At-heights cleaning
Roof steel, purlins, cable trays, light fittings and high-level plant, reached from a licensed platform and vacuumed down, with nothing blown around.
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What this is
Most commercial cleaning contracts stop at the top of a ladder. Above that line, the roof steel, the purlins, the cable trays, the light fittings and the high-level plant accumulate for years, because nobody on site is licensed to get to them.
This is a job in its own right and sits outside a general cleaning contract: the ticket to get up there, the platform to reach it, and a method that brings the material down and keeps it from being redistributed through the building.
Why it matters
Getting up there is a licensed activity
Operating a boom-type elevating work platform with a boom length of 11 metres or more requires TLILIC0005, a nationally recognised high-risk work licence. It is not a certificate of attendance and it is not optional. Smaller platforms are a different class again, and the crew is ticketed across both.
It is also the reason this work usually gets quoted from the floor, or quoted out to somebody else and never followed up.
A job we did
Overhead aisle signage in a trading store
Every aisle sign in a retail store, cleaned from the platform while customers kept shopping.
Step by step
How a day on site actually runs
01
Sign in and roles
Everybody signs in to site and we run through each person’s role for the day, out loud, before anything moves.
02
Licences and machines checked
Usually two or three platforms on site. Every operator’s licence is checked as current and every machine is checked as the right spec for the job it is about to do.
03
Crews paired to the plant
Two vacuum setups per platform, each with an operator and a labourer. That pairing is what keeps the platform moving and the hose managed at the same time.
04
Scope agreed up front
Where the crew starts, where they move to, and where they should finish. Agreed with you before the first machine goes up, so the end of the day is not a negotiation.
05
Top down
The work runs top down, to wherever you want it to stop. Anything else means cleaning the same surface twice.
Scale
How long, and how many
4 to 6 hours at the short end, on one platform with a small crew and a fixed window. Up to 11 days on the largest jobs, with crews sized to the work.
Work is scheduled around your operating hours, not ours, including weekends, night shifts and annual shutdown windows.
Where this applies
Building types
Warehouses
Factories
Retail and trading floors
Commercial office buildings
What the rules say
Falls are managed in a set order
Queensland’s Work Health and Safety Regulation deals with falls in Part 4.4, and WorkSafe Queensland points to the Managing the risk of falls at workplaces Code of Practice 2021 as the practical guide. It sets an order of preference. The most effective control is to remove the risk by not working at height where that is reasonably practicable. Next comes work on a solid construction with edge barriers. After that, a safe system of work: a fall-prevention device such as guard rails first, then a work-positioning system, then a fall-arrest system.
Your own safety people will know that order. It is a fair test of any plan to ask which level it relies on, and what sits above it that could have been used instead.
Before you book
Questions to ask any contractor working above the floor
- Who holds the licence for the platform on site? WorkSafe Queensland says scans and photocopies of a high risk work licence are only a guide, and the details should be checked against the physical card and the regulator’s register.
- What happens to the dust? Ask whether it comes down into a vacuum or is blown off the steel. Safe Work Australia’s hazardous chemicals code lists compressed air used to blow out dust as one of the ways combustible dust is put back into the air.
- Who coordinates with whom? Section 46 of the Work Health and Safety Act requires duty holders working on the same matter to consult, cooperate and coordinate their activities as far as reasonably practicable. The site walk before the job is where that gets done.
- What is underneath? Forklift routes, production lines and people on the floor are part of the plan for a platform moving overhead.
Common questions
What people ask about working at height
Do I need a licence to run a platform on my own site?
WorkSafe Queensland says a WP high risk work licence is needed to operate a boom-type elevating work platform. Boom length is the greater of the vertical reach from the supporting surface to the platform floor and the horizontal reach from the centre of rotation to the outer edge of the platform, both at maximum extension.
Can it be done from the floor?
Sometimes. Wands run from 1 to 5 metres, and where one reaches, that is the simpler answer. We can say on a site walk which items need a platform and which do not.
Can the building keep trading while the work goes on?
That depends on what is underneath the work. The Southport job was done with the store open. Whether yours can is a question for the site walk.
Related work
Where at-heights cleaning fits with the rest of the work
Most industrial buildings need more than one of these, and it is usually cheaper to do them on the same visit while the access equipment is already on site.
Jobs written up
Get in touch
Have a look at what is above the ladder line
Send us the building and what you can see from the floor. We will go up and tell you what is actually up there before anyone scopes a job.
0409 455 189 · info@legacyinnovations24.com.au
Boom-type platform work, 11 metres and above