There is a moment in almost every large capital project where a board member asks a completely reasonable question: “We already got three bids. Why would we pay somebody else on top of that?”

It is a fair question, and the answer is not that the board did anything wrong. Getting three bids is exactly what a careful board does. The problem is that a roof replacement across thirty buildings, a facade restoration, a balcony repair program, or a full road reconstruction is not a bigger version of a maintenance job. It is a different undertaking with a different set of risks, and the board’s usual tools were not built for it.

Here is the plainest version of the problem. Your board is not a roofing expert. Neither is your management company. Eclipse is not a roofing expert, and any management company that tells you otherwise is selling something. The same is true of asphalt, masonry, balcony coatings, window systems, elevators, and boiler plants. When an association spends several hundred thousand dollars on one of them, the only people on the project who know the trade are being paid by the company doing the work.

On a project this size, the contractor has technical expertise on their side of the table. The question is whether the association does.

Roofing is the example used throughout this article, because it is the project most associations face and because roofing happens to have unusually well documented codes and warranties. But the gap it illustrates is the same on every large capital project, and the section near the end names the others.

Across the 200 communities Eclipse manages in Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky, the capital projects that go badly are rarely the ones where the board picked a bad contractor. They are the ones where nobody was watching the project from a technical sense.

Nobody On That Job Site Is Working For the Board

Boards assume somebody is checking the work, usually one of three somebodies: the manufacturer, the building department, or the contractor’s own supervisor. It is worth being precise about what each is actually doing, because all three say so in writing.

The manufacturer inspects for itself, and says so. Johns Manville’s Peak Advantage guarantee states that “any roof inspections are solely for the benefit of JM,” and that “JM does not supervise nor is it responsible for a roofing contractor’s work.” GAF’s EverGuard Diamond Pledge guarantee is blunter still: “Any inspections made by GAF are limited to a surface inspection only, are for GAF’s sole benefit.” Johns Manville also reserves the right to waive its inspection entirely, and states flatly that it “will not issue a letter of deck acceptance, acceptance of application or any other supplementary letters.”

The building department is very likely not coming. Roof assemblies on a four or more unit condominium building are governed by the Ohio Building Code, which adopts Chapter 15 of the 2021 International Building Code at OAC 4101:1-15-01. But adopting the standards is not the same as inspecting against them. OAC 4101:1-1-01 sections 108.2.1 through 108.2.14 enumerate the inspections a building official draws from, and roof covering, underlayment, flashing, and ice barrier are not among them.

The contractor’s supervisor works for the contractor. That is not a criticism. It is the job.

So on a typical association reroof, the answer to “who is verifying that what was specified is what got installed” is nobody. Not by anyone’s bad faith. By default.

Ohio’s own building code anticipates this gap and points at the solution. OAC 4101:1-1-01 section 108.2.11 provides that “where applications are submitted for projects of unusual magnitude of construction, the building official may permit inspections or full-time project representation by a registered design professional or inspection agency. This inspector/project representative is to keep daily records and submit reports as required by the building official.”

Full-time project representation by an independent professional, keeping daily records. That is the arrangement this article is describing, and the code named it first.

What an Owner’s Agent Actually Is

An owner’s agent, also called an owner’s representative, is a professional the association hires directly to protect its interests through the life of a construction project. The important word is not “agent.” It is the trade. You are not hiring a generalist to attend meetings. You are hiring someone who knows the system being installed better than the contractor’s estimator does, and who works for you.

That expertise is credentialed, and the credential depends on the work. Building enclosure projects, meaning roofs, walls, and waterproofing, run through IIBEC, the International Institute of Building Enclosure Consultants. Structural, mechanical, and civil work runs through a licensed professional engineer in the relevant discipline. The point is not the acronym. The point is that a real credential exists for whatever you are about to spend money on, and the board should ask for it.

The job splits into two phases, and boards routinely buy only the first. Someone evaluates the existing condition, writes the specification, and runs the bid. Then someone is on site during construction documenting what is actually being installed. Both matter, and the second one is the one that gets cut from the budget.

It also helps to be precise about what the owner’s agent is not. The general contractor holds the subcontracts, controls means and methods, and is selling the association a finished product at a price. The contractor is a counterparty, not an advisor. The architect or engineer designs the work, but is engaged for the design, not for the association’s exposure. The owner’s agent is a construction advisor. They hold no trade contracts and have no financial stake in what the project ends up costing. That is the entire point.

