Roof clean-ups
Spills, debris and blocked gutter lines cleared at roof level, and a proper look at what is up there while somebody licensed is on it.
Request a site assessment
What this is
Industrial roofs get visited when something has already gone wrong. A gutter line has backed up into the building, a process has put something onto the sheeting, or a storm has left a mess that nobody can safely go and look at.
This is that visit, done by a crew with the access equipment and the height tickets to be up there legitimately, so nobody on site has to volunteer to climb.
Why it matters
Nobody should be on an industrial roof casually
Work at height on a commercial roof carries fall risk, fragile-sheeting risk and edge risk, and the duty to manage it sits with the business that lets someone up there. On other construction work the fall-protection provisions bite at 2 metres. An industrial roof is well past that.
The material an ageing industrial roof is made of is the problem. WorkSafe Queensland lists as likely to be fragile: polycarbonate or plastic used in skylights, fibre cement sheets, liner panels on built-up sheeted roofs, and metal sheets and fasteners, especially when corroded. Its own incident alert of 15 May 2020 covers three falls through roofs in four months, one of them fatal, and the fatality was a man repairing a skylight.
The same alert is blunt about the weak end of the hierarchy: administrative controls and personal protective equipment rely on human behaviour and supervision, and on their own tend to be the least effective. Which is why we can work from a licensed elevating work platform wherever a platform can reach.
The practical guidance sits in the Managing the Risk of Falls at Workplaces Code of Practice 2021. That is the document your own safety people will recognise, and it is a fair thing to ask any contractor about before they go up.
It is also the single most common reason a roof stays uncleaned for years: the job is small, and nobody on site can legally do it.
What we find up there
The roof is usually telling you something
On one job the brief was ducting and dust inside an office. While the attached factory was being cleaned, small holes turned up in the factory roof, letting dust straight through into the roof cavity, which was then feeding the office next door. The dust problem was being treated in the wrong building.
That is the ordinary shape of roof work. Somebody is up there for one reason and finds the actual cause of something else: a penetration that has never been sealed, a gutter falling the wrong way, a downpipe that has been blocked long enough to have rusted the sheeting under it.
We are cleaners, not roofers. So what you get is the location and a photograph, not a quote to repair it.
What gets cleared
Roof level, and the lines off it
Box gutters and gutter lines
Downpipes and sumps
Accumulated leaf litter and debris
Process spills and residue on sheeting
Storm and wind-blown material
Roof-mounted plant surrounds
How it is done
Small jobs, scheduled properly
Roof work is scheduled around your operating hours, and on a trading or occupied building it goes around the people underneath.
If water is used, we can contain it. What comes off a roof after a process spill is not clean water, and it should not go to the stormwater drain by default.
We can take the debris down and away with us, and nothing goes over the edge.
Before you book
What to ask before anyone goes onto your roof
- Has the roof been assessed for fragile sheeting, skylights included? Ask for the answer in writing.
- Where will people be kept off the weak parts? Ask what protects the edge and the openings.
- What happens to the debris and the water? Ask whether anything goes over the edge or down a drain.
- Who else is up there? Roof-mounted plant, solar and air-conditioning service visits can put other duty holders on the same roof. Section 46 of the Work Health and Safety Act requires them to consult, cooperate and coordinate.
Before you ring
What to photograph first
A few photographs from the ground shorten the first conversation.
- The whole roof from the yard, showing gutter lines and any visible ponding
- Staining or drips inside, at the ceiling line under the box gutters
- The downpipe outlet at ground level
- The spill or the debris, and the date it was first noticed
- How a person gets onto the roof today
Send them with the suburb and we can walk the roof with you once we know what we are looking at.
Related work
Where roof clean-ups fit 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.
Get in touch
Point us at the roof
If a gutter has overflowed twice this year, or a spill has been sitting on the sheeting since somebody first noticed it, that is the job.
0409 455 189 · info@legacyinnovations24.com.au
Licensed platform access · working at heights ticketed