Rod: Hello, everyone. My name is Rod Escayola and I am your condominium lawyer with Gowling WLG. Thanks for joining us again today for the March edition of your monthly Condo Adviser installment. Lots has happened since we were last connected together. Ontario has declared, yet again, another state of emergency. I can't keep up. I'm not sure which number we're at. The Federal invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in its history. The authorities were able to tort an insurrection and end the Ottawa siege and take back Ottawa from the bouncy castle forces and here we are on the brighter side, moving Ontario out of Step 3 and into the roadmap exit steps. I mean, like it's just, I just can't believe. Who's able to keep track of all of that? I suspect that maybe by the time we get to the next episode your favourite condo lawyers are going to be jumping the sharks, or something like that, just to keep you on the edge of your seats. So here we are on March 2, and with everything that has happened in Condo Land and elsewhere over the last little while, it got me thinking about all the emergencies we've faced and all the unprecedent times that we've had to react to. Just look back over the last couple of years. There was the major Ontario blackout not too long ago where huge portions of the Province went without electricity and lessons were learned from that. Then we got, a couple of years back, the Eastern Ontario tornados. Significant ones at that and lessons were learned from that as well. Then we had the 100 year floods, 2 years in a row, and lessons were learned from that as well. I suspect lessons were learned from Fort McMurray fire, and I suspect lessons were learned from the Florida Surfside condo collapse, and so what all of these events have in common is that we seem to be learning lessons and we're hoping to be better prepared for next time. But wouldn't it be great if you could prepare today for the unexpected? That's what we're going to try to tackle today. I've got to tell you, it's pretty difficult to plan and prepare for the unexpected, because by definition it's kind of unexpected. 2 years ago if you'd ask me, what would be the most destructive situation Condo Land could face? I can tell you something. There's two things that weren't on my Bingo card and global pandemic was one of them and a siege in Ottawa was not one of them either. So what's next? How can we prepare for that? To help us prepare for the unexpected, what I've done is I've gotten a couple of experts who have seen it all. They've done it all. They've survived it all. Let me stop sharing my screen so maybe you get to see all our faces while I introduce them. I'm just going to try that here today. So one of our regulars here, from the National Life Safety Group, I've actually asked him and the others, what's the most destructive crisis you've had to respond to? When I've asked that question, Jason Reid said, how much time do you have? I've looked at the list, Jason, you sent me and I couldn't pick one out of those. I mean there's fires, there's fatalities, there's hazmat suits, there's a high rise flood that has damaged 19 storeys of the building. How do you keep with that, Jason?
Jason: Thankfully I have a wonderful community of property managers that lead the charged and I kind of come in and help and support them. Listen, there's a wide variety. Communities are typically horizontal. Our communities are vertical. We have the same risk and impacts that a community or a Province would. Just a smaller condensed community.
Rod: That's right. Thanks for joining us and I think our recurring guests, I'm not too sure if we had you before, Scott, but from #D Security and Response Services, Scott Hill is the kind of guy you absolutely must follow. I mean that literally. If you see him running in some direction, follow him, something's about to blow up wherever he's coming from. Scott, thanks so much for joining us today.
ScottThank you very much, Rod. My pleasure being here but I would say that I don't run very well. That's one of the things that I don't do.
Rod: In fact we attended an AGM once, and it was kind of pandemonium, and we were lucky enough to have Scott escort us on the way out because I think Graeme was about to just throw me to the wolves and point at me and say, he's a lawyer, and just pretend to be one of the occupants. From Gallagher Insurance, a returning guest for sure, and we're very lucky to have someone who has pretty much seen it all and is always there to help, Tricia Baratta. Hi, Tricia.
Tricia: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Rod: Now, a new guest tonight, from Melbourne Property Management. She's got probably the best story tonight. A meth lab explosion. That's a new one for me and so we have here from Melbourne Property Management, Jenna Lawson. Hi, Jenna.
Jenna: Hello. I'm excited to be here today. Thank you for having me.
Rod: You're welcome and of course your favourite condo twins, the Cheech and the Chong of the condo law industry. We're going to start with Graeme MacPherson. Hi, Graeme.
Graeme: Hi, Rod. Thanks for the intro. I guess I'll take Cheech.
Rod: And David Plotkin from Gowling WLG. Hello, David.
David: We'll need new business cards with Cheech and Chong on them.
Rod: Nice. Okay, so folks, the usual rules. The chat lines are open and what we're going to do, today there's very little legalese tonight. Tonight is going to be more about preparing for the unexpected and there's going to be about security, about emergency, about preparedness. So my two condo twins are kind of a bit bored, I think, and so what we're going to do is we're going to have two webinars in parallel. We're going to talk about emergency preparedness but if you have a couple of questions, and you want to run a couple of things by the two twins, feel free to put them in the chat. Be sure to also keep the following in mind before I jump in. My usual disclaimer. The first disclaimer is that we're broadcasting out of Ontario and so when we talk about legislation we're talking about yours to discover kind of legislation in Ontario. We are broadcasting on March 2, 2022 and so keep that in mind if you are watching this later on. Some of the information may get stale dated. The information we're providing tonight is general in nature, and it is important if you want advice that you can rely on and use, it's important you go and seek advice from your advisors, your managers, your lawyers, your security advisors, your engineers and so on and so forth. Finally, this session is being recorded and in a couple of days we're going to put it online for you to be able to watch on demand. I think I covered what I had to cover. I'm going to turn to you, Graeme, and if you could update us on the COVID front. What I'm going to do is I'm going to try to put back the screen. This is light at the end of the tunnel a bit, Graeme, and I don't think it's a train coming our way. Are we actually leaving the Step 3 phase? Is that what's happening?
