The first 90 days managing a new building

Take on a building you did not previously manage and you inherit a stranger. Somewhere in Southampton or any other city, a block changes hands between managing agents, and on day one the new team is responsible for something they barely know. The plant, the history, the open obligations, the people inside: all of it exists, but little of it is yet in your head or your system. The first 90 days are about closing that gap deliberately, before an inspection, an incident or a resident closes it for you.

The problem is knowledge, not effort

A new manager rarely fails for want of trying. They fail because they are asked to be accountable for a building before they know its true state, and the handover they received was thinner than it looked. A folder of documents is not knowledge. Knowledge is being able to say, with evidence, when the lift was last examined, what the fire risk assessment found, who the responsible person is, and which actions are still open.

So the first task is not to do work on the building. It is to find out where the building actually stands. Everything else depends on that picture being accurate, and the early weeks are when it is cheapest to build, because the questions are expected and the previous team may still be reachable.

Weeks one to four: establish the truth

The opening month is for capture. The goal is a single, current record of what exists and what is owed.

• Confirm the legal roles: who is the responsible person under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and, if the building is in scope, who is the Accountable Person under the Building Safety Act 2022.
• Locate the current fire risk assessment and check its date and scope, including whether it covers the structure, external walls and flat entrance doors as the Fire Safety Act 2021 requires.
• Build the asset register: lifts, fire systems, plant, water systems, and the intervals each is governed by.
• Gather the plans, and check whether they match the building as it stands today.
• List every open action and overdue obligation you can find, without yet trying to close them.

The output of this month is not a tidy building. It is an honest one. You should end week four able to describe the building's real condition, including the parts that are not in order.

Is the building in scope, and what follows

One early question shapes much of the rest: whether the building is a higher-risk building. Under the Building Safety Act 2022, a higher-risk building in England is at least 18 metres tall or has at least 7 storeys, whichever comes first, and contains at least 2 residential units. If it qualifies, a different and heavier set of duties applies, including registration with the Building Safety Regulator, holding a safety case and producing a safety case report.

A high-rise residential building also carries specific duties under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022, in force since 23 January 2023, including sharing external wall and floor plan information with the local fire and rescue service, keeping plans in a secure information box, and carrying out monthly checks of firefighters' lifts and key firefighting equipment. Establishing scope early tells you which of these obligations you have inherited, rather than discovering them late. Confirm the current detail before acting, as these regimes continue to develop.

Weeks five to eight: close the urgent, schedule the rest

With the picture built, the second month is for triage. Separate the inherited open items into what is urgent, what is statutory, and what can be planned. Anything touching life safety or a missed statutory interval goes to the front. A lift past its six-monthly LOLER examination, an overdue electrical inspection, a fire safety action left open: these are not month-three problems.

Everything else gets scheduled rather than rushed. The aim is to convert the list of inherited obligations into a live, owned calendar, so that each recurring task has a date and a name against it. This is also the point to put the building's obligations into a system that generates the next deadline from the last completion, so the schedule stays accurate rather than drifting. We describe that mechanism in a maintenance calendar that chains its own deadlines.

Weeks nine to thirteen: make it provable and durable

The final month is about turning your hard-won knowledge into something that survives you. A picture held in the new manager's head is only marginally better than the gap they started with, because it leaves the moment they do. The work of the last few weeks is to write it down where the building's record lives: confirmed roles, current plans, the asset register, the live calendar and the closed-out urgent items.

By day 90 you should be able to hand the building to a stranger and have them understand it without a guided tour, which is the same test the building will face at your own eventual handover. Holding plans, assessments, the calendar and the action history in one place, as a compliance calendar and a structured building record allow, is what makes that possible.

From stranger to known quantity

The first 90 days do not make a building perfect. They make it known. You move from inheriting a stranger to managing a building whose true state you can describe and prove, with the urgent items closed, the recurring obligations owned and dated, and the knowledge written down rather than carried. That is the difference between a handover that holds and one that quietly unravels the first time someone asks a question you cannot yet answer.