escalation and receive the morning report. Then you receive a written scope and quote.

Sources

• Strata Property Act, Part 6, section 98 (unapproved expenditures), BC Laws.

This page is general information about BC strata rules, written for property managers. It is not legal advice. Your strata corporation may have filed bylaws that differ from the Standard Bylaws, so check your own.