Most height safety projects go wrong in the same place. Someone rings three installers, gets three quotes, and every quote is for a different job.
One prices a static line. One prices anchors. One prices walkway and guardrail. They're not being dishonest — nobody told them what the building needs, so each priced what they sell. You end up choosing on number, and the number was never the point.
Nail the scope first and everything downstream gets easier. The quotes are comparable, the variations largely disappear, and the system that gets installed is the one the building actually requires.
There is nothing wrong with an installer who also designs. Plenty are excellent. But you should understand what you're buying: a design shaped by a product range.
The alternative is to pay for the design separately, own it, and then compete it. The design fee is usually a rounding error against the install, and it routinely pays for itself in the pricing spread alone — before you count the variations you didn't have to wear.
Every access task and its frequency. The hierarchy of control decision for each, with reasoning. Standards applied, clause by clause where it matters. Anchor, line and platform locations marked on drawings. Structural fixing requirements. Clearance and pendulum calculations for anything arrest-based.
Then the parts people forget: the rescue plan (rope access) where rope access is used, the certification and handover requirements, the logbook format, and the ongoing inspection regime with intervals and competency requirements.
If your specification doesn't cover those, you don't have a scope. You have a shopping list.
The cheapest time to fix height safety is at design stage, on paper. The next cheapest is during construction. The most expensive is after handover, when you're drilling into a warranted roof and coordinating around an occupied building.
Same on refurbishments. If the roof is being touched, that is the moment to sort access. Every year you wait adds cost and adds the risk that someone's up there in the meantime on a system that never suited the task.
Ask what they'd do if the answer was 'no system at all' — a good specifier will happily tell you when eliminating the trip to the roof beats protecting it. Ask for a specification they've written, with the client details stripped. Ask who certifies the installed system, and whether that is the same party who designed it.
And ask what happens in twelve months. If the answer stops at handover, so does their interest.
A quote before anyone has asked what the roof is used for. A design that is one product line from end to end, with no justification against the hierarchy of control. Drawings that show hardware locations but no load path, no clearances and no clause references.
Any answer to a standards question that starts with 'we've always done it this way'. And the biggest one: a designer who tells you fall arrest is the answer before they've considered eliminating the trip or guarding the edge. That order is backwards, and it costs you money for the life of the building.
Ask for professional indemnity insurance that specifically covers design work — not just public liability. If their design is wrong and someone falls, their PI policy is what stands behind the specification. No PI covering design means you are self-insuring their mistakes.
Ask what competency they work under. There is no single licence for height safety designers in Australia, so you are looking for evidence instead: working knowledge of AS 1657 and AS/NZS 1891 clause by clause, structural awareness or access to a structural engineer, and a track record of specifications that were actually built without major variation.
Finally, ask whether they or their certifier will inspect the finished installation against the specification. Design intent without a completion inspection is how non-compliant systems get handed over with a straight face.
We design and specify roof and facade access, and we don't supply the hardware. That's deliberate. We write the scope, you take it to market, installers price the same job, and we can stay across construction and completion if you want us to.
For architects, builders and height safety installers, The Spec Hub is the purpose-built version of this service.
- Split design from supply. Get the system specified by someone who doesn't sell the hardware, then take that scope to installers.
- They define the job. Assess the access tasks and fall risk, apply the hierarchy of control, and document the system in enough detail to be priced, installed and certified.
- Tasks, standards, structure. AS 1657 