The business side is standardized too. In 2024 the American Institute of Architects published AIA Document C104, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Owner’s Representative, defining an advisor retained through all project phases who develops and monitors the owner’s budget and schedule, attends the meetings, reports monthly, and coordinates closeout.

What Technical Review Actually Catches

This is the part boards find abstract until they see the list. What follows is a roof, because a roof makes the point cleanly. Every item is a specific, checkable requirement in the code, and every one of them is invisible within hours of installation.

The deck. Ohio requires roof replacement to include removal of existing coverings down to the deck, and prohibits a recover where “the existing roof or roof covering is water soaked or has deteriorated to the point that the existing roof or roof covering is not adequate as a base for additional roofing,” or where two or more layers already exist. Once the deck is open, someone decides how much deteriorated sheathing gets replaced. That decision is made on the roof, in real time, by the party who bills for the replacement material. It is the single highest leverage hour of the entire project, and nobody sees that deck again for twenty five years.

The ice barrier. Ohio requires an ice barrier that extends “from the lowest edges of all roof surfaces to a point not less than 24 inches inside the exterior wall line of the building,” measured along the slope. On a building with a deep soffit overhang, one 36 inch roll does not reach 24 inches past the wall line. It takes two courses. This is among the most commonly shorted items on a reroof, it costs real money, and it disappears under the first course of shingles.

The fasteners. Ohio specifies fastener type, a minimum 12 gauge shank with a 3/8 inch head, and a length sufficient to penetrate “not less than 3/4 inch into the roof sheathing.” It requires “not less than four fasteners per strip shingle.” Shingles must be tested to ASTM D7158 and must meet the wind classification in the code’s table for the design wind speed. A shingle rated to the highest wind class can be installed to perform like nothing at all if it is nailed high, nailed short, or nailed four times where the manufacturer requires six.

The flashings. Flashings must be installed “at wall and roof intersections, wherever there is a change in roof slope or direction and around roof openings,” in corrosion resistant metal “not less than 0.019 inch (No. 26 galvanized sheet).” A cricket or saddle is required on the ridge side of any chimney or penetration more than 30 inches wide. On a reroof, flashings must be reconstructed per the manufacturer’s instructions, and existing flashings, edgings, outlets and vents “shall be replaced where rusted, damaged or deteriorated.” Reusing tired step flashing to save a day is a decision somebody makes on a Tuesday and the association pays for in year six.

The ventilation. Ohio requires net free ventilating area of 1/150 of the vented space, reducible to 1/300 only when “not less than 40 percent and not more than 50 percent of the required ventilating area is provided by ventilators located in the upper portion.” Nobody does this arithmetic. Ridge vent gets installed, soffit vents stay buried in blown insulation, and the resulting condensation rots sheathing from underneath. Read the warranty section below and note that condensation damage is excluded by every manufacturer warranty quoted there. The ventilation defect and the warranty exclusion are the same problem.

None of this is exotic. It is ordinary roofing competence. It is simply not competence a board has, or a management company has, or a municipal inspector is scheduled to bring. Every other trade has its own version of this list.

The Warranty Is Not the Protection Boards Think It Is

Boards hear “thirty year warranty” and stop asking questions. That is precisely backward, and the roofing industry’s own trade association says so.

NRCA, the National Roofing Contractors Association, puts it plainly: “There are two basic categories of roofing warranties: the contractor’s warranty, which covers workmanship, and the manufacturer’s warranty, which covers (as a minimum) materials. A manufacturer’s warranty alone will not protect you if your roof system is improperly installed.” NRCA is equally direct about the misconception: “Roof system warranties typically do not warrant that the roof system will not leak or is suitable for the project where it is installed,” and “a roof system warranty’s length should not be the primary criterion in the selection of a roofing product or roof system.”

Read the current published guarantees from Carlisle SynTec, Johns Manville, and GAF side by side and they agree on the following exclusions:

• Design and specification defects. Johns Manville excludes “defects in or faulty/improper design, specification construction or engineering.” GAF excludes leaks caused by “architectural, engineering, or design defects or flaws.” If the roof was specified wrong, the warranty does not respond.
• The deck and the building. All three exclude failure of the roof substrate, walls, copings, and non-manufacturer metal work.
• Condensation. See the ventilation paragraph above. The ventilation defect and the warranty exclusion are the same problem.
• Wind above 55 miles per hour, in the GAF and Johns Manville base documents.
• Later rooftop work. Solar arrays, new penetrations, or any alteration without the manufacturer’s prior written approval voids or suspends coverage, as does failure to perform and document maintenance.

