WORK AT HEIGHT
NO SCAFFOLDING

Rope access

A facade can be reached three ways, and the building usually decides which. Its own cradle is the first choice until it is booked out for the season, rigged over another elevation, or simply unable to swing into the recess, the inside corner or the podium roof where the damage sits. Scaffolding reaches anything, but it is a build: a footprint on the ground that a live car park rarely spares, ties into the structure, a hand-over and then a dismantle — all of it whether the repair takes an hour or a fortnight. Ropes take a technician to the exact point instead, leaving nothing at street level but a closed-off zone. Access on ropes is arranged for facade work at height: cladding and panel repairs, glass on the upper floors, and the joints that keep the weather out.

two lines how it is rigged
written approval before the descent
point work where it pays

Request a site assessment

What decides the access method

Booked or blocked

Cradle

Not every elevation is in reach
Needs ground

Scaffolding

A live car park rarely spares it
One panel, one joint

Scope

Point work is what ropes suit
Written approval

Building

Management sets the work window
Wind first

Weather

The forecast ends the day, not the clock

How work on ropes is set up

Elevation read from the ground and from the roof Anchors are settled before anything
Access method chosen against the defect Ropes, cradle or scaffold
Method statement agreed with the building Work window fixed in writing
Anchors rigged with a working and a safety line Either one holds on its own
Zone at street level closed and kept manned Nothing passes under a live rope
Every defect photographed on the way down The descent doubles as the survey

Modern villa with panoramic aluminium glazing and a pool at sunset

Request a site assessment

Tell us the building, the floor and what needs doing. We reply within 15 minutes during working hours, Mon–Fri 9:00–18:00.

Frequently asked questions

Because the cradle has to be free, and it has to be able to get there. It is a shared machine on a booked calendar, it is rigged over one elevation at a time, and its arms swing through an arc that misses recessed bays, inside corners, the underside of a soffit and anything standing above a podium roof. Where it reaches and is available it is the better platform — a cradle gives a floor to stand on and carries tools and materials. Ropes are for the points it cannot serve, and for work too small to justify moving it.

For a point job, nearly always, and the reason has nothing to do with day rates. Scaffolding is a structure that must be erected, licensed, tied in, inspected and taken down again, and every one of those steps happens regardless of how small the repair at the top of it turns out to be. Rigging is not a structure: anchors and lines are set on the roof, and nothing is erected at street level at all. Turn the job around, though — a whole elevation to strip and refit, materials arriving by the pallet — and scaffolding wins outright, because a rope carries only what a person can carry.

Permission from whoever controls the roof and the ground below it, in writing, before the ropes leave the bag. In practice that means a method statement and a risk assessment for the building's file, anchor points the building accepts, and a work window — many towers allow facade work only outside office hours or at weekends, and residential communities add quiet hours on top. Street level gets an exclusion zone with barriers and somebody watching it. The requirements themselves come from the building's management and from the approved facade drawings, so they differ from tower to tower.

Rope access technicians, working to the method statement the building has approved. How the job is set up is the point: rigging, descent, the exclusion zone underneath and the plan for getting an injured person off a line are trade skills, and none of them is improvised on the day. What goes back onto the facade — profile, sealed unit, fixings, finish — is specified from the drawing the facade was built to and agreed with you before anyone descends.