Graeme: We are, yes, and we've gone from 1, 2, 3 to essentially 4 but this one's actually called the roadmap exist step. What that means is that while there are still some restrictions in place, vis a vis the Provincial regulations, as we'll see in a moment they are much, much less strenuous then they have been. I'm going to be rather brief because that's not the point of this webinar. But, again, if there are any questions feel free to put them in the chat. Let's start with what restrictions are no longer in place with respect to this regulation. We no longer have any gathering limits. Capacity limits with respect to your indoor recreational amenities. You're no longer required to do things like advance booking for access to amenities. Nor are you required to collect tracing information or are you required to ask for mandatory proof of vaccination. Likewise, the requirement that you actively screen workers is no longer in place. As is the requirement that you have a safety plan in place, unless a business is being operated out of the condominium. Likewise, short term accommodations and guest suites, in our view, there's no real restrictions with them in place anymore in that you don't have to reserve them for people who absolutely must use them. Now before we go to the next slide, I do just want to probably preempt a couple of questions that I suppose we're going to get. One of the ones that likely comes to the forefront is with respect to gathering limits and what this means for AGMs and board meetings. Under this regulation, technically, your condo could have a meeting in person and your board could meet in person. But what we need to keep in mind is that everybody's comfort level is going to be different and there's going to be a lot of people, and maybe even some people who have underlying medical conditions, who are not comfortable with kind of all packing together into one place and having the meetings in person again. So what the goal of these meetings has to be is how can we get as many people involved as possible. I think what we've seen over the last 2 years are that the virtual methods are a good way to do that and they do work. I know that there's going to be people who miss the in person meetings so I think our recommendation, at this stage, is to continue to try and do them as virtually as possible and at the very least we need to start seriously thinking about hybrid meetings, because I think it's just a fact that once Pandora's box has been opened, not everybody's going to be prepared to get back into the gymnasium altogether and sit together.
Rod: Right. Especially for board meetings. They are so much easier, I find, and so civilized and you can all share the screen. There's really, on that front, no reason to go back. But you're kind of stretching your time limit here, Graeme, so let's move to the restrictions that are still in place.
Graeme: Okay. What you still must do, you must wear your mask in the interior common elements unless the corporation can ensure that there's a 2 meter distance that can always be maintained between everyone. I'm not sure how that could really ever be ensured so our recommendation is to just wear your mask in the interior common elements and make that required. You need to have COVID screening notices at your entrances. You need to comply with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and you need to make sure you're complying with whatever the public health officials, in your public health sector, are recommending. I'll end my little segment here with I know I just ran off a whole bunch of things that we are now technically able to do, but I'll just repeat our mantra that I'm going to have to tattoo onto my forehead, just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. What Rod's sharing on screen here is if you want to do this in more detail, check out what you can and can't do and what the regulations say, if you go to your friendly condoadviser.ca website and tick that COVID tab at the top.
Rod: You can see how quick my computer is, eh?
Graeme: Technology at work. We then see these tiles here that each show the various restrictions in place in each step. So it's a really useful tool if you want to kind of get the, I guess what I just gave was the Coles Notes. So if you want to read the full book on my little presentation here, this is the place to do it. Plus you get to see a nice picture of Rod without a beard.
Rod: Look at that, eh. Okay, thank you so much. So there it is. Are behind schedule? Bit time. Okay, David, I'm going to turn to you now and I guess the question I have for you is, how does emergency preparedness fit within our legal obligations in Condo Land? So why do we care about that? Do we have an obligation to even prepare for that or can we just roll with the punches?
David: For sure. So this is really the only legal section of this talk and you're all here more to hear from our esteemed guests. I'll run through it pretty quickly. As we know, the condo's duty, generally, is to control, manage, administer the common elements and the assets of the corporation. We see that in section 17 of the Condo Act. So that's done by the board. It's done with the assistance of property management and, under the Condo Act, also the corporation is the deemed occupier of the common elements. What that simply means is that if anything happens on the common elements there's potential liability to the corporation directly. So the corporation always has to take care, reasonable steps to ensure reasonable safety of its premises. So when we're thinking of an emergency, I think the takeaway here is prioritize safety over convenience. If the lights go out, the first thought should not necessarily be, how are all of our owners going to be able to charge their cell phones? It should be, are our emergency lights activated? Are our emergency generators activated for all of our security functions? Does the front door still open and close with the buzzers? Things like that where safety is the number one concern. Otherwise the liability that you might have as a condo under the Condo Act and Occupiers Liability Act might come into issue.
Rod: Perfect. Okay, so there it is. Now I'm going to turn to Jason and, Jason, you're going to help us with sort of maybe an overview of emergency management and emergency preparedness. You're on a timer, Jason. All of you are on a timer so, you're up.
Jason: Thank you, everybody. So emergency management is practiced in every community, typically every building. Every community, every municipality, every Province and Territory as well as Federally in Canada. One of the things that I focused on in these next slides is taking that same principle of emergency management and applying it to just a smaller community. There are five pillars of emergency management. These are the pillars. It's not simply a response plan because in order to effectively manage that emergency I have to prepare for it, mitigate it, prevent it, then respond and then properly and safely recover. Next slide, sir.