Then there is Carlisle’s section 3(i), which is the sentence that makes the whole argument. The warranty does not apply where “the Carlisle Authorized Applicator or any additional contractor or subcontractor failed to follow Carlisle’s published specifications and details for the approved system assembly.” The warranty is not a substitute for someone verifying field compliance. It is conditioned on that compliance. Carlisle says the same about design in section 13: “The Owner, design professional, architect, consultant, or engineer is solely responsible for the assembly chosen … to properly calculate wind uplift values, design dead loads and live loads, and suitability and condition of building envelope substrate, decking, parapets, drainage, slope.”

One more number. NRCA reports there is no industry standard for the length of a contractor’s workmanship warranty, and that an informal NRCA survey put the average at about one to two years. So workmanship coverage expires in year two, the manufacturer’s coverage excludes workmanship it did not accept, and design defects are excluded outright. The years in between are covered by exactly one thing: whether the roof was specified correctly and installed correctly in the first place.

Certificates of insurance are the same kind of paper. ACORD, which publishes the certificate, states that it “is NOT an insurance policy, and does not serve to provide, endorse, amend, extend, or alter in any way the terms of an insurance policy,” and the disclaimer on every ACORD 25 says it “CONFERS NO RIGHTS UPON THE CERTIFICATE HOLDER.” Collect the endorsements, not the certificate. Our insurance review process covers the master policy side.

Why Three Bids Cannot Be Compared

Boards get three numbers and assume they are pricing the same project. They almost never are.

Look back at the list of technical items above and notice that every one of them is a price variable. How far the ice barrier runs past the wall line. How many fasteners per shingle and how long. Which ASTM wind class. Whether flashings are reconstructed or reused. How much deteriorated deck is assumed replaced, and at what unit price. Whether tapered insulation is included to establish positive drainage. Whether the manufacturer warranty is material only, system, or no dollar limit, and which contractor authorization tier that requires. Two proposals can differ by thirty percent and describe the same roof, or by five percent and describe entirely different ones.

There is published guidance on what a real roofing project should look like, and its authorship is what makes it worth citing. The Roofing Project Submittal and Protocol Guidelines is a 2023 joint document of the Canadian Roofing Contractors Association, IIBEC, and NRCA. The consultants and the contractors wrote it together, so neither side can call it self serving.

It organizes a roofing project into six phases and assigns responsibility across three parties: the Contractor, the Owner, and the Specifier, which it defines as the roof consultant or design professional. The entire structure presupposes a third party, distinct from the contractor and the owner, who writes the documents and administers the contract. That is this article’s thesis, stated jointly by the industry’s consultants and its contractors. Two of its requirements are worth pulling out for boards: sample warranties submitted for review before work begins, which is when the exclusions above should be read rather than after a leak, and unit prices verified daily and billed monthly, which is how deck replacement stops being an open ended change order.

A one page proposal from a contractor is not a specification. It is a sales document, and every decision it leaves unstated has been handed to the party being paid to make it. That is true of a roof, a parking lot, a balcony program, or a boiler replacement.

Neither Ohio Nor Kentucky Licenses General Contractors

This is the fact that surprises boards most. Ohio licenses exactly five construction trades. ORC 4740.01(A) defines a license as one issued to an individual as a “heating, ventilating, and air conditioning contractor, refrigeration contractor, electrical contractor, plumbing contractor, or hydronics contractor.” Roofing is not on that list, and there is no general contractor category anywhere in Chapter 4740. Kentucky is the same in substance, licensing plumbers under KRS 318.030, electricians under KRS 227A.020, and HVAC contractors under KRS 198B.656, with no general contractor license at the state level.

So on a multimillion dollar capital project, the party running the entire job needs no state license at all, while the plumber running a pipe in the same building does. Municipalities can and do require contractor registration, and ORC 4740.12(A) expressly preserves that authority, but registration is not qualification.

Manufacturer certification is not qualification either, and the manufacturers say so. Johns Manville’s program terms state that “approved roofing contractor” “merely identifies an independent contractor considered eligible to apply for a Peak Advantage roof guarantee,” and that approval “is specific to the roofing system type, i.e., PVC, TPO and EPDM.” A contractor approved for EPDM is not thereby approved for TPO. Certified installer status is purchasing eligibility, not an endorsement of the crew that shows up.

