Why Letting the Window Cleaner Certify Your Anchor Points Leaves a Gap

The window cleaner abseils off your roof twice a year, checks the anchor points they use, and signs them off. On paper your building looks covered. Then the air conditioning technician, the plumber, or the facade engineer turns up, needs a point on the other side of the roof, and finds it was never assessed at all.

This is one of the most common gaps we see, and it is easy to miss because nothing looks wrong. When a rope-access crew self-certifies the points they hang off, they only check the ones they need. They are not assessing the anchor near the air conditioning unit, the point the plumber needs to reach a gutter, or the system a facade crew would rely on. Every one of those points is part of your roof, and every one of them sits outside what the window cleaner ever looked at.

That leaves you with a roof that is partly certified and a record that looks complete. It is a quiet risk, and it usually surfaces at the worst time. A heating and cooling technician walks over to change a filter and ends up standing a metre from a ten-metre drop, near an edge that needed a guardrail nobody installed. A trade trusts a point because the last person said it was fine, when it was never the right type of point for that work.

The weight of that falls on you. You are accountable for everyone who gets on the roof, not just the crew who happened to certify their own anchors. And there is a principle underneath it that matters. Every tradesperson who accesses your building deserves access that has actually been assessed for the work they are doing, not just for someone else’s job. A self-certified point covers one trade. It does not cover your building.

We see this pattern often, and we understand why it happens. Anchored Height Safety works with building owners, facilities managers, and strata committees across Melbourne and Victoria, and we are regularly called in after a near miss exposes a point that was never independently checked. We know the Australian Standards that govern rooftop access, including AS/NZS 1891 for fall-arrest and harness systems and AS 1657 for fixed platforms, walkways, ladders, and guardrails, and we know that a proper assessment looks at the whole roof and every trade who needs to be on it, not just the points one crew uses.

The path forward is simple. We carry out an independent assessment of every anchor point and access route on your roof, mapped against the trades who actually need to get up there. We confirm which points are genuinely fit for purpose, which are the wrong type for the work being asked of them, and where points or edge protection are missing for trades the window cleaner never considered. Where an air conditioning unit or plant sits near an unprotected edge, we flag it and design the access or guardrailing that makes it safe.

From there we install, certify, and maintain the anchor points, static lines, and edge protection your trades rely on, and we set a recertification interval in line with the relevant Standards. Our industry-leading documentation tells every trade exactly what is on the roof, what each point is approved for, and when it was last inspected, so the plumber, the facade engineer, and the air conditioning technician all arrive knowing where to go and what they can trust. The certification covers your building, not just one crew’s corner of it.

Picture how that looks when it is done properly. Any trade can access your roof safely, because every point and every edge has been assessed for the work that happens up there. Your documentation reflects the whole roof. You are confident that whoever goes up next, for whatever reason, is working off a system that was checked for them.

Now picture the gap left open. A trade the window cleaner never thought about goes up, reaches for a point that was never assessed or was the wrong type, and trusts it. Maybe nothing happens. Maybe it does, and an unprotected edge or an unsuitable anchor turns a routine visit into an injury, a WorkSafe investigation, and an insurance position you cannot defend. Self-certification by one trade was never going to cover that.

If your roof has only ever been signed off by the crew who uses it, there is almost certainly a gap waiting for the next trade. Let us assess the whole roof, for every trade who needs it. Call us on 03 9555 3586, email sales@anchored.com.au, or visit anchored.com.au to book an independent assessment of your anchor points.