The objective of the next couple of slides really is we're going to review how to conduct a hazard identification and risk assessment. This same HIRA is completed in every municipality and Province. That HIRA allows you, as a building manager or a corporation, to review and focus your emergency response procedures based on those five pillars of emergency management. But more importantly, priority. Because in a condominium you want to focus on what you should be focusing on and the only way to do that is do that HIRA and base it on priority. From that completed HIRA then we can understand how to develop that emergency response plan.
How an organization handles an accident, or an incident, can have a significant impact on the ultimate cost of the claim. This one is a big statement made in 2018 by IBC and it rings true for the last decade and continuing right now.
Rod: Somebody's sending the Bat signal to you, Jason?
Jason: Next one, Rod. Yeah, that's my ring. So, what is the criteria in determining whether appropriate standard of care was applied? Now I know you just saw a screen of the legislation, but we have to remember that we also are a workplace. So the Occupational Health and Safety Act states that we also have to be responsible for our employees within our workplace. So was the danger foreseeable? Was the occupier's conduct in accordance to basic due diligence? Was there an adequate system of inspection to take a look at those risks in the preparedness and mitigation stage? Not just focusing on the response and how we're going to respond. Finally, whether the danger was allowed to exist for an unreasonable length of time, and the ease of which that danger could have been prevented. I'm going to show you some examples in the next slide.
How do we conduct a HIRA? The first part is a hazard identification, followed by a risk assessment, followed by establishing program priorities based on that assessment and you develop a property, or facility, risk profile. That property risk profile is going to allow us to consider all facets of risk and hazards with a condo. Let's take a look at the next slide.
Rod: It was going to be just, maybe, for people a spoiler alert. You're going to walk us through an example of an emergency plan for a specific situation. So all this that you're talking about today, right now, will apply in a couple of minutes, right?
Jason: It's a build up. Yes, Rod. Thank you. So what is a hazard? Here is the definition that should be used in all condominiums. An event or physical condition that has the potential to cause fatalities, injuries, damage, infrastructure damage to your building, and damage to the environment or interruption of business. Let's dive into what are some of our hazards in condominiums and hazards in general. Next slide, sir.
They break into three different categories; natural, human caused and technological. Quite simply, condominiums are getting technology at lightening fast speeds, and those are risks and hazards that we haven't even scratched the surface on. In fact, did you know that the Canadian cyber security forum just released all critical infrastructure, requesting them to update their infrastructure based on the current status and threats of the world right now. Next slide.
Is a condo a piece of critical infrastructure? No. But a lot of your systems are able to be accessed online. So once I do this hazard identification I need to create a general hazards list and I'm zipping through this. Once I do that I narrow it down to property specific hazards. Then I look at the systems I have in the building, can they fail? If there was failures, will they result in emergencies? You betcha. Some of those impacts are life, safety and operation. Then finally, once I've reviewed all those hazards, I take a look at my resources at my building and try to understand how can I put a plan in place to prevent, prepare and mitigate them. Let's jump on the next slide.
When I look at hazards in a condominium you have to consider the general hazards list, you should be including examining past occurrences at your building. Work with one building, they've got five sprinkler leaks in the last 10 years, but the diligent property manager now, a new manager, sat there and said, geez, we need to make this a priority. There's no file sitting there explaining that. That manager recognized it, is acting on it. Tour the property. Think out of the box. What would happen if this happened? What would happen if this failed? Then finally, review your local risks. Let's talk about some of those local risks. Next slide, sir.
Rod: Oh yeah. There it is.
Jason: Don't forget about these because this is a valuable piece of information. Is your condo within 10 kilometers of a nuclear generating station? There are. Confirm your properties aren't on an existing floodplain, lake or river. Are you down river from a hydro dam? There are many of those in Ontario. Confirm your facility is not a thousand meters away from a railway. Those railways are high speed. They carry hazardous materials. Is your condominium in the flight path accessing an airport? Now, what about some of your tenants on the ground floor. Drycleaners and things like that. But what about in your community? Refueling stations. I visited a condo this morning in Markham and they are literally 1 kilometer away from a large fireworks distribution center. They have no clue. This is a large facility. So my point here is don't forget your local area risks. Let's go to the next slide.
Rod: Okay. We're running out of time. You'll have to focus on the high level points here.
Jason: Here's my last slide and we can go right to part 2 after this, Rod.
Rod: Perfect.
Jason: Here is the general hazards list and this is something that we've whipped up over the last 2 or 3 days, so folks, this is not concrete. But then you have property specific hazards. Have you ever thought about what you would do if security just didn't show up? Have you ever thought about what would happen if we had an employee fatality? What would we do if the CCTV system failed? You have significant responsibilities to act when those things happen. We have to figure those out, how we're going to deal with them now. So, the next session we'll talk a little bit further.
Rod: Okay. Thank you so much. Sorry to keep rushing you and, Scott, you're next. You're going to talk about a holistic approach to security. Let me give you an example of why you have to think about security before the condo manure hits the fan. Let me tell you about this story that took place in Ottawa not too long ago. My condo is right smack in, as what's now known as The Red Zone, and not in the Amsterdam fun kind of Red Zone way, so this is where the forces were battling to try to take over Ottawa. So I'm going to show you a couple of pictures because at times our traffic circle was occupied by the belligerents. At time the traffic circle was occupied by the forces and it was just like going back and forth, and at one point I had to send the Bat signal out to Scott Hill, and I thought, my goodness. This is now kind of getting everybody a bit nervous. So I sent the Bat signal and I thought, how can I get Scott in here? The roads are closed. There's trucks everywhere and believe it or not, within 59 minutes he had boots on the ground. He had a march vehicle that was in location but we kind of got lucky. So, Scott, tell us more about planning about the security and implementing that in how we do business.
