Developers specify lifts, generators and boreholes in detail. The systems that meter water and power, raise service charge and let visitors through the gate are usually left to the managing agent after handover. Steve Karechio, Founder and CEO of PayServe, explains why that is costly, and what belongs in the design brief instead.

Walk through any new apartment development in Nairobi and you can see the care that went into it: the façade, the lifts, the backup generator, the borehole and the water tanks. Every one of those was specified, tendered, installed and commissioned.

Then ask how residents will be billed for the water and power they use, when service charge will start for each owner, and how the guard at the gate will know which visitor is expected. Too often, the answer is that the managing agent will sort it out after handover.

That is where a new building starts to lose money and goodwill. I have spent more than 20 years in technology across banking, real estate and development, and I now run PayServe, which meters, bills and collects for residential developments in Kenya. The lesson from our projects is consistent: billing is a building service, and it should be designed in, not bolted on.

Retrofitting is the expensive option

Metering decisions are made during MEP design, whether anyone calls them metering decisions or not. Where the meters sit, how much room the risers and meter rooms allow, whether there is a bulk meter at each supply inlet, and whether a meter in a basement can actually send out a reading are all settled long before a resident moves in.

Get them right on the drawings and installation is simply part of the build. Get them wrong and the fix comes after occupation: water shut off to occupied homes, finished walls opened up, and contractors negotiating access one unit at a time. The cost lands on the developer, the managing agent or the residents, and nobody budgeted for it.

Every litre you cannot measure is a litre you cannot bill

Kenya’s water utilities lost 45% of the water they produced in 2023/24, about KSh 11.9 billion in revenue, according to WASREB’s Impact 17 report. Estates face a smaller version of the same problem. Water comes in through the bulk supply and goes out through homes, irrigation, swimming pools and common areas. If those flows are not metered separately, nobody can say where the gap is.

At Northlands Heights Apartments in Nairobi, PayServe has 1,074 smart water meters live on one platform, with separate irrigation meters in every block so that landscaping water never lands on a resident’s bill. Residents prepay for water, so the estate collects before it supplies. The reporting is built to compare bulk supply against metered use and to list every meter that shows consumption but has not been billed. That list is revenue assurance on a single page, and it is only possible because the meters were planned for.

Plan for tenants, not just buyers

Power follows the same logic. At Altura, Canaan Developers’ tower in Upper Hill, 500 PayServe smart power meters bill each unit on what it actually used. That matters in a building where many owners let their units and occupants change often. A move-out reading is available at once, the next tenant starts on a clean account, and owners are not left chasing a former tenant’s power bill.

Handover is a process, not a date

Large developments are handed over home by home. Each buyer completes their legal and financial steps on a different day, and service charge should start for each one on the right date, with deposits and prepayments recorded properly. Run on spreadsheets, this produces invoices for homes that were never handed over and missed invoices for homes that were. Both end up as disputes, and the developer’s name is on them.

At Northlands Heights Apartments, each homeowner’s service charge starts from their own handover date. Finance enters every new owner once, and facility management then assigns the meter to that same record, so nothing is captured twice. Payments are matched to the right account and posted automatically to the estate’s Zoho books, so the finance team reviews instead of retyping.

The gate is part of the system too

Visitor management and access control raise the same design questions. Gatehouses need power and data, barriers and turnstiles need to talk to the software, and guards need a quick way to verify an expected visitor. When residents pre-register guests and each guest receives a QR code or one-time PIN, every entry is logged and every pass expires on its own. That works smoothly only if the gate infrastructure was planned for it.

What to put in the design brief

For developers, architects and MEP consultants, these items cost little at design stage and a great deal later:

• Meter every unit and every shared service separately, including irrigation, pools, gyms and common lighting.
• Install a bulk meter at each water inlet so that supply can be checked against consumption.
• Reserve accessible space for meters in risers and meter rooms, and confirm communication coverage where the meters will sit, including basements.
• Decide early between prepaid and postpaid billing for each utility, because it affects the choice of meter.
• Make a fully loaded billing platform part of the handover package: unit register, owner records, opening meter readings and service charge start dates.
• Specify how payments will be collected and reconciled, and which accounting system they will post to.
• Provide power and data at the gate for visitor management and access control.
• Commission the whole journey before occupation: a meter reading should produce a bill, the bill a payment, and the payment an updated balance.

The building is the asset; billing protects the income

A well-built development earns its value over decades of operation, and much of that operation is billing, collecting and serving residents. Developers who specify these systems with the same care as the lifts hand over buildings that run properly from the first month. Their residents notice, and so do their next buyers.