What a Facade Audit Covers (and What Happens After the Report)

Facade audits get commissioned for different reasons: age (many owners adopt a five-yearly cycle), visible defects, a sale or refinance, an insurer's request, or a compliance trigger such as cladding review. Whatever prompts it, the audit answers the same three questions. What is on the building? What condition is it in? What needs doing, in what order?

Stage 1: desktop review

The audit starts with paperwork: architectural drawings, previous reports, repair records and maintenance history. This sets expectations about wall types, known trouble spots and warranty positions. It also flags where the records and the building are likely to disagree, which is common on buildings that have been recladded, repainted or patch-repaired over the years.

Stage 2: the inspection

Close range is the operative term. Most facade defects, debonded sealant, hairline cracking, drummy render, loose fixings, cannot be confirmed from the ground. The inspection method is chosen to put eyes and hands on the wall:

• Rope access reaches every elevation directly and suits towers with certified anchor systems
• Elevated work platforms suit lower buildings and podiums with vehicle access
• Drone survey covers broad areas fast and photographs hard-to-reach details, but it supplements rather than replaces hands-on inspection

During the inspection the auditor works elevation by elevation, tap testing render and tiling, probing joints, checking fixings and glazing gaskets, and photographing every defect with a location reference so it can be found again.

What the auditor examines

• Concrete elements: cracking, rust staining, spalling, drummy cover
• Masonry: cracked or missing mortar, wall tie corrosion, displaced units
• Render and tiling: drummy areas, debonding, failed movement joints
• Sealant joints: splitting, debonding, age hardening
• Glazing systems: gasket condition, frame fixing, cracked or shifted panels, with commercial glazing defects logged for panel-level follow-up
• Attachments: signage, awnings, balustrades, plant fixings
• Previous repairs: are they holding, and what do they hide?

Where something cannot be confirmed visually, the audit can extend to targeted testing: pull tests on fixings, moisture readings behind suspect areas, sample breakouts, or carbonation and chloride testing if reinforcement corrosion is suspected. Testing is usually staged: the visual audit identifies the questions, and testing is scoped only where the answer changes the repair decision. That keeps the audit cost proportionate while still producing evidence the engineer can rely on for anything structural.

Defect classification

Every finding gets a risk rating. Terminology varies, but a typical scheme is: priority one for safety-critical items needing immediate make-safe (loose overhead concrete or panels), priority two for defects that will worsen or admit water within the planning horizon (failed joints, active cracking), and priority three for cosmetic or monitor-only items. The rating discipline is what turns a long defect list into a usable plan.

The report

A good report contains an executive summary the committee can read in five minutes, elevation-by-elevation findings with photographs and locations, the classification table, repair recommendations with indicative quantities, and budget-level cost ranges. It should also state what was not inspected and why, so nobody mistakes a sample inspection for a full one.

How long it takes and what it costs

Duration scales with the building: a mid-rise audit is typically a day or two on the wall plus reporting time, while a large tower with multiple elevations and materials can run a week or more. Cost follows access and scope rather than floor count alone; as a guide, audits on commercial and strata buildings commonly price in the low thousands for small buildings and into five figures for towers with rope access across all elevations and testing included. Owners comparing audit quotes should compare scope lines, not totals: how many elevations are close-range, whether tap testing and joint probing are included, whether testing is priced or excluded, and what the report deliverable actually contains. The cheapest audit on the list is frequently a drone flight with captions, which has its uses but does not answer the condition questions that drive repair budgets.

What happens after the report

The report is the start of a process, not the end. Priority one items are made safe immediately, often within the audit visit itself. The remaining defects are scoped into a repair programme: detailed specifications, quantities firmed up, access strategy chosen, and the work either tendered or negotiated. Owners typically stage facade repairs across budget years, doing safety and waterproofing items first and cosmetic work last. The audit then repeats on its cycle, and the next report measures whether the building is improving or sliding.

For buildings with recurring water entry, the audit often pairs with leak detection so that roof and facade sources are traced in the same exercise rather than blamed on each other.

Allied Commercial audits facades on commercial and strata buildings across Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, and delivers the repair programmes that follow. To scope an audit for your building, contact our team.