Short answer
A Building Management Committee (BMC) is the body that coordinates the shared parts and services of a development split between several parties — for example separate residential and commercial strata schemes in one large or mixed-use building. It operates under a strata management statement and sits above the individual schemes for the shared elements, with its own rules and cost-sharing.
Where a BMC comes in
In a large or mixed-use development you can have more than one owners corporation — say a residential strata scheme and a commercial one — plus other stakeholders, all sharing infrastructure: driveways, lifts, lobbies, plant rooms, fire systems, sometimes a whole shared basement. None of these schemes owns those shared parts alone, so there needs to be a body that manages them and the relationships between the parties. That body is the BMC.
The BMC handles the shared elements and how their costs are split; each individual owners corporation still runs its own scheme for its own property.
The strata management statement
A BMC operates under a strata management statement — the registered document that establishes it, sets its rules, lists the shared property and services it manages, and sets out how shared costs are allocated (and reviewed) between the parties and how disputes are handled. The statement is the BMC’s rulebook, much as by-laws are for a single scheme.
The law is different from the SSMA
This is the point owners most often miss: a BMC and its strata management statement are creatures of the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 — the Act dealing with the creation and structure of strata developments — not the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 that governs the day-to-day running of a single owners corporation. So when you’re looking at what a BMC can do, how the statement works, or how it’s amended, the answers come from the Development Act and the statement itself, not the management Act.
Flag: BMC powers, the content of a strata management statement and how it’s amended are governed by the Strata Schemes Development Act 2015, not the SSMA. Check the correct Act (and the scheme’s actual registered statement) rather than applying single-scheme management rules to the BMC layer.
Running your own scheme alongside a BMC
Sitting under a BMC doesn’t reduce what your individual scheme must do — it adds a shared layer on top, with its own contributions and obligations to keep track of. Straita keeps your own scheme’s obligations, levies and deadlines tracked and surfaced in time, so a self-managed owners corporation stays on top of its part even while a BMC coordinates the shared building around it.
Primary sources
- Strata Schemes Development Act 2015 (NSW) — building management committees and strata management statements.
- Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 (NSW) — management of the individual owners corporation.
- NSW Government — Strata schemes (Fair Trading) — mixed-use and layered schemes.