Initials, abbreviations and acronyms are supposed to make it easier to communicate but if one side of the conversation doesn’t know what they mean, confusion and chaos can only ensue.
AGM: Annual General Meeting – a compulsory meeting that must be held every year and to decide on budgets and by-laws and to which most owners don’t turn up.
BC: Body Corporate the old name for Owners Corporations in NSW and Victoria but still used in Queensland.
BCCM: Body Corporate and Community Management – strata law in Queensland.
CA: Community Association
CLMA: Community Land Management Act – this is the relatively newly revised law covering multiple buildings that share common property in NSW. There’s a guide to it here from our sponsors Bannermans Lawyers
CP: Common Property – the external walls, floors, ceilings, front doors, common areas, balconies, windows, roof and other bits of your apartment or block that you should not change without permission.
DCS: Department of Customer Service – this is the government ministry overseen by Victor Dominello (for the time being) and which incorporates Fair Trading.
DLI: Dicentennial Liability Insurance – This is the ten-year policy that Building Commissioner David Chandler hopes insurers will soon provide to cover blocks built by one of his four-star developers.
EGM: Extraordinary General Meeting – the general meeting where owners in a block get together to deal with something unexpected or which can’t wait for the next AGM.
EC: Executive Committee – now changed to Strata Committee because members were getting elevated ideas about their status.
NCAT: NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal – effectively the strata court which is supposed to be user-friendly and lawyer-free but isn’t.
OC: Owners Corporation – in NSW and Victoria, used to be the Body Corporate and if you’re an owner, you’re in it whether you want to be or not.
OC/BC: Not an ageing rock band, but alternatives when you are referring to both Queensland and NSW/Victorian strata bodies
OP: Original poster – a more polite way of saying “the idiot who started this thread” in an online forum.
RAB: The RAB Act or Residential Apartment Buildings (Compliance and Enforcement Powers) Act 2020 (NSW) granted new powers to New South Wales Fair Trading to regulate developers during the construction of residential apartment buildings to prevent building serious defects.
SC: Strata committee – either the group of elected volunteer owners doing the heavy lifting to run the building as smoothly, efficiently and transparently as possible or, depending on your point of view, a self-serving cabal of owners who rig elections and wield too much power to their own benefit. You choose.
SCM: Strata Committee Meeting – It’s one vote per member and non-members can’t speak unless given permission by the committee (but how do you ask for permission?).
SM: Strata Manager – this is a manager of strata processes and finances who’s told what to do by the strata committee, or vice versa. Can have all the powers of the strata committee delegated to them, but owners can take them back whenever they want.
SSMA: Strata Schemes Management Act – strata law in NSW. The equivalents are the Owners Corporation Act in Victoria and the Body Corporate and Community Management Act in Queensland.
UE: Unit entitlement – the figure on which your levies are calculated as well as your voting power in a poll vote at a general meeting.
VCAT: Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal – like NCAT but different.