ScottThank you, Rod. If you can, for times sake, just go to the third slide. The next one, please. Back one. We always just like to start off with a couple of quotes but I think everybody would agree, just by the virtue of being here, that preparation through education is less costly than learning from tragedy. So we use other people's experience and then the second one I had to tap into my inner Star Wars fan base to say, what do you know of ready? Because as Jason was just talking about, and I'm going to talk about a little bit, you don't know what you don't know. That's the next slide if we look at it. The four stages of learning were the getting ready to adequately address the concerns that you have. At the bottom stage you don't know that there's an issue. You're Yoda teaching somebody. There's problems but you don't know about them and sometimes people say ignorance is bliss until it's not. When it's not bliss and you move to second layer, and this is usually after something's happened, then the condominium knows they have a problem but they don't know how to deal with it. This is for security and it's right along what Jason was saying. It's all about preparation. If you tried to respond to an emergency after the fact, or during the event, it's too band-aid solution. It's too haphazard. So you want to go to the third layer where the condominium starts making changes in the policies, the procedures, the technology, and as Jason said, just doing the simple "what if" game. What if this happened? What if this happened? What if this happened? Being able to, okay we would do this. We would do this, and that wouldn't work, and having the group mind and then finally you get to the Holy Grail which is where you don't have to think about it. I think everybody on this call would say that's never going to happen. That you always have to circle back. You always have to re-evaluate. There'll be emerging trends. There'll be different situations you have to deal with so you always circle back. Can I go to the next slide, please, Rod?
This is stage 2. Before something happens you have to pry a dime out for security. But then once something happens, all of a sudden the money is most important thing and people will say, let's just get it fixed. I don't care what it costs, get it fixed. We know that when we work that way, in any industry, you're paying a premium for fast work that's not good. So you want to have a systematic holistic approach to the security where these things are planned for ahead of time. Next one, please.
This is where we come in, much like an emergency plan, a security audit. It's a report that's put together by an impartial third party. We've done security audits all across Ontario. We've done some in Windsor and quite often, or at least 2 or 3 times, I've had somebody say, we got a free security audit from our camera installer and he says we should have more cameras. It could very well be that you need more camera's but how confident are you? So you want an impartial review of what you have in place. What is working, what is not working. As Jason was talking about, the threats and the risks, where are our gaps in security? Then we want to "what if" them into doing the recommendations to eliminate, mitigate the risk or off-load it to another property. If we can go to the next one, please.
There is accreditation. It's Physical, Security Professional from ASIS or GSX. The next one is what we use and I'll just do a very quick, because I see Rod looking at his watch, so I'll do a very quick analysis. Two condominiums that we worked at, there was an exterior door with no fob reader. The developer just forgot to install it. What type of risk would that be? That depends. I would say, and I didn't do this on purpose, it's a 3D risk. 3D Security. It's a shameless plug but it is a possible, but if somebody will take advantage of it, and it could be moderately serious. You'd have to look at what the other factors are. Crime trends in your neighbourhood. What's happening? Who's around? What crime magnets we have but you will want to mitigate that one. But if we had a risk that's say, 6E. So a relatively unimportant and it has no consequence whatsoever, then that's a risk you would have to address, whereas a 1A would be one that you would want to address before I finish talking. Somebody's going to die if we don't do it. This is how condominiums, because quite often they'll get a report, and in our reports there's always 40 to 50 recommendations, and it's like which one do we want to address? Well, this makes it easy. Address the ones that have the most risk to the property. Almost done, Rod, if you can go to the next one.
This is just an embarrassing example from my experience. This is the 3D Security office. We'd just moved into it. One day I had a very important Zoom meeting with somebody the first day that was here, Murphy's Law kicked in and the power went out. So no problem with the laptop but my modem wasn't working. So what you see on the left is the booster pack that we use for our security vehicles when we have to boost somebody, hooked into the modem, so that we would get internet signal. So the next day, you can guarantee, that we had a battery pack and a surge protector on there. So preparation, it really is the key. I was doing this on the fly and I found it a little bit humorous so I wanted to take a picture to say that we're not all perfect. I've always been told that with your takeaways you should keep them in groups of three. Like stop, drop and roll or call 911. So the takeaways that I would leave with, people may not be aware of their emergency or security vulnerabilities and that's why a fresh pair of eyes are invaluable. The security, emergency preparation begins by looking at would/could happen. If I had a nickel for every time somebody said, oh that will never happen. I betcha, Rod, if somebody said that about what happened at your property, a year ago, it'd be we don't need to put anything in place for that because it will never happen. But now we know it will happen.
Rod: Right.
ScottSo look at what could happen.
Rod: Okay. Wonderful. I keep pushing you forward there, Scott. Anything else to add or you were done, I think. No?
ScottJust a last one is for the stakeholders. I think this is really important. When you're doing emergency drills or security drills, to bring all the stakeholders in. Site supers, the cleaners, the security guards, the concierge because those are all people that are resources in an emergency and you may have to react. Thank you, Rod.
Rod: Okay, wonderful. Sorry I interrupted you. I just keep pushing the agenda forward. I'm going to turn to Jenna now. So what we're doing folks, so far, we're like big pictures. Emergency preparedness, security implementation and protocol and now we're going to look at the top 10 tricks that maybe property managers or very conscious directors should implement. Then after that we're going to go down a list of actual emergencies and see how can we react this to, how can we mitigate risk. We're going to get to that but for now, Jenna, I'm going to turn to you and you have a top 10 list of steps to follow that kind of help you prepare for the unexpected.
