The PCA Document Request List: What to Ask the Owner For and What Each Document Establishes

Half of a good PCR is written from paper, not from the walkthrough. The age of the roof, the date of the last overlay, whether the fire alarm passed its annual test, whether the seller has a repair budgeted: none of that is visible on site. E2018 makes document review and interviews one of the three components of the assessment and gives a list of what to ask for. Send the list before the site visit, and send it again after.

The pre-survey questionnaire

The guide asks the consultant to send the owner's point of contact a questionnaire before the walkthrough and to interview that person during it. The questionnaire covers, in substance: ownership and management history; known deficiencies and past repairs with costs; the age of major systems; warranties; pending or planned work; preventive maintenance in place; code citations or violations; litigation related to physical condition; hazardous-materials surveys; accessibility complaints; flooding history; and tenant-owned equipment. Every answer is "reported" information in the report's vocabulary, attributed to the person who gave it.

The interview is not a formality. The point of contact will volunteer the sentence that matters ("it always puddles there after rain", "the mason said to monitor it") and the report should record it in substance and attribute it.

The documents, and what each establishes

The guide's list of documents to review when readily available, with the material information each typically carries:

Document	What it establishes	Where it lands in the report
Certificate of occupancy	Permitted use, construction type, occupant load, sprinkler status as of issue	General description; life safety
Building and fire department records	Open permits, violations, citations	Findings; immediate costs (code violations)
Safety inspection records (fire alarm, sprinkler, elevator, boiler)	Pass or fail, dated deficiencies still open	Life safety; often the source of immediate items
Warranties (roof, boilers, chillers)	Installation date, coverage, exclusions, transfer terms	Age basis; reserve table; key risks
Records of the age of major systems	Documented installation dates	Age basis for every reserve line
Historical repair and replacement costs	What was done, when, for how much	Capital-work summary; owner's cost experience
Pending proposals and contracts	Work already scoped or priced	Findings; cost basis
Planned improvements and capital budgets	What the owner intends	Findings
Outstanding code or fire citations	Violations by definition immediate	Immediate costs
ADA or Fair Housing evaluations	Prior accessibility findings	Additional considerations
Previous property condition reports	Prior deficiencies, prior reserve schedule, what was and was not done since	Everywhere; the single most useful document
Occupancy and rent roll	Tenants, areas, vacancy, tenant-responsibility items	General description; Table 2 exclusions
Marketing literature	Claims about the property to check	Rarely material
Drawings and specifications	Areas, quantities, systems	Quantity basis for cost lines
Appraisal	Area and use, sometimes condition commentary	General description

Recording what was provided and what was not

The report's document-review section carries three lists: documents reviewed, with the material information found in each; documents requested and not provided; and the substance of interviews. The second list is short to write and long in value. "As-built drawings were requested and not provided; quantities marked to be confirmed could not be checked against drawings" tells the reader exactly why some lines are engineer to provide, and it tells a later reader that the omission was the owner's, not the consultant's.

Reliance without verification

The guide allows the consultant to rely on information that appears reasonable without verifying it, and requires the report to say where each fact came from. In practice that means three words on every statement: observed, reported or documented. The certificate of occupancy says 1985, the property manager says the roof is 2011, the field observer saw the nameplate say 2004. Keep them apart in the text and the report survives cross-examination; merge them and it does not.

Sequencing that works

1. Send the questionnaire and the document list with the engagement letter, two weeks before the visit.
2. Read what comes back before the visit; the prior PCR and the capital history tell you where to look.
3. Interview the point of contact on site and note who said what.
4. Re-request the missing documents the day after the visit, in writing.
5. Close the list in the report: provided, not provided, and the consequence.

How Baseline PCR handles documents

The engine classifies each uploaded document by type, extracts dated facts and costs with page references, and tags every fact as documented; the questionnaire link goes to the point of contact and their answers arrive as reported facts. The document-review section, the not-provided list and the interview record are drafted from that, and every statement in the narrative carries its source. The sample report shows the section built from seven documents and one questionnaire.