Every bit of vetting therefore falls on the board. We covered the mechanics in our guide to vendor selection and procurement.

It gets thinner still. Boards often assume Ohio’s Home Construction Service Suppliers Act supplies a floor of protection. It does not. ORC 4722.01(B) provides that home construction service “does not include construction performed on a structure that contains four or more dwelling units … or construction performed on the common area of a condominium property.” The written contract requirement, the insurance disclosure, the completion dates, and the excess cost mechanism at ORC 4722.02 all sit on the other side of that exclusion. An individual owner remodeling a kitchen gets them by statute. An association replacing thirty roofs does not.

The Law Requires Technical Expertise Even Where It Does Not Require a License

Ohio exempts non architects from preparing plans for “residential buildings” under ORC 4703.18(C), but ORC 3781.06(C)(9) defines that term as a one, two, or three family dwelling house. A condominium building of four or more units is nonresidential under Ohio’s building standards definitions, and the exemption does not reach it. There is a practical carve out at ORC 4703.18(D) for like for like replacement and for work where no plans are required, but that determination belongs to the building official, not to the board.

Kentucky draws a much brighter line. KRS 323.033(1)(e), mirrored at KRS 322.550(1)(e), requires a licensed architect for a residential use group of more than twelve dwelling units, for alterations requiring compliance with the Kentucky Building Code, and a licensed professional engineer may serve instead where the work predominantly involves structural, mechanical, or electrical components. KRS 323.033(6) then requires that engagement to include administration of construction contracts, which KRS 323.010(7) defines to include periodic site visits, shop drawing review, and reporting deviations. In Northern Kentucky above twelve units the board is not deciding whether to hire a design professional. It is deciding which one, and an owner’s agent complements that professional rather than replacing one.

The Exposure That Outlives the Project

Technical risk is the reason to hire an expert. Legal and financial risk is the reason to do it before the contract is signed.

ORC 5311.13(C) provides that anyone furnishing labor or material for the improvement of “any part of the common elements of any condominium property is entitled to a lien … on the estates or interests of all owners in all units.” A mechanic’s lien from board authorized common element work attaches to every single unit in the community, apportioned by ownership percentage under 5311.13(D), so an owner who already paid their assessments could have to pay a second time to clear their own title. Ohio gives the association one tool against that: ORC 1311.04(A)(1) requires the association, as the contracting party, to record a notice of commencement before work begins, which forces every lower tier party to identify itself within twenty one days under ORC 1311.05. Skip it and, under ORC 1311.04(R), nobody has to serve notice at all. Kentucky has no such regime, so that visibility has to be built into the contract. Our overview of the Northern Kentucky statutory framework walks through which layer of law applies to which community.

Funding has its own gate. ORC 5311.081(B)(17) permits assigning common assessments to a lender as security, but only “to the extent provided in the declaration or bylaws,” and Chapter 5311 contains no express power to borrow at all. Ohio planned communities have express authority at ORC 5312.06(D)(14), subject to a seventy five percent vote under ORC 5312.09(A)(1) absent declaration language. If your declaration is silent, amendment is a schedule item measured in months. And a documented project protects marketability: under the current Fannie Mae Selling Guide a project is ineligible if it needs critical repairs, which includes “any unfunded repairs costing more than $10,000 per unit that should be undertaken within the next 12 months.” A special assessment does not make a project ineligible. An unfunded critical repair does. We covered the 2026 changes in our breakdown of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac condo requirements and the funding side in our post on reserve planning.

How To Hire One, and How To Pay

Hire on qualifications first. IIBEC’s published policy positions include qualifications based selection, which means choosing the professional on demonstrated expertise and then negotiating the fee, rather than competitively bidding professional judgment. Ask what credential the firm holds for this specific type of work, ask which of its people will actually be on your site and how often, and ask for three association projects of comparable size and scope with references you can call.

Then look hard at independence. IIBEC’s own procurement policy states that it “advocates for the use of independent design consultants with no financial interest in products specified and installed.” That statement is framed around public projects, and a condo board is not a public body, but the principle is the right one. Ask every candidate, in writing, whether they hold any manufacturer representation, any referral or commission arrangement with a contractor, or any financial relationship with a management company, bank, or insurer connected to the project. IIBEC’s Code of Ethics requires registrants to “evaluate and decline activity or employment, financial or other interest … if it reasonably appears that such involvement could compromise judgment,” and its introduction sets the bar higher than the rule: “Even the appearance of a conflict of interest shall be avoided.”