Jenna: Alright. So we heard from a security standpoint and life safety standpoint but us managers typically deal with everything hands on and we deal with it everyday. We're constantly putting out fires but we need to prepare for them to happen. Obviously no need to have the emergency plans in place but I would recommend having just your first page be your main contacts. Important people. Who to be calling in case of the emergencies and ensure that everybody's getting access to this. Include the superintendents and the cleaners because you never know who's going to be site when things occur and you need somebody to be called. I would ensure that owners and residents information is up to date. I couldn't stress this one enough, because when we have these emergencies that take place, we want to make sure that we're contacting the right people. When floods happen, fires happen and we're having to go into these units, we want to ensure that those email blasts and those notifications are going out to the correct people so we're not getting even more problems to deal with. I would ensure that we would have some sort of digital communication with our communities. Whether that be a text message, like call to text, automatic phone messages, digital notice boards, anything whatsoever that's in place in our communities to communicate with them without having to be on site. I think that that's essential and a big step to prepare for emergencies, because if communities are aware that we're in the know and we're dealing with these problems, the less phone calls, the less issues and they know we're in the know and we're dealing with the problems and the more we communicate, the better we're all reflected. Hold regular meetings with your staff. I couldn't stress this enough. Like weekly, monthly walk the building with them. Show them the specific locations of items. Do a mock trial of what could happen in these situations. Okay, you have a flood. This is the steps that we have to take. Okay, this is who would need to be called. Say this person doesn't answer the phone, what do you do, right? The building's flooded. The building is on fire. They need to know and if we meet with them and we walk the building, they're better prepared so they don't like stress out. Because, regardless, we're all in the moment but the better prepared we are, and staff, more so.
Rod: Okay. I'm going to move to the next slide. But, Jenna, your microphone is very sensitive. We hear you very well. It sounds like you're upset. I'm getting people telling me, is the house on fire? So, it's all good. Moving onto the next one. Go ahead.
Jenna: I would create a checklist of red flags during your suite inspections. So utilize the opportunities that we get to go into the suites to create a checklist for the escort guards when they're going in the units. We get this opportunity during our annual fire inspections, maybe heat pump maintenance. We need to ensure that these escort guards have a checklist of what to look for. Hoarding, infestation. I've seen smoke detectors, butane. Look for things and note them. That's our due diligence and we should use this opportunity to our advantage. Tamper proofing pull stations, fire hose cabinets, adding additional cameras. It's going to prevent vandalism and nuisances, fire alarms and the less false alarms the residents have, when an actual emergency happens, they'll be more attentioned to it.
Rod: I'm going to interrupt you for a second, but the reality is that for each of these points we could come up with tons of examples of situations to sort of illustrate it. We don't have the time to do it today, but for instance, in Ottawa recently, I think they arrested someone, this past week, who actually broke and entered into something like 34 condominium corporations and what this person wanted to do, and was able to do, was to access either the mechanical penthouse or electrical rooms. He would actually just disconnect things and break things. I think you were involved in one, will not involved but they looked to your help, Scott. The security of all these, whether they're fire cabinets, hoses, or equipment, or your electrical vaults, or communication vaults, it's paramount to ensure that these are secured and not easily broken into. Okay, number 8.
Jenna: Investigate complaints and feedback in a timely manner. This is a serious one because we get so many complaints as managers. Smoke odour, you name it. But there is the typical one where there is a lot of traffic and questionable smells that I think are more important to ensure that we're investigating them, and noting that we did an investigation, and also creating secured lock boxes with building keys in a safe location because how many times have we been locked out of buildings, or we have contractors coming to our buildings for these emergencies and they don't have access to the buildings, and it's delaying the stopping of the floods or the clean ups, potentially. I would ensure, obviously, our reserve fund is adequate and we're following our reserve fund plan to ensure that we're preparing for any situations that could occur.
Rod: A key point for number 9 is to have your lock boxes secured. There's too many instances where these lock boxes are actually accessed, or broken into, and then if they have the keys to everything right in that lock box you're no further ahead. You need to really, as Scott would probably tell you, you need to look around and really have a holistic approach to this whole thing because obviously when you try to sort of facilitate something on one end while you may be exposing risk on a different front. So thank you so much, Jenna, for the top 10 pointers for managers. I kept your lab explosion later. That's going to be at the end if we have time, hopefully. Now I'm going to turn to, oh this is what David told me. He's indicated that I jumped over Tricia. Let me just see. There it is, Tricia. Insurance forethoughts.
Tricia: That's okay, Rod. No one really wants to talk about insurance anyway.
Rod: We usually think of you after the fact when all has failed and we have broken stuff to fix, we think of you, but sometimes it's of little comfort if you realize, for instance, that you don't have adequate core coverage. Or that you didn't do what you had to do to maintain and to ensure you get coverage. So tell us maybe a bit more about what kind of thoughts go into proper insurance coverage.
