A building survey is an important preliminary step to doing any kind of building repair work and when it’s done accurately, the cost is invaluable. Without a proper building survey, however, many maintenance companies will hire scaffolding, spending money that is unnecessary, only to discover that they haven’t been able to fully determine the nature of the work needed beforehand; the problem being that hiring scaffolding to access the building for a close-up inspection survey in the first place would have increased the initial costs unacceptably.

There are ways to spend your money wisely getting inspection surveys. The money should be spent on surveys from a rope access company.

Why Rope Access Building Surveys Are Effective

Rope access ensures that all aspects of a building or tall structure are covered, including the hard to reach areas. Otherwise, people from the ground level will make assumptions that are often incorrect and sometimes financially disastrous.

The owner of Sussex Rope Access, Wayne Brooks, shares an experience where the right survey wasn’t conducted and the scaffolding was in place for the maintenance company to begin work. “They called in all the engineers and architects and surveyors. They all were saying, ‘We just couldn’t tell this from the bottom. We just didn’t know that we were in for this from the bottom’. They had simply looked at it with binoculars, and they estimated the damage of the works from the bottom.“

Ropes access allow technicians to go where binoculars and scaffolding cannot. They get to see all the way up to the very top of the building because that’s where they start. They can see every problem close up because they are on the building instead of seeing it from the ground.

Why Scaffolding is Ineffective

Scaffolding is costly from both a material stand point as well as the labour costs involved in erecting it. Once the scaffolding is up and the workforce are in front of the building, they are often unable to get to exactly where they need because the poles and bars of the scaffold are right in the way. There is no way to get around them because the scaffolding doesn’t move.

Hiring scaffolding isn’t an effective use of budget because it is ineffective in completing the job fully. Think about the area scaffolding takes up and you’ll realise that workers cannot accurately get to all aspects of the building and therefore skip over areas that could need serious work. As a result, this leaves the job incomplete. In fact, there are many times when a rope access company is brought in after the scaffolding has been taken down to help complete the job to a satisfactory level.

Brooks’ team has done hundreds of surveys because they know what they’re looking at. “We can go to a tall building or block – and see they’ve got water, damp, they’ve got cracks. We’ll tell if there’s movement; we’ve dealt with so many engineers and been through so many surveys, we’ll provide a building inspection report that’s completely accurate and will detail exactly what work is needed.”

The money for any project is best spent on the initial survey by rope access technicians, not scaffolding hire. There is only one way to truly find out what the condition of the building is really in and no one wants surprises when the scaffolding is up and the diagnosis is worse than expected.

A proper inspection survey done by rope access will save thousands of pounds before the building maintenance has even started.