The CBD splits into two building stocks that behave nothing alike. The office towers along Eagle Street, Creek Street and Adelaide Street are mostly 1970s to 1990s: precast concrete, deep window reveals, spandrel panels and a lot of steelwork that has been painted more than once. The residential towers that have gone up along Albert Street and Margaret Street since 2015 are glass almost to the ground, with frameless balustrades and very little on the facade to stand on.

Access here is a scheduling problem as much as a rigging one. Most of the older towers have davit arms or a building maintenance unit already on the roof, and where the unit cannot reach, which is usually the setbacks, the light wells and anything above the plant deck, we rig from anchors and drop past it. Footpath is the real constraint: Queen Street Mall and the Eagle Street restaurant frontages need either an exclusion zone with spotters or a start before the city wakes up, so a lot of CBD work runs from 6am or over a weekend. Salt off the river, traffic film and pigeons are what you are actually cleaning off.

Brisbane CBD at a glance

Building types

1970s to 1990s office towers, and residential glass towers from 2015 on

Typical access

Davit arms and building maintenance units where they reach, roof anchors for everything they do not

Usual frequency

Quarterly for commercial glass, twice a year for residential

What we watch for

Salt off the river, traffic film and pigeon fouling on the ledges

Photos

On site in the Brisbane CBD

Three Abseil Pro rope access technicians working down the glass of a curved blue tower in the Brisbane CBD — Looking up from the base, three technicians working down the glass.

Abseil Pro technicians on four ropes cleaning a blue glass tower in the Brisbane CBD with the drop zone barricaded below — Four drops running at once, with the ground below barricaded and signed.

Abseil Pro rope access technician on the glass of a Brisbane CBD tower with the street far below — Part way down a CBD tower with the street a long way below.

Abseil Pro technician on ropes repairing stone and concrete on a Brisbane CBD facade above Queen Street — Stone and concrete repair above Queen Street, patched and finished on the rope.

Looking up the facade of a Brisbane CBD tower with planted ledges above the street — Most facade defects are invisible from the footpath.

Abseil Pro technicians on ropes beside the planted facade of 443 Queen Street, Brisbane River behind — Two technicians part way down a drop on the riverside elevation.

Three Abseil Pro technicians abseiling down the dark glass facade of a Brisbane office tower — Three technicians working the same elevation from the top down.

Four Abseil Pro rope access technicians cleaning a high rise glass facade above the Brisbane CBD — Four on the glass, one drop each, working the same face.

Local work

On the ropes around the CBD

We work the CBD year round rather than in bursts. Commercial towers on a quarterly cycle where the glass is the facade, and the newer residential buildings on Albert Street and Margaret Street where the body corporate wants the whole envelope done at once rather than trade by trade.

Early starts are normal here. Beginning at 6am and being off the ropes before the lunch trade means no exclusion zone across a restaurant frontage and no argument with the building's tenants. If your building is near one we already visit, we can usually fit it into the same week and the same traffic plan.

Buildings we have worked on in Brisbane CBD

In the CBD our work splits two ways: glass on the tall towers like Brisbane Square, Abian and 10 Eagle Street, and planted towers such as 480 Queen, 80 Ann and 443 Queen, where we maintain green walls and terraces monthly or quarterly. Most also have us certify the anchors every drop hangs off, and at Old Mineral House we installed the system in the first place.