Gasworks Residences sits on the corner of Longland Street in Newstead: sixteen levels of glass balustrades, aluminium louvres and painted concrete above a retail podium and a pool deck. Abseil Pro has been the building's rope access contractor since 2020.
Six years on one building means the crew is not working it out each visit. The clean runs to a scope written elevation by elevation, and the anchors they hang off are ones we installed and certify.
At a glance
Location
Newstead, Brisbane
Services
Window and facade cleaning, vine removal, height safety
Access
Rope access, rigged from the roof
Frequency
Facade clean annually, anchors certified each year
Photos
On site
The clean
One scope, four elevations
A tower like this is not one surface. Glass balustrades, aluminium ledges, horizontal and vertical louvres, kitchen and living room windows sitting behind those louvres, painted concrete, a glass awning over the walkway and a glass roof above the foyer. The scope is written face by face so nothing is assumed and nothing is missed.
What the clean covers
Glass balustrades, aluminium ledges and the horizontal slats in front of them, north and south faces
Windows and glass behind the fixed vertical louvres on the east and west faces, with the louvres cleaned at the same time
Painted concrete facade elements on all four faces that cannot be reached any other way
The glass awning over the walkway, the glass roof above the foyer and the gym windows at level 16
Retail frontage at ground level, including the exhaust louvres above the roller door, degreased without touching the door mechanism
How it is run
Cleaning is pure water through a brush head on most surfaces, with traditional window cleaning, a mechanical scrub or pressure used only where the substrate calls for it. Drops start at the type 4 apartments and work clockwise around the building, so the corner apartments are all done in one pass instead of twice.
Owners are offered their private balconies at the same time, booked and paid for with us directly, so the ropes already on the building get used twice. Anything that will not come off is written up and reported rather than quietly left.
Height safety
The anchors, installed and certified by us
Every drop on this building hangs off the roof anchor system. We installed a large part of it and we certify the whole register each year.
What the system covers
34 ConcreteLink inserts with collared eyebolts installed in 2025 to extend the system
Anchors, static lines, cast-in soffit anchors and gutter ladder brackets from level 1 through to the rooftop
Post installed anchors pull tested to 7.5 kN, everything else a visual inspection, all to AS/NZS 1891.4
A certificate and an asset register listing every asset, where it sits and whether it passed
Certified before it lapses
The inspection runs annually, on a day the crew is on the roof anyway. That keeps the certificate current rather than renewed after somebody notices it expired, and it means the register is checked by the people who hang off 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 building in use
Everything is rigged from the roof. Gear goes up, drops come down the elevation, and the ground stays open. Underneath the facade is a podium with gardens, a pool deck, a walkway and retail tenancies, all of it in use while the crew works.
Working over the podium
Drops are planned around what sits below them. Exclusion zones go in under live drops with a spotter on the ground, and the crew works one elevation at a time so the building is never closed off in more than one place at once.
Resident balconies sit in the middle of most drops. Where a balcony is directly under the work it is cleaned as part of finishing that face, with debris kept out of the balcony drains rather than washed down them.
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
Boom gate and lockbox codes used as agreed, and every access door locked behind the crew
Retail and the pool deck kept open, with the drops sequenced around them
Anything that would not clean up written into the report rather than left for someone to find
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 written scope every year by a crew who already know which windows sit behind which louvres, and which drop reaches them. Nothing gets rediscovered, and the scope does not quietly shrink.
The rest follows from already being on the building. The anchors are installed and certified by the same people who use them, and vine removal happens off the same rig rather than as a fresh mobilisation. One contractor, one point of contact, and a written record of everything done above head height.
