Is Your Strata a Part 9 Building? How to Check: A Guide for Vancouver Island Strata Councils

The full guide

Whether your strata's buildings are "Part 9" or not sounds like a technical detail, but it is a detail the Strata Property Regulation uses when it comes to your Electrical Planning Report (EPR). Here is what Part 9 means, how a council can check, and where the regulation's own wording on the subject sits.

What is a Part 9 building under the BC Building Code?

The BC Building Code sorts buildings by size and use. Part 9 — the Code's "Housing and Small Buildings" part — covers buildings of three storeys or less in building height, with a building area of 600 square metres or less, used for residential, business and personal services, mercantile, or medium- and low-hazard industrial occupancies. In practice, that describes a large share of BC's strata stock outside the Lower Mainland's towers: townhouse complexes, low-rise wood-frame apartment buildings, and smaller mixed-use blocks. Concrete mid-rises and high-rises, buildings with bigger footprints, and most large mixed-use blocks fall outside it.

How can our strata council tell if our buildings are Part 9?

Height and footprint are the two figures that matter. A council can usually settle the question from its own documents and a walk around the property:

1. Count the storeys. Three or fewer generally points to Part 9. A fourth storey, or a tall parkade level that counts as a storey, generally points beyond it.
2. Estimate the footprint. Pace out or measure the building's ground-floor outline. Under about 600 square metres — 6,450 square feet, or a building smaller than roughly 20 by 30 metres — generally points to Part 9. Townhouse rows are often split into separate buildings by firewalls, each with its own footprint.
3. Check every building on the strata plan. The regulation looks at whether every building on the plan is a Part 9 building. A strata with several matching townhouse blocks is a straightforward case; a strata with three townhouse rows and one larger mid-rise is not an all-Part-9 strata.
4. Look at the permit documents. Building permits and occupancy documentation on file with your municipality typically record the classification. Your strata manager or the municipal building department can pull them.
5. Ask whoever prepares your EPR. The person assessing the building can confirm the classification as part of the engagement.

Why it matters for your EPR

Under the Strata Property Regulation, who may prepare an Electrical Planning Report depends on whether every building on the strata plan is a Part 9 building. The regulation's own wording, with the Building Code article it points to, is set out in the questions on our Electrical Planning Report page. Whoever prepares it, the report's required content under section 5.11 is the same for every building; see our section 5.11 checklist for the complete list.

Check before you commit

Confirm your buildings' classification, say so when you ask for proposals, and confirm the scope covers everything section 5.11 requires. CF Electrical Services works with strata corporations across British Columbia — request a fixed-price proposal and we'll tell you plainly what an EPR involves for your building. We'll also show your council a redacted sample report from a comparable building and connect you with references — see what strata councils and property managers say about working with us.

Authoritative sources

• Strata Property Regulation — who may prepare the report (section 5.10) and the report content requirements (section 5.11), BC Laws.
• Guidance for the Preparation of Electrical Planning Reports — Province of British Columbia (May 2026).
• Strata electrical planning report — Province of British Columbia overview page.