Fee structure is where independence is won or lost. AIA C104 permits a stipulated sum, a multiple of direct salary expense, hourly rates, or a fee plus expenses, and expressly declines to recommend any of them. The concern with a fee set as a percentage of construction cost is straightforward. It is the only structure in which the advisor earns more when the association spends more, which is an odd incentive for the person hired to control cost and evaluate change orders.

Ask every candidate for that disclosure in writing, before selection. Including us.

It Is Not Just Roofs

A roof is the cleanest illustration because the codes are specific and the warranties are published. The same structure applies anywhere the association is buying work it cannot evaluate.

Asphalt and paving. Subgrade preparation, base thickness, compaction, and asphalt mix design are all invisible the day after the lot is striped, and all of them determine whether the surface lasts eight years or eighteen. A pavement engineer cores the existing lot and writes a section. A paving contractor gives you a price per square yard.

Facades, masonry, and sealants. Tuckpointing depth, mortar type matched to the original, sealant joint geometry, and lintel condition are judgment calls made from a lift. IIBEC credentials exterior wall consultants for exactly this work.

Balconies, walkways, and railings. Structural condition, waterproof coating systems, and attachment details, where the failure mode is not a leak but a collapse. This is professional engineer territory, not contractor territory.

Windows, doors, and siding. Flashing integration with the existing wall assembly is where these projects succeed or fail, and it is finished behind trim in an afternoon.

Elevators, boilers, and mechanical plant. Long lead equipment, code upgrade triggers, and commissioning that either happens properly or does not happen at all.

Structural repair of any kind. If a report uses the word structural, the association needs a licensed engineer before it needs a contractor.

The question to ask is not “is this a roof.” It is “does anyone on our side of this table understand what we are buying.” When the answer is no and the number has six figures in it, that is the project that needs an owner’s agent.

What Boards Should Do Next

If your association is heading into a major capital project in the next year or two, here is the order of operations that works. The roofing specifics below translate directly to whatever trade you are actually buying.

Start with a condition assessment, not with bids. Neither NRCA nor CAI publishes generic service life tables for roof systems, and that is deliberate. Service life depends on the specific assembly, deck, ventilation, drainage, installation quality, and maintenance history of your building. The number in your reserve study should come from someone who looked at your roof. Our field guide to reading a reserve study covers how to read what you already have.

Retain the consultant before the bid package is written. The value is in evaluating the existing condition, writing the specification, and prequalifying bidders. By the time three numbers are on the table, most of the leverage is gone and every unstated decision has already been made by the bidders.

Insist on a written specification, not a proposal. On a roof that means the ice barrier extent, fastener schedule, wind class, flashing details, ventilation calculation, and deck replacement unit price all stated. Every trade has its equivalent list. Then bid that specification, so the three numbers describe the same project.

Require sample warranties before work begins. Read the exclusions while you can still do something about them.

Budget for construction phase observation as a defined scope. How many site visits, at what stages, with what documentation. Someone independent should be on site at every point where work is about to be permanently concealed.

Handle the legal items before signing. Confirm what your declaration permits if a loan is involved, and record the Ohio notice of commencement before anyone sets foot on the property. In Kentucky, build the equivalent visibility into the contract, because the statute will not do it for you.

The Honest Version of the Cost Question

An owner’s agent is a real line item, and no board should pretend otherwise. On a project large enough to need one, it is also the smallest number on the page.

The comparison that matters is not the fee against zero. It is the fee against a roof that fails in year nine on a deck nobody inspected, a parking lot that alligators in year six over a base course nobody measured, or a warranty claim denied because the installer deviated from details nobody was checking.

Every board faces the same underlying question. At the moment a judgment call is being made about what gets replaced and what gets covered over, is anybody standing there working for the association? If the board did not hire that person, the answer is no.

If your board is scoping a large capital project, trying to turn a contractor’s proposal into a real specification, or working out what its declaration permits before it approaches a lender, reach out to us here. Eclipse works with roof consultants, engineers, and owner’s representatives across Ohio and Northern Kentucky, and we will tell you plainly when a project is big enough to need one.

This article is informational and is not legal, financial, engineering, or insurance advice. Code provisions, lender guidelines, manufacturer warranty terms, and standard form contract documents change, and their application depends on your association’s governing documents, your building type, and your local jurisdiction. Code sections cited are current as of publication. Boards should consult their association attorney, insurance professional, and a qualified design professional or consultant before entering into a construction contract.