Buying a Building? What to Check About Its Height Safety System

Due diligence on a commercial building covers the lease schedule, the roof, the services and the compliance certificates. The height safety system rarely rates a mention, yet from settlement day the buyer owns every duty attached to it. Workers will clip onto those anchors under the new owner's name, and if the system is undocumented, expired or wrongly laid out, the cost and the liability both land on the purchaser. Twenty minutes of checking before contract beats discovering the problem when the first maintenance contractor refuses to get on the roof.

The documents to request

• As-installed layout drawings showing every anchor, static line, ladder bracket and access point on the building
• Design and installation certification for the system, including the installer's details and the standards it was designed to
• Current inspection certificates, dated within the last 12 months for anchors and within 6 months for cable systems where that applies
• The logbook recording inspections, repairs, component replacements and any fall arrest events
• Manufacturer documentation stating inspection frequencies and component lifespans

If the vendor cannot produce these, price the gap. A re-certification visit is a modest cost; re-documenting an unknown system is larger; replacing anchors that fail assessment is larger again. The request itself costs nothing: it is one line in the due diligence list, and the speed and completeness of the vendor's response tells you how the building has been managed generally.

The physical checks

A pre-purchase roof walk with a competent inspector covers more than the anchors, but on the height safety system specifically it should confirm:

• Tags on every anchor, legible, with an in-date next inspection
• No visible corrosion, cracked fixings or deformed eyes, especially on coastal buildings
• Static lines correctly tensioned with intact end terminations and energy absorbers
• Ladders, walkways and guardrails in sound condition and compliant with AS 1657
• Skylights protected or rated, since they remain a leading cause of falls through roofs

Coverage: the question nobody asks

A certified system can still be the wrong system. Anchors certify as components; coverage is a design question: can every maintenance task on this roof (gutter cleaning, plant service, solar maintenance, facade access) be done while safely connected? Buildings accumulate coverage gaps as plant gets added and solar arrays appear, and a system designed for the 2010 roof may strand workers short of the 2025 equipment. An assessment against the current roof layout, the kind done during height safety design, identifies the gaps, and system upgrades are far cheaper to negotiate into the purchase price than to fund after settlement.

The gaps that show up most often

Pre-purchase height safety reviews keep finding the same handful of problems, which makes them easy to brief into a building inspection. Certifications expired quietly because the previous owner's reminder system was a person who left. Anchors present on the roof but absent from any drawing, installed by a long-gone contractor with no design records, which leaves the new owner unable to prove what they are fixed to. Static lines whose energy absorbers have deployed (a visible tell) without any logged event. Solar arrays installed across what used to be the safe access path, with no system redesign. And roof access doors whose ladders or hatches would not pass AS 1657 today. Each one is mundane; together they are the reason the height safety file deserves a line in the due diligence checklist alongside the fire and electrical records.

Questions to put to the vendor

• Who installed the system, when, and to which standard editions?
• Who has been inspecting it, and is the next inspection booked?
• Have there been any fall arrest events or component replacements?
• Which contractors currently use the system, and have any raised concerns?
• Are there roof areas workers currently cannot reach while connected?

Vendors with a managed building answer these in a day. Silence or improvisation is itself information, and it should move the price.

What it means for the deal

None of this should kill a purchase; it is ordinary, priceable risk. Expired certification is a service call. Missing documentation is a re-baselining exercise. Coverage gaps are a scoped upgrade. The error is paying full price for a building while assuming the system on its roof is current, complete and compliant, because a meaningful share of the time it is not, and the WHS duties that attach to it begin the day the keys change hands.

Make the height safety file a settlement deliverable alongside the leases and the fire certificates, and put the first height safety inspection in the diary for the month after settlement so the cycle starts under your control.

Allied Commercial carries out pre-purchase height safety assessments and brings inherited systems up to standard for owners across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Before you settle, talk to us about an assessment.