Maintenance plan software · Victoria
Tier one and tier two owners corporations in Victoria must prepare and approve a maintenance plan, and fund it. Plinth keeps that plan current between professional reviews — the register, the forecast and the levy, all moving with the building.
One
Since 1 December 2021, the Owners Corporations Act 2006 (Vic) has sorted every owners corporation into five tiers, counted in most cases by occupiable lots — lots ordinarily used for residential or business purposes. Tier one is more than 100 occupiable lots. Tier two is 51 to 100. Under section 36, both must prepare and approve a maintenance plan. Tier three (10 to 50 lots), tier four (3 to 9) and tier five (two-lot subdivisions and services-only owners corporations) may adopt one, and many do: the obligation stops at tier two, but the deterioration doesn't.
Section 37 fixes the core contents. The plan must set out the major capital items anticipated to require repair and replacement within the next 10 years, their present condition, when the work will fall due, its estimated cost, and the expected life of each item once repaired or replaced, along with anything further the regulations prescribe. The Act names lifts, air conditioning plant and heating plant as major capital items. A plan also brings money with it: once approved, section 40 requires a maintenance fund, and section 23(2) requires annual fees designated for the plan and sufficient to implement it.
Two
Most Victorian maintenance plans share a life story. A consultant inspects the building, prices ten years of capital works and delivers a handsome document. The committee approves it, sets the fund contribution, and files the PDF with the AGM minutes. It is compliant on that day — and quietly less true every day after.
Costs escalate. Works get done early, or deferred, or done differently. A balcony membrane fails eight years before its programmed year. Within a couple of budget cycles the contribution is being set against figures nobody has re-checked. Elsewhere in Australia the same reserve is called a sinking fund or a capital works fund; whatever the label, a fund built on a stale plan is the wrong size, and the shortfall eventually arrives as a special levy.
Three
Read closely, the Victorian Act does not describe a document you produce once. Section 39 requires the owners corporation to report to every annual general meeting on the implementation of its approved plan — an annual account of what was programmed, what was done and what it cost. Section 37(1A), added in the 2021 amendments, lets the owners corporation amend an approved plan by ordinary resolution, so it can be corrected mid-stream rather than waiting for the next engagement. And section 42(3) requires the annual-fee amount the owners corporation sets aside for the maintenance fund to be adequate to fund the plan — a test you can only apply against current numbers.
A plan bound in the year it was written can't carry those obligations. The AGM report becomes a shrug, the amendment power goes unused, and adequacy is asserted rather than checked.
Four
Plinth holds the plan as data, not as a document. Every element sits in an asset register with its replacement cost, cycle and condition. From the register it builds a 20-year forecast with cost escalation — the statutory decade and the decade after it — and states plainly the year the fund runs short and the levy that prevents it. Works are tracked from quote to awarded cost to approved variations, so committed spend flows back into the forecast the week it changes. Compliance documents sit against the assets they belong to, with expiry dates watched.
One thing Plinth is not: a statutory report, or engineering, quantity surveying, legal or financial advice. Where your owners corporation engages a qualified professional to prepare or review its maintenance plan, that work still belongs to them. Plinth is the system of record between engagements — it takes the professional's numbers, keeps them moving with the building, and hands the next reviewer a current position instead of a cold file.
Five
Plinth costs A$750 a year including GST for an account covering the first building, and A$350 a year for each additional building. Every feature is in every price and there are no per-seat charges, so the whole committee and the manager work from the same plan.
To see the mechanics before you commit: the free sinking fund calculator at /tools/sinking-fund-calculator takes six inputs and no sign-up, the worked demo at /demo shows a full building, and the guides at /learn cover the Victorian requirements in more depth.
Questions
- Is a maintenance plan compulsory for owners corporations in Victoria?
- For tier one and tier two owners corporations, yes. Section 36 of the Owners Corporations Act 2006 (Vic) requires any owners corporation with more than 100 occupiable lots (tier one) or 51 to 100 occupiable lots (tier two) to prepare and approve a maintenance plan. Tier three, four and five owners corporations may adopt one voluntarily, and once any plan is approved the fund and fee obligations follow.
- What must a Victorian maintenance plan contain?
- Section 37 of the Act sets out five core contents: the major capital items anticipated to require repair and replacement within the next 10 years; their present condition; when the work will be needed; its estimated cost; and the expected life of each item once repaired or replaced — plus any other information the regulations prescribe. The Act names lifts, air conditioning plant and heating plant as major capital items, and items of a prescribed class can be added.
- Do we need a maintenance fund as well as a maintenance plan?
- Yes, once the plan is approved. Section 40 requires an owners corporation with an approved maintenance plan to establish a maintenance fund in its own name, and section 33(2) requires separate accounts for it. Annual fees must then include amounts designated for the plan and sufficient to implement it, and under sections 42(2) and 42(3) the owners corporation must determine, by ordinary resolution, the annual-fee amount paid into the fund — an amount that must be adequate to fund the approved plan.
- Is a maintenance plan the same as a sinking fund forecast?
- They are one idea under different names. Victoria's Act speaks of a maintenance plan feeding a maintenance fund; New South Wales calls the reserve a capital works fund, and much of Australia says sinking fund. In every version the exercise is the same: list the capital items, price their renewal, and set contributions so the money exists when the work falls due.
- Does Plinth replace our maintenance plan consultant?
- No. Plinth is software — not a statutory report, and not engineering, quantity surveying, legal or financial advice. Where your owners corporation uses a qualified professional to prepare or review its plan, keep doing that. Plinth carries the plan between those engagements, updating costs, logging completed works and recalculating the fund position, so each professional review starts from a current record.
Elsewhere
Six numbers into the free calculator gives the year your fund runs short. The 7-day trial builds the full plan.