The short answer: protect people and property first. Emergency work that stops active damage — tarping, boarding, shutting off water — is generally treated differently from planned work, though your attorney should confirm how the law's emergency language applies to your association. The rebuild that follows is a planned project, and it belongs in a normal bid process.
Hour one: stabilize, and don't sign anything else
Ordering a crew to tarp an open roof or board broken windows is the correct move, immediately — no board should sit on active water intrusion while debating procurement rules. Get the property safe.
What you should not do in hour one: sign anything a door-knocking contractor puts in front of you. After every major Twin Cities hailstorm, crews canvass damaged associations with paperwork that reads like a repair authorization and functions like a full-project commitment. A signature that hands the whole rebuild to whoever knocked first is exactly what both the new law's bid process and your own leverage are designed to prevent.
Where the emergency ends
This is the line boards miss. The emergency is the tarp — not the reroof. Once the property is stable, the permanent repair is a planned capital project: it can be scoped, documented, competitively bid, and awarded like any other large contract. "It started as storm damage" doesn't exempt the rebuild from the process.
A useful discipline: have the board note in its minutes when the property was stabilized. That entry marks where emergency response ended and the planned project began — and it's exactly the kind of record that makes your file defensible a year later.
The paper trail that saves you later
- Photograph everything — before the tarps go on and after. Wide shots and close-ups, dated.
- Keep every emergency invoice separate from the rebuild costs. Two piles, from day one.
- Record the decisions — who authorized the emergency work, when, and why, in the minutes.
- Document the damage independently before repairs erase the evidence — this is what a photo-documented inspection report is for, and it serves both the insurance conversation and the bid scope that follows.
The insurance decision comes next — slowly
Whether to file a claim is a real decision, not a reflex: it involves your deductible, your policy structure, your claims history, and what the damage actually is. Before filing, it's worth knowing what you have — damage documented, options laid out side by side. That's pre-claim advisory, and the reason our assessment stays credible is that we never negotiate with the carrier for a fee.
Then the rebuild is a normal bid
Scope written from documented damage, vetted bidders, sealed bids, a recorded opening, a side-by-side comparison — the same defensible process as any capital project, run by someone with no stake in who wins. Storm rebuilds attract the most vendor pressure of any HOA project; an independent process is how the board stays in control of it.
General information, not legal advice — confirm the specifics with your association's attorney. Back to the full SF 1750 guide →