The Oxlade is two towers at 80 Oxlade Drive, New Farm, sitting between the street and the river. We maintain the planting built into the facade, clean the glass and wash the building, handle the bird work, and certify the height safety system all of it hangs off.
The gardens are on the building rather than in a bed at the bottom. Planters sit in the setbacks on levels three and four facing Oxlade Drive, along the penthouse terraces, and above the foyer, the pump room, the bin room and the garage ramp. Getting to any of them means going over the edge.
At a glance
Location
New Farm
Services
Window cleaning, facade cleaning, gardens, height safety
Access
Rope access, off roof anchors and davits
Frequency
Gardens quarterly, glass six monthly, facade and anchors annually
Photos
On site
The gardens
Planting set into the facade
The planting here is spread across both towers. Two setbacks face Oxlade Drive on levels three and four, two more gardens run along the penthouses on raptor rails, and single beds sit above the foyer and pump room, the bin room and the garage ramp. Left alone it gets away quickly. Foliage hangs over the edge, weeds and nut grass come through the beds, and dead growth sits in the middle of an otherwise sharp building.
On every round
Prune back to a neat, bushy shape rather than a hard cut that leaves the planters bare
Pull the weeds and spot spray the nut grass that keeps coming back through the beds
Strip out dead foliage and anything hanging over the edge where the street can see it
Bag green waste on the rope in load rated bags and take every one of them off site
Report on plant health, waterproofing and irrigation, because a planter is also a roof
How a round runs
We recommend quarterly. A full round is about 54 hours across the two towers, and a qualified horticulturalist either does the work or supervises it, so the cut is a horticultural decision rather than whatever the rope happens to allow.
Tools stay on lanyards the whole time, because everything below is glass, footpath, pool deck or driveway. Anything big enough to need a saw or an aerial rig gets quoted before it happens rather than improvised on the day.
Glass and facade
Two finishes, two methods
The same crew and the same anchors that handle the planting clean the building. Glass and frames get pure deionised water so they dry clear with nothing left behind. The hard surfaces get pressure cleaned: painted concrete walls, slab edges, ledges, soffits to the drip edge, metal sunshades, fins and screens, the Alpolic panels and the graphite poles on the riverside facades.
On a clean
All shell glass and frames, plus the external side of every balcony balustrade and its framing
Slab edges, ledges and soffits taken back to the drip edge rather than stopping at the visible face
Metal sunshades, fins, screens and Alpolic panels washed along with the surfaces around them
The graphite poles on the riverside facades, which take the most weather of anything on the building
Glass and balustrades every six months, the hard surfaces and poles once a year
Birds
Droppings on this building are a job of their own. They are treated as a biohazard, contained rather than blown around, then washed, disinfected and rinsed off.
Spikes go on afterwards where the birds keep returning, so the clean holds for more than a season instead of coming back the same way next time.
Height safety
The system everything hangs off
Every drop on both towers hangs off the roof anchor system, so it has to be in certification before anyone leaves the ground. The inspection covers anchor points, horizontal and vertical lifelines, walkways, platforms and ladder systems, against AS/NZS 1891 and the AS/NZS 4488 series.
What the inspection covers
Every anchor, lifeline, walkway, platform and ladder system on both towers, load tested where the standard calls for it
Compliant gear tagged with the date it was checked, non compliant gear tagged out so nobody can use it
An asset register and a marked up site plan, plus a defect list rated high, medium or low
Twelve months of certification, with any rectification quoted separately
Done while we are already here
The inspection runs alongside a clean, while the crew is rigging anyway. Nine hours covers both towers that way, which is the cheapest this will ever be done.
It also means the people certifying the system are the people using it. Nobody signs off an anchor they would not hang from the next morning.
How we get to it
Rigged off the roof
Both towers are rigged from the roof. Davit arms and anchors are set on the roof terraces, lines run, then the crew works down the face in drops. On the river side there is nothing underneath but terrace and water, so everything goes over tethered.
Getting to the planters
The planters sit between levels rather than at them, so a technician stops partway down and works from the rope instead of passing by. Each planted level is its own set up, rigged, worked and cleared before the next one.
Water on site is not reliable, so we plan around it rather than discover it on the day. We bring our own supply for the pressure cleaning when the building cannot hold up its end.
How we leave it
Tools on lanyards and green waste bagged on the rope, never dropped
Bags kept out of the way during the round and taken off site at the end of it
Keys and access passes back to management before anyone leaves
Equipment, bollards and signage packed away where management has approved
Roof and access doors locked, and the building manager spoken to before the crew vacates
Photos uploaded the same day, so the record exists whether or not anyone asks for it
Challenges
What makes this one awkward
None of it is hard on its own. It is awkward because the gardens, the facade and the safety system all sit on top of each other.
The planting had grown over the davit base covers. Those are the fittings the ropes rig to, so the gardens had to be cut back before anybody could get to the facade at all. Three separate contractors would each have turned up to find work in the way that was not theirs to do.
Outcome
What the building gets
The planting reads as deliberate instead of overgrown, which matters more here than it would on a plain facade, because the gardens are part of the architecture rather than decoration at the base.
Rigging two towers is most of the cost of working on them. Doing the gardens, the glass, the facade, the bird work and the anchor certification off the same set up means the building pays for that rigging once, and no trade is ever left waiting on another one to clear the way.