Tricia: Similar to what Scott had mentioned is that level 2. That's when people come to brokers and say, oops we didn't have the coverage, and then suddenly they're willing to spend an arm and a leg on insurance coverage. So it's very, very similar, Scott. Most importantly it's to have a broker that understands condominiums and that is the very first place to start. If you have one, excellent. They know the answers so you talk to them. Do we have the adequate insurance coverage? They will do a risk assessment. They will do something similar to what Jason was showing. Jason gave us a great example of what needs to be done in order to ensure you have the right coverage. What are the risks? What are the exposures that this particular condominium corporation has? A building with staff has a whole different profile of exposures then a townhome/condominium that just has here and there contractors coming and going. It does come down to phone a friend, like Jason. Like Scott. Phone a friend that can help you discover what those things are, unless you have a broker that does that as well. I could go on the list of what condos need for insurance but that's a whole other webinar.
Rod: Okay. When you think about it, think about what I think Jason was saying, look around you and try to identify the risks that you could be exposed to and I'm thinking of a condo corporation that turns out that they realized, while I don't want to make a political statement, but if you're close to an Embassy, sometimes the risks associated with that may vary, depending on what's happening in the country, behind the Embassy. I'm thinking of a condo corporation on Rideau Street, which is within spitting distance of the Russian Embassy. Well there's a lot more traffic now happening at that place. One of the managers in a different condo corporation, at one point was wondering whether or not there's terrorism coverage, because they realized that they're beside an Embassy that may be more of a target. Look around and try to think because there's no point in turning to your insurer if you have not sought the proper coverage. I guess that's my point. Okay. There it is. And same if there's a material change in risk. If you're going to be putting some EV charging stations in your garage, that may or may not constitute, I think, a material change of risk. Right?
Tricia: Correct. I do want you to make sure that you keep on track of your reserve fund. Jenna mentioned making sure you're following your reserve fund study. It's extremely important. The insurer will want to know. If there's a total loss, so let's say you have a fire and it devastates the building, the insurer's going to want to know what you've done to follow that reserve fund study plan. If there's a material change in risk, meaning if there's a big reason why the insurance company would want to deny a claim, that's a pretty scary situation to be in especially when you're in a multi-million dollar building. Then the best practices are all what was mentioned before.
Rod: Okay. Wonderful. Sorry I keep pushing forward, keeping an eye on the time. I did it as usual. I've put too much stuff to cover. Jason, we're going back to you and you're going to walk us through an example of an emergency sheet or plan for a specific situation.
Jason: Yeah, listen, Tricia, Jenna, Scott had some very valuable tips and they all really are based on what are the hazards in your building and let's prioritize which ones we need to look at. Once I do that, once I identify what my priorities are, it allows me to identify the training requirements of your staff. It allows me to identify your required equipment and resources. Which response plans? Which standard operating procedures for your guards and superintendent? But it also allows you to document what should we be checking.
Tricia: I don't need cleaning in here, thank you.
Rod: Oh, sorry, I'm going to mute you, I think that was Tricia.
Jason: What should we be doing to prevent or prepare for every day, week and month? Let's take a look at the next slide. We've taken a look at the impacts of a power outage, for example. Let's look at this because I'm confident most don't even think about some of these things with high impacts. Did you know that a power failure, if your domestic water pumps are not on your emergency power, it will disrupt water to the top floor. Your domestic water pump will only pump water up to the fourth floor so if you have no power in your condo, and if your domestic water pumps aren't connected, your residents aren't getting water. It can cause food spoilage, water contamination, but more importantly, medical devices for our residents. These are really big impacts so what we can do, as a corporation, to mitigate or prepare for those? Next slide.
Rod: A big one. Okay.
Jason: It's a big one. So this is not a standard emergency management plan. What I've tried to do here, for this session, is to put down what I believe an organization should do, high level, for power failures. But it's covered under each unique bucket. Internationally recognized around the world. In fact, this is how the Province bases it on risks. So how can I prepare for a power failure? I need to make sure that I do my maintenance on my electrical distribution. Under the electrical safety code, that's 6 months and 12 months. I'm only allowing electricians to work on it, certified electricians. Those are the prevention things. But there's things I can do that mitigate the impacts. Once a week, or once a month, I'm going to make sure my fuel load is ready. I'm going to make sure my domestic water systems are on the generator. If I do that, I don't worry about water. I can have the power failure go down for 2 days. My residents still get water. Preparedness. My staff should have 4 or 5 flashlights, as Scott had mentioned. Where am I going to get them? Every time I go check for a flashlight in my house my daughter's using it in the garage. She's seven. I can't find batteries. I can't find anything. My point here is, everything you put into place has to have a preventative maintenance schedule as well. Then finally, the meat and the potatoes. Everybody wants to respond. We want to investigate whether the failure is partial or full power. We want to make sure that the staff have hearing protection, because if they're in the generator room, that generator could start anytime. I need my superintendent to know how to manually operate that generator. That's a requirement under the Ontario Fire Code. What are my staff going to say over the PA system to my residents? Do you want somebody shaking like this, going, we have a power failure? No. We want our strong staff to be practiced and rehearsing this. In fact, we want our board of directors to approve that message 6 months before the power failure happens. Then finally, the last section, recovery. Now this is not all exhausting. These are high level points but what do we need to do after the power failure? We need to make sure that we inspect critical systems. We need to make sure we restock fuel and replace the batteries from the flashlights. We need to communicate to the residents often, and further and finally, we need to review the root cause and impacts and damages, and what went well and what didn't, then we review and update this little document so that we're stronger the next power failure.
