Insights from my Condo Managing Bodies

For those like me living in a private apartment blocks (called Condos in Singapore), the grassroots consists of two key elements:

• Singapore's Grassroot organizations: These are part political in their outlook, and provide an excellent opportunity to connect with local Singaporeans at a personal level and gives you excellent visibility about the Govt initiatives impacting Singapore residents.
• The Condo Managing Bodies (Formally called MCSTs) are the self governing structures constituted under Singapore law to manage the affairs of the Condos.

My note below summarizes the key learnings and insights from my interactions with my Condo's managing bodies in the past three years.

Structure

At a very basic level, the structure consists of a Managing Committee (MC) consisting of volunteer residents having oversight responsibilities over the Condo management. There is significant regulatory complexity around the day to day operations of a Condo and to manage all that the MCs usually appoint a Managing Agent (MA), who in addition to being well versed with the regulations, has the wherewithal to manage day-to-day operational matters. The Condo Manager is usually the face of management and how he deals with the residents, esp about the conflict issues has a bearing on how the residents view the entire management.

Some personal observations:

• Ideally, the MC resident volunteers should exclusively focus on oversight and resident engagement activities. Unfortunately, they often get involved in operational matters, thus putting a severe strain on their personal lives. This results in a situation where the MC overwhelms itself with petty issues and the residents feel muzzled up.
• In a residential setup of almost 700 families keeping everyone happy is very difficult but I believe the MA lead by the Condo Manager Mr K L Tan does a decent job of taking care of the hygiene factors. Some residents have raised valid concerns, I believe the issue is more a result of inefficient processes overburdening those in charge and not sufficient resident participation. I will elaborate this point below.
• However, there are some challenges when it comes to resident requests that change MA's scope of work. In some cases, there is a genuine lack of clarity, but often I got the sense that MA response is bureaucratic and tends to err on the side of extreme caution. One of our residents wanted to install blinds in their balcony and there was a certain lack of clarity that caused significant consternation between the said resident and the MA/ MC volunteer residents.

Managing the Hygiene factors

Our Condo is reasonably well managed and there are a few things that stand out:

• Daily a lady painstaking takes about 40 minutes to thoroughly clean up the Gym and all the equipment present. I have personally witnessed instances when the treadmill is full of dried human sweat. Once it was so bad that I used the sanitizer liquid and tissues to clean up the machine. It took quite some time and yet my work could not match the workwomanship of the cleaning staff.
• We have a reasonably large garden and is perhaps the only Condo in Singapore where the MRT line passes through the boundaries of the Condo. The maintenance is such that it ranks as one of the top 10 Condo in terms of owner residents. The commitment shown by the gardening staff is commendable.
• There were a few instances of service disruptions and I was happy with the response of the staff and the MC resident volunteers. In fact, it's only during those disruptions that I recognized the good that goes into keeping the Condo as it is. Once the swimming pool filtration system was damaged and within hours the pool became murky. 

A key thought is that the long-serving staff like Mr. Jaish from the Gardening team, add tremendous value. We need to respect the dignity of these individuals and figure out a way to get things done efficiently without keeping them in endless loops. There are a few things that could be improved and the following sharp observations were made by a fellow resident:

• Singapore is a reasonably safe city and unlike other places, you don't need to provide comprehensive security. What is needed is proper access control (perhaps automated) and quick reaction time in case of an incident. On this front, there are many inefficiencies and there is also a considerable staff turnover especially amongst the security staff.
• You can book your tennis courts through a portal. But in case you wish to book a BBQ pit or a functional hall, you need to make a booking through the portal and then physically visit the condo office to take care of the token payments. The resident I talked about above, very insightfully commented that there is significant potential for cost and process improvements if we use commercially available solutions. 

Getting Tennis coaching for Kids.

I have had good personal interactions with the MC members and as I mentioned earlier, for non-routine matters the feedback loops are not very efficient and often the management response errs on the side of extreme caution. A case in point was around initiating tennis coaching for kids. I just didn't realize how challenging that seemingly simple request would be.

Initially, the management responded that neither coaching nor kids are allowed inside the tennis courts. Informal conversations gave me some plausible reasons for these rules. But when we examined the house rules, we figured that there were no rules that prohibited coaching or kids from accessing the courts. When shared these points with the MC/ MA, they gracefully acknowledged it, however, there was an additional concern around liabilities in case of an injury. I then had to jump many hoops to get those matters clarified and thankfully the management allowed us to start the coaching sessions.

The time it took to resolve those questions was significant and in the interim, I had to replace coaches and a few of the resident parents opted out. Fortunately, everything ended well, as 9 children currently take the coaching sessions from a former Singapore National player and is a level 2 USPTA certified coach. The kids so far enjoy the sessions and my 7-year-old has learned to hit the ball across the net. Once the COVID restrictions are eased, we scale up participation as there is much interest amongst other residents.

My 7-year-old can hit it across the net :D

Final comments:

My final comment is that managing the condo affairs smoothly requires effort and there will be a capacity constraint on how many hours the volunteer residents can put in. Directionally, the key is to somehow get more residents to be involved with the condo management affairs. Doing that would be possible only if we can have an efficient way for residents to log their desired changes and the management could efficiently prioritize those requests and in a timely fashion communicate which of those requests can be operationalized. In case some requests cannot be handled then there has to be a more respectful way to communicate that to the resident who made that request. Needless to say I was able to draft this note because some residents were kind enough to spend time and explain things to me. We need those conversations to be scaled up for the benefit of all residents.