Why Your Tenants May Be at Risk: Height Safety Gaps in Leased Commercial Properties

Somewhere in your leased commercial building, a contractor is about to step onto the roof. They might be servicing the air conditioning for Tenancy 3, clearing the shared gutter run, or checking the exhaust fan above the kitchen in Tenancy 7. What few people in that building understand is that the moment that contractor sets foot on the roof, the legal exposure does not land on just one party. It spreads.

Leased commercial properties create a unique and often overlooked height safety problem. Multiple tenants, multiple maintenance contractors, multiple service agreements, and a shared rooftop that no single party feels fully responsible for. The air conditioning company servicing one tenancy does not coordinate with the refrigeration contractor working on the cool room next door. Each finds their own way onto the roof, makes their own assumptions about what is safe, and gets on with the job. If the roof has no height safety infrastructure, every one of those visits is an uncontrolled risk event.

The stress builds when you start to understand who actually carries responsibility for each of those visits. As a building owner or landlord, you carry a primary duty of care under the Work Health and Safety Act that cannot be transferred through a lease agreement. But the exposure does not stop with you. Your property manager or real estate agent, if they arrange or facilitate access to the property, also holds a duty as a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking. Your tenants, when they book a contractor to service their rooftop equipment, hold a duty to ensure that contractor can work safely. And the contractor’s employer carries their own obligations on top of that.

This is the part that surprises most people. Giving access is enough to create exposure. When a tenant unlocks the roof hatch so a refrigeration technician can service their condenser unit, that tenant has facilitated work at height. If the roof has no fall protection and that technician is injured, the investigation will not ask who owns the building or who signs the lease. It will ask what each party did to ensure a safe workplace. The landlord, the property manager, the tenant who booked the job, and the contractor’s employer can all find themselves answering that question at the same time.

At Anchored Height Safety, we work with commercial property owners, facilities managers, and property managers across Melbourne who face exactly this challenge. We see this pattern regularly across multi-tenancy buildings, and we understand how easily responsibility can feel like it belongs to someone else. We also understand that once you see the full picture, you are in a much better position to protect everyone involved, and a properly designed height safety system is a more straightforward solution than most people expect.

We begin with a comprehensive rooftop assessment. We map every piece of rooftop plant across all tenancies, identify every access path a contractor would use, and document every fall hazard on the roof. That includes unprotected edges, fragile roof sheeting, skylights, changes in level, and gaps between mechanical plant. From that assessment, we design a height safety system that covers the entire roof, not just one tenancy’s equipment. The system typically includes permanent anchor points positioned near each piece of rooftop plant, horizontal static lines along common access paths, fixed roof ladders with fall-arrest rails, and edge protection in high-traffic zones near unprotected perimeters.

Every component is installed and certified to AS/NZS 1891 and AS 1657. We then provide industry-leading documentation that maps every anchor point, static line, and safety device on the roof. That documentation tells any contractor, from any tenancy, exactly what equipment is available, where it is located, what it is rated for, and when it was last inspected. Your tenants can pass this information directly to their service contractors before they arrive on site. We also schedule annual recertification inspections to keep the entire system compliant year after year.

When your height safety covers the full roof, your building works as a cohesive system. Maintenance happens on time because contractors have safe, documented access. The duty of care obligations of the landlord, the property manager, and each tenant are all supported by the same infrastructure. Your insurers can see a clear compliance trail. Every tradesperson who steps onto your roof goes home at the end of the day.

When height safety is left to chance in a multi-tenancy building, the gaps multiply and the liability spreads. One contractor uses a portable ladder propped against a parapet with no fall arrest. Another crosses fragile sheeting to reach a rooftop unit because nobody marked the safe walking path. A third works at the roof edge with no harness and no anchor point. When someone falls, the investigation will reach every party who played a role in that rooftop visit. The landlord, the property manager, the tenant who booked the job, and the contractor can all face WorkSafe scrutiny, civil liability, increased insurance premiums, and the knowledge that someone was seriously hurt on a roof that should have been safe.

Take control of your building’s rooftop safety before someone gets hurt. Call Anchored Height Safety on 03 9555 3586, email sales@anchored.com.au, or visit anchored.com.au to arrange a full rooftop height safety assessment for your commercial property.