Rod: This shows you how they work. How the plan would kind of work and you can adapt that to every one of your situations. I know of a condo where they realized, after the fact, that somebody had access to the fobs and was able to go in and steal bikes and break into cars. There was just no knowledge as to how this thing was happening. So you could fit that under each of these headings and how do you mitigate the situation? How do you prepare for that? How do you respond to that? And so on and so forth. So it's really almost like, it's not a template, but it's a way to help you think about how to prepare for different sort of situations. Okay. Let's move on. Thank you so much, Jason. Let me see where we're at. What we're going to do now is we have a bit of time but not a lot so, folks, you're going to get each 1 minute. I initially promised you 2. You get 1 minute. So we're going to go over each of these sort of more current kind of events to try to see, maybe a lesson learned from that, or how do you prepare for that, or how do you mitigate that? So I'm going to start with you, Jenna. 1 minute about floods. Are you there, Jenna?
Jenna: Sorry, I had to unmute myself there. So I would say, 100%, you need to know the water shutoffs. Number one issue when we have water damage. The sooner we can turn off the water, the better. Having picture specific of where they're located in that building, what they look like, and include those pictures into your emergency preparedness. So the front desk or the staff all have access to this document. What it looks like, where it is and it's easily accessible for everybody so you stop the water as soon as possible.
Rod: Right. So exercising the valves regularly, doing some maintenance and some inspections, but also having maybe a rapid deployment team that would know where to shut the valve because by the time the super comes on board, or the manager if you don't have them on site, so maybe think of volunteers. Also have easily accessible numbers. You need to call somebody to come and start drying the woods, and the floor and the carpets or whatever it is. Okay. Perfect. Next, Jason, you're going to tackle the fire. 1 minute.
Jason: Okay, so let's look at it through the buckets of emergency management. How can we prepare for fire? Have we posted signs up next to all the manual pull stations? Those are done by the builder. They're there. Have we communicated the emergency procedures to the residents once very 12 months? How do we do that? We photocopy the applicable pages from the building's approved fire safety plan, and we send it to every resident, and we document that we've sent that. The date and time because that's our code requirements. So there's a prevention side but then there's a response side and a mitigation side. Did you know that when somebody pulls a pull station, one of the biggest reasons why that fire alarm is not reset quickly, is because staff can't find the screwdriver required to reset the manual pull station at two in the morning. Do you think the firefighters do it? Nope. Even if they got it on their belts they will not hand it to you. My point is because it's not their job and they don't do it. So my point here is, for a $1.99 I can put this special screwdriver, it costs a $1.99, in my fire safety plan box and my staff never have to look for it again and I can reset those fire alarms 15 to 20 minutes faster than anybody else.
Rod: Times up. Thank you so much. I gave you 21 seconds extra. So I'm going to take these away from Scott. Scott, severe weather events or power outage.
ScottYou're speaking like an auctioneer but okay. I think going along the same lines, is that preparation is knowing what systems are on your generator. What systems are on your emergency? Making sure that your generator actually kicks in when things happen and what are the alternate sources that you can use for power. The response is, for example, just using one of your locks. Are they fail safe? Like when they lose power, do they lock or do they release automatically when they have no power? If they release automatically when power's cut then you have to get security in place to control access in and out. The recovery afterwards, and one thing I've notice quite often, is people forget to go back into their computers and reset the date and time on their fob system and their camera system. Or their camera system and their fob system are out sync which causes a lack of integrity in the system. Done, Rod.
Rod: Okay. Wonderful. Time's up and something else I'm going to add to this. One of the problems with emergency situations, if it only happens to your condo corp, you're kind of a step ahead. But if it's one of those events that's affecting the area, that's affecting the city, that's affecting the Province, everybody is scrambling to get access to the same resources. An example was the last blackout where everybody now needed to use their generator, and if there's this condo corporation that the superintendent went to the cottage and the fuel tank was only halfway there, a third way there, everybody's trying to get their hands on fuel, to get refueled. Because at that point in time there's a lack of resources. A scarcity of resources. Scott, break and enter. 1 minute.
ScottWith break and enter obviously the security aspect of delaying it, but I would take it a step further ,and I think Jason would say that one of the first things that fails in emergencies is communication. I think that highlighting two residents how to communicate in an emergency. I can't count how many times I've received an email, well I can, maybe 6, saying somebody's breaking into our condo. By email. I'm like, this is how you communicate an emergency? They'll tell me, no, no, no. I also posted it on Facebook. So I think having clear communication, if you see a break and enter taking place, it's not an email to your property manager or to your security provider. You call the police and establish the trends that are taking place.
Rod: Right, and for break and enter, I know of a condo where they're developing a protocol. So what is the protocol? Who should be advised if in fact we realize that a fob fell through in the wrong hands? Should we advise the cops? Yes, for sure. Should we advise the president of the corporation? Maybe not. Should we advise the owner of the unit associated with the fob? Probably. We want to know when was that fob last accounted for. So having protocols sort of systemize how you react to various things. Okay, the next one is a medical emergency. I think I have Jason on that one.
Jason: Listen, there's a great article, in fact I was just going to look for the link. I wrote this 2 years ago and medical emergencies in high rise buildings have long been documented in medical journals, that if you live above the third floor, your chances of surviving a medical emergency are significantly reduced. This has been captured and broadcasted throughout Canada and identified as vertical response times. It's the time that people take to get to the door, the police, fire and EMS, that's their ETA. That's their response time. But then they get delays because they have to go into the building and then they have to wait for the elevator. Then they have to go up. Then they have to get through the front door. So one of the things that you can do right now is create a procedure and inform your residents that for all medical emergencies they call 911 first, and then they call security or they call property management. Why? Because your concierge and security team, you know what they can do? They can shave 60 to 90 seconds off of a medical response and in 60 to 90 seconds, you know brain damage sets in in 4 to 6 minutes, right, without oxygen. That's irreversible. So what that means is you're concierge team can actually save lives by simply having the front door open. Having the elevator on service, waiting for the EMS. But you know what happens? 9 out of 10 times security is greeted by EMS and they have no clue why they're there. They don't know where. They don't know what. Do you know that your concierge could have the key in his pocket to your suite, and escort EMS on the elevator and have the elevator waiting for you, and that directly impacts your standard of care. That's powerful.
Rod: So all of that is about preparation and setting in place protocols so people know what to do. It's all about knowing what to do ahead of time. So in 45 seconds, Jason, building evacuation. I'm going to ask you this, when do we decide to evacuate? Who decides whether we evacuate a building?
Jason: So you should be deciding with your board of directors and your property manager, now. We should be deciding those trigger points, now. Because here's why. Did you know for a chemical biological, radiological or nuclear, a bomb threat, things like that, the building management is responsible to identify when the building should be evacuated. It's not the police. The police will give you recommendations but the building owner's ultimately responsible. What if I smell gas in the lobby? Your staff should have a trigger point that is clearly laid out, in advance, that when they see the trigger point they have a set of procedures that they can initiate to best remedy the situation as far as life safety goes. The only way to do that is to decide those trigger points, now.
Rod: So, Jason, every time I bring you on one of our webinars I have somebody on my board that tells me that you scare the bejesus out of them but there's a solution to all of that. Someone like you, and others, can help condo corporations develop these kind of emergency preparedness plan. We're not left to our own device.
Jason: Listen, we've written corporate programs but my point here is, and we've written programs in Canadian Embassies in other countries, but my point here is you can do this yourself. It doesn't have to be this laborious process and you really can do it yourself. I would start off with 5 or 6 risks or hazards and take a stab at doing it yourself. Why? I'd love to help you, but we have lots to do and if you build it in partnership with somebody, you'll know it inside out. You won't even need training afterwards. It's very powerful.
Rod: Scott, 15 seconds, what have you learned with the civil unrest in Ottawa? One thing that stands out.
ScottFor things like civil unrest and bomb threats and suspicious packages and things like that, one of the most common complaints that we get when we do security audits, is people talking about the security provider and the inconsistency of providing staff to the site. They'll have a different staff member every weekend. Whereas the situational awareness tells us that we need to establish a baseline so we know what is outside of the ordinary. So having a good relationship with security providers, that you have good staff coming in so that they recognize, hey we never have garbage bags there. That car has never been there before. I think knowing what is normal, what's your baseline, and then what is above and below the baseline is critical to making the building more secure.
Rod: Thanks so much, Scott. Jenna, we kind of ran out of time but I'm still going to show the pictures of your, not your meth lab explosion, your meth labs are safe. But one where you were involved because you were managing the property. You can just see how allowing a dangerous situation to take place can just have a drastic sort of consequences. But unfortunately we don't really have too much time left to talk about it, so if you ever see Jenna run away, follow her. Something's about to blow up in suite 301. Okay, so folks, we're at the end of the webinar already and it was fast and furious, as usual. So I'm going to go around the table and very quickly thank you, all of you. You won't have time to give us some words of wisdom because it's already 6:00 and it's Ash Wednesday. Somebody's got to go to confession.
Jason Reid, from the National Life Safety Group, thank you so much. I mean you come often with us and share you expertise. I can't thank you enough. It's always extremely useful to have you on. So thank you.
Scott Hill, of 3D Security and Response Services, thanks for saving our bacon at the Gardens, Scott, but also thank you for sharing your expertise tonight with us.
Tricia Baratta, a recurring star at our webinars, from Gallagher Insurance, thank you so much as well and, Jenna Lawson, first time on the show, now learned the power of her microphone, thank you so much, Jenna, of Melbourne Property Management. Thanks so much.
And, of course, the two condo twins. You guys get some parting words. So, Graeme, parting words?
Graeme: I guess my parting words, I'm kind of going to a little bit copy what Scott said. But I think it's important to remember that we don't know what we don't know and that a fresh pair of eyes can go a really long way. Because without that you'll be content to keep thinking that everything's under control because you just have no idea what the blind spots are.
Rod: Graeme's the kind of guy you give a microphone at a wedding and he's not going to let go. Really intense. Thank you, Graeme. 10 seconds, David, parting words or words of wisdom?
Graeme: That was just my intro, Rod, I've got 20 more minutes planned.
Rod: Nice.
David: Lucky for our timing, I know exactly what I was going to add anyway. As a lawyer, I know what I know and I know what I don't know. I think boards are well suited to defer to the experts as well.
Rod: Okay. Thank you, David. Thank you, everybody. Folks, April 6 is going to be our next webinar. You'll need to register again. You can register by going to the webinar tab. I'm going to put the link, maybe tomorrow, it's not quite ready. I'd like to thank all of you for having given us 63 minutes of your time. I know it's peak time. It's supper time. People are hungry and as I said earlier on, it's Ash Wednesday. Some people have to go to confession, some more than others, so thanks so much for spending time with us and I would like to leave us with a thought for our brothers and sisters in Ukraine who are going through a tremendously difficult time. Let's think of all of those who are involved, sometimes against their will, on both sides of the conflict. That's it for us, folks. Keep wearing a mask. Get a vaccine if you haven't gotten it already and let's see each other next month. Thank you so much.