Starting Up New Connections

In November 2018, I was called by Ben Bar from Allstate HOA Management regarding referrals to HOA’s for consulting programs. His main contact, Jerry Acker had recently retired and they were looking for experienced consultants to assist their client HOAs. Jerry Acker and I met and I learned that there were many HOAs that needed various problems solved and that I was familiar with those topics. I re-tailored my previous consulting practice in dispute resolution, to solve problems for HOA’s before they became a dispute.

Since my previous 37 years of construction consulting arose from projects in disputes, I was already experienced in maintaining records, proposing a scope of work or analyzing a perplexing problems with careful detail. These skills have helped me set up a new set of services quickly and track all the presenting issues. Happily, a few years back, since I moved to Los Angeles, where, due to the large population and number of HOAs, a specialty of this kind of consulting is often needed. 

Re-roofing, for example, is a common need in Southern California because of, ironically, the good weather. The sun is the main cause of the deterioration of most roofing materials, not just rainfall. Our sunny skies are wearing out our roofs, and without good maintenance programs and Reserve Studies, we only know it when it starts raining again. When your reserve study kicks in with -what I call- institutional grade maintenance programs the risk of failure and resultant interior damage is avoided.

My role in all of this is when problems arise. Sometimes it is a problem with the coordination of getting the maintenance project started, or combined with other work adjacent, or fraught with changed conditions as compared to what was expected. I am a problem solver with experience in nearly every material or process used in modern buildings.