The Height of Safety
The Australian War Memorial is one of the most iconic and recognisable landmarks in Australia and welcomes more than one million visitors each year. Anchor Safe worked alongside Spotless to rectify & maintain their height safety assets to ensure the cultural significance of the Memorial was not compromised. A memorial of this size & age undergoes constant rooftop maintenance, which in turn generates a lot of traffic along the roof and near fall edges.
The Australian War Memorial required a solution to prevent damage to roof sheets and membranes in high traffic areas and we had just the right solution to not only eliminate damage to the roof but to enhance the efficiency & safety of their rooftop access. With the memorial being a highly recognised landmark, meant that each safety system needed to be aesthetically pleasing, blend in with the roof material & hidden from the eyes of the public.
Delivering results from top to bottom
We started with a site visit to get a complete understanding of the project and the unique requirements of working with the Australian War Memorial buildings. Some of the issues our height safety technicians found on the initial visit were:
- Ladders that didn’t meet AS1657 Standards
- Anchors out of pendulum
- Systems installed incorrectly – not according to manufacturer’s specifications
- Areas on the roof that required servicing, however no existing access
- Skylights that weren’t protected
These issues were easily resolved in the planning stage and our height safety technicians rectified existing systems to make them compliant to the Australian Standards. For example, an existing static line system on the main administration building had been installed incorrectly, instead of installing a complete new system Anchor Safe re-installed the system correctly with the new components that were required – creating room in our clients budget to upgrade their height safety systems on other buildings. A significant amount of Anchor points and almost 700m of static lines were installed over 7 different buildings including the famous memorial building. In order to deliver the best result for our client we worked closely with the heritage building consultants and powder coated the ladder systems to achieve minimal visual impact to the memorial building.
Overall, Anchor Safe’s full service provided the confidence that the Australian War Memorial employees and contractors are safe, risks are minimised and responsibilities are met. We have significantly improved the types of access and anchor points, and created a compliant, and cost-effective solution that considered everyone’s needs. It was a pleasure to partner with Spotless – and proud to once again receive their positive feedback about our approach.
