How to Choose an EPR Provider: A Guide for Kootenays Strata Councils

The full guide

Every BC strata council with a December 31, 2026 deadline has to make the same decision: which firm do we hire to prepare our Electrical Planning Report? Price and familiarity are the easiest things to compare, but they say the least about what the strata will actually receive. A more useful lens is a short list of questions every council can ask before the vote.

1. Does the firm have a stake in the upgrades its report recommends?

This is the question most councils don't think to ask, and it matters the most. An EPR is a planning document — it assesses your building's electrical infrastructure, identifies what it can and cannot support, and recommends specific upgrades. Those recommendations belong to your council and your reserve fund, not to the firm that prepared the report.

When the firm that prepares your EPR also stands to win the upgrade work it recommends, there is a built-in tension: every upgrade the report calls for is revenue the same firm could capture. A firm whose only product is the report itself has no stake in which upgrades you choose.

Ask directly: "Does your firm have any financial interest in the upgrades this report will recommend?" A yes is not automatically disqualifying, but it is worth a follow-up: ask how the firm manages that interest, and what keeps the recommendations tied to your building's actual needs.

2. Does it cover all BC strata building types?

BC stratas range from concrete highrises, mid-rises, and mixed-use buildings to wood-frame walk-ups, townhouse complexes, and stacked townhomes — and the work an EPR involves differs with the building.

Ask whether the firm covers your specific building type. If your strata includes a mix of building types, ask whether a single engagement covers all of them — or whether you will need different providers for different buildings.

3. Does it quote a fixed price — or hourly billing?

An EPR is a strata expenditure, approved by a council vote, paid from strata funds, and disclosed in your financial records. Before the vote, the council should know exactly what it is approving. With hourly billing, the number on the proposal may not be the number on the invoice, and the difference only becomes clear after the work is done.

A fixed-price proposal — a single, scoped number that covers every step from site visit to final delivery — lets the council vote on a known cost. It also means the provider has assessed your building and committed to what the work involves.

Ask explicitly: "Is this a fixed price, or will the invoice be based on hours?" Then check that the proposal defines the scope in writing. We wrote about the full pricing range and how to read an EPR quote in why EPR prices vary from $2,500 to $14,000.

4. Will it show you a sample report and provide references?

A proposal describes what you will get. A sample report shows it. These are different things, and the gap between them is exactly where councils get surprised months later, when the deliverable arrives and nobody can use it.

Ask for a redacted sample from a comparable building — similar size, building type, and region. Read the summary: can a non-technical council member understand what the building's electrical situation is and what to do next? If the sample reads like a dense technical submission, that is what your strata will receive.

Then ask for two or three references from strata clients who received the same type of report. Ask them whether the report arrived on time, whether the scope matched the quote, and whether the council could actually use it. We covered the full process in ask for a sample report and references before you approve strata report work.

5. Does it handle the process end-to-end?

An EPR is not only a report-writing exercise. It requires twelve months of BC Hydro or FortisBC consumption data — which means a formal request to the utility, a wait, and a follow-up if the data doesn't arrive. It requires the electrical drawings and strata plan from the municipality, which involves its own retrieval process. And at the end, most councils benefit from a presentation that walks the council and owners through the findings and what to do next, not just a PDF in an inbox.

Ask: "Who handles the BC Hydro data request — us or you?" and "Is a council presentation available when we want one?" Every task the strata manages itself is council time, strata-manager time, and a source of delay. A firm that owns the process end-to-end delivers the report on a predictable timeline without managing work back to the strata.

A practical shortcut: score every proposal against the same standard

Before your council votes on any EPR proposal, score it against the same fixed standard: what BC strata law requires plus the qualities that make a report useful. Our guidance-compliance checklist for councils walks through BC's official preparation guidance question by question, and makes it easy to see whether a low quote and a high quote are actually buying the same thing.

How CF Electrical Services answers each question

Our only product is the report itself, so we have no stake in which upgrades your strata chooses. We work with most BC strata building types — often wood-frame walk-ups and townhouses, and larger buildings too — in a single engagement. We quote every EPR as a fixed price, scoped to your building, with a proposal within one business day. We handle the BC Hydro consumption-data requests end-to-end, and a council presentation is available whenever your council wants one. And we will show you a sample report and connect you with references before you commit to anything.

To get a fixed-price proposal, see how our EPRs work and send us your building details — or contact us directly.