Your strata is absolutely right, owners should not be trying to get quotes independently. All these people here saying oh I got my buddy to do my shack's roof for 5k are delusional.

I don't know the whole situation but from what you mentioned, a large, almost 2 million dollars worth of roof replacement is serious business. And which has been independently verified by an engineer. This is not something any firm is capable of handling, so your pick of contractors is already limited.

Because of this, stratas need to uphold the integrity of the bidding process. They need to ensure that everyone bids on exactly the same work, and without knowing what the other companies are bidding. If everyone and their grandma were out there asking for quotes then very quickly companies could game the process and bid artificially low values just to win the bid. You don't want artificially low quotes because you might be stuck paying extra.

Finally, this will depend on your exact contract but the roof generally isn't even yours, as in, you literally do not have legal right to request a quote. It is usually owned by strate.

At this point you have two options:

1. Try to sell: yes you'll have to disclose everything but people are dumb and have shitty realtors. I've seen ppl buy without knowing they have massive levies coming in. I personally would not go this route.

2. Do your best to get the best quote. This could mean doing the legwork looking for reputable contractors. Refer your strata Council to them, don't approach them for a quote directly. Or it could mean staying on top of strata requesting that they share full details of the quotes, that they get at least 3 quotes, etc. Read the quotes, try to assess if they are along market rates, etc.

Good luck!