Who Can Prepare a BC Depreciation Report — The Qualified Person Rules

What changed

Until recently a strata council could engage more or less anyone it considered competent to prepare a depreciation report. From 1 July 2025 that discretion ended: the report must be prepared by a person falling within a defined set of professional categories.

On 27 October 2025 the Province widened that list, adding professional licensees in engineering, architectural technologists and certified technicians. The expansion was a practical response to demand — with the July 2026 deadline approaching, there were not enough qualified providers to go round.

Why the rule exists

A depreciation report is a thirty-year financial projection resting on engineering judgment about how long components will last and what replacing them will cost. Get the remaining service life of a roof or a parkade membrane wrong and the funding model is wrong with it. The qualification requirement is the Province's attempt to put a floor under report quality.

What a council should ask

• Which qualified category does the person preparing the report fall into, and can they evidence it?
• Is that person the one attending the site, or is the visit delegated to someone junior with the qualified professional only signing?
• Does the fee include all three funding models the regulation requires, or are extra models charged separately?
• What will the five-year update cost? A low first-report price sometimes anticipates an expensive update.

The practical risk

Cost matters to every council, but the cheapest quote is not a saving if the resulting report is not compliant. A non-compliant report means commissioning a second one, and by then the deadline may be closer than the lead time. Confirming qualifications at the proposal stage takes one email.