Bohemia sits on Jane Street in West End, render and panel over a mix of balconies, window bays and awnings. Abseil Pro has worked the building since 2020.
The work has settled into a pattern: the facade gets cleaned and the anchors get certified, by the same crew every year. Six years of that means nobody arrives here reading the building for the first time.
At a glance
Location
West End, Brisbane
Services
Window and facade cleaning, height safety
Access
Rope access, rigged from the roof
Frequency
Facade clean annually, anchors certified each year
Photos
On site
The clean
Glass and everything around it
The clean covers the whole envelope rather than just the glass, because the render and the ledges are what actually hold dirt and what the coating depends on.
What the clean covers
Exterior shell glass and frames, and the outside of every balcony balustrade
Painted render, slab edges and ledges, where run off collects and stains hardest
Balcony soffits, cleaned up to the drip edge
Metal sunshades, fins, screens and the aluminium composite panel
Anything noticed on the way past photographed and written up, whether or not it is our work to fix
How it is run
Drops run from the roof, top to bottom, one elevation at a time so nothing already cleaned gets dirtied on the way down and the building is never closed off in more than one place.
Glass wants doing every six months and the facade elements every twelve, so the annual visit covers the whole envelope and a glass only clean can go in between if the building wants it.
Height safety
The anchors get certified before anyone uses them
Every drop on this building hangs off the roof anchor system, so it has to be in certification before a rope goes on it. We inspect and certify the whole register each year.
What the inspection covers
Every anchor and component inspected against the manufacturer documentation and the Standards
Post installed anchors load tested to 7.5 kN under AS/NZS 1891.4 and AS/NZS 4488.2
An information tag fitted to every component with the date it was checked
An inspection report listing every asset and where it sits, and a certificate valid for twelve months
Certified by the people who use it
The inspection is booked so the certificate is renewed before it lapses rather than after somebody notices. It also means the crew rigging off this system are the crew who tested it.
Anything that fails is tagged out on the spot so nobody can use it, and rectification is quoted separately rather than folded into the inspection.
How we get to it
Rigged from the roof, over a lived in building
Everything is rigged from the roof. Keys signed out from management, gear carried up, then down the elevation on rope. The footpath stays open and the building keeps running around us.
Working over people
Every drop passes somebody's balcony. Residents are notified before the crew starts on their face of the building, and drops are sequenced so nobody has a technician outside their window for a week.
Exclusion zones go in below live drops with a spotter on the ground, and access doors are locked behind the crew every time.
How we leave it
Tools tethered on every drop, and nothing dropped from height
Exclusion zones and signage set up before a drop starts and packed away after it
Keys and key safe codes used as agreed, and every access door locked behind the crew
Anything that will not clean up written into the report rather than left for someone to find
Every photo tagged with the level and elevation, not just a pile of pictures
Photos uploaded the same day, so the record exists whether or not anyone asks for it
Outcome
What the building gets
A facade cleaned to the same scope every year, an anchor system certified before the ropes go on it, and a crew who can get to any part of the building within days.
The rest is what comes from one contractor being on the building for six years. The crew certifying the anchors is the crew cleaning the building, and every visit leaves dated photographs of parts of the building nobody can see from Jane Street.
