Did you know that if you are managing a residential building, workplace health and safety laws apply? Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking, or PCBU, carries a legal duty to keep workers and anyone affected by the work reasonably safe.
There is a narrow exemption for owners corporations that manage purely residential common property and don’t directly employ anyone. But that exemption disappears fast. The moment a building employs an on-site caretaker or gardener, it’s a PCBU. If there’s any commercial or retail component mixed in with the residential lots, the exemption doesn’t apply to those shared areas at all. Even a lot owner running a business out of their unit can complicate things.
What does all of this mean for roof access?
Whenever a contractor like a plumber, roofer, HVAC technician, or whoever comes on-site to work on common property works on your roof, that section becomes a “temporary workplace” for the duration of the job.
The contractor carries their own safety obligations, sure, but the owners corporation and the strata managing agent don’t get to wash their hands of it. They still have to make sure the physical access, such as the ladder, hatch, anchor point, and guardrail, is safe to use.
Layer on top of that Section 62 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, which puts an unconditional duty on owners corporations to maintain and repair common property, and you end up with a pretty clear picture: strata schemes should be operating on the assumption that these obligations apply to them, rather than hoping they’re exempt.
What are roof safety audits for owners corporations checking against?
The main benchmark for permanent roof access (platforms, walkways, ladders, guardrails) is AS 1657:2018, a surprisingly specific piece of legislation. Some examples include:
- Top guardrails need to sit between 900mm and 1100mm off the walking surface
- If there’s more than a 450mm gap between that top rail and the floor, you need a mid-rail too
- A solid kickplate of at least 100mm has to run along open edges to stop tools and feet sliding off
- The whole guardrail assembly has to hold up to a serious point load (1.1 kilonewtons, roughly the force of a 112kg person leaning or falling against it) without bending out of shape
Ladders get their own rules too, as anything climbing higher than 3 metres needs a safety cage or fall-arrest rail, and rest landings are required at least every 6 metres so people aren’t climbing enormous, fatiguing, high-risk stretches in one go.
For taller buildings where a platform or boom lift simply can’t reach (like façade cleaning on a high-rise), rope access, or abseiling, becomes the go-to method. That’s governed by its own set of standards (the AS/NZS 4488 series for the rope access work itself, and AS/NZS 5532 alongside the AS/NZS 1891 series for the anchor points and lifelines). Proper systems need two independent ropes, a working line and a backup, anchors that have been proof-tested to their rated load, and exclusion barricades at ground level so nobody wanders underneath.
What audits often find
In practice, height safety audits across Sydney strata buildings tend to turn up a fairly familiar list of problems. Abseil anchors installed decades ago, with no test paperwork to show they’re still fit for purpose. Parapet walls on older, mid-century buildings that sit well under the 900mm mark, offering next to no protection to anyone working near the edge. Skylights without fall-through protection right next to walkways. Solar panel arrays that were bolted on after the fact with no safe path built in to reach them.
None of this is necessarily anyone’s fault as buildings age, standards evolve, and equipment gets added over the years without anyone stepping back to look at the roof as a whole system. That’s exactly the value an audit provides: it catches the accumulated gaps before they turn into an incident.
Once problems are identified, they’re not all treated the same way. Audits work through the WHS Hierarchy of Control, which basically says: fix the actual hazard before you rely on someone wearing the right gear. So relocating equipment so nobody needs to climb up there at all sits at the top. Below that are permanent guardrails and walkways that protect anyone without special training. Then work-positioning systems like static lines and anchor points, which need harnesses, training and annual load testing. And right at the bottom, personal fall-arrest gear (lanyards, harnesses, catch systems), which only comes into play once someone’s already falling.
Height safety audit for strata buildings Sydney can trust
An audit report is only as useful as what happens with it afterwards. That means strata managers checking that contractors have a proper Safe Work Method Statement before they’re allowed on the roof (mandatory for any fall risk over 2 metres), confirming anchor points and static lines have current load-test certification, and running a genuine permit-to-work system, so roof keys don’t just get handed out on request.
It also means keeping decent records. If something ever does go wrong, having a paper trail of audits, certifications and contractor checks is what separates “we did everything reasonably practicable” from a very uncomfortable conversation with SafeWork NSW.
A height safety audit every three to five years, or after any major building works, isn’t box-ticking. It’s the difference between knowing your building’s roof access is genuinely safe, and just hoping it is. Contact Abseilers United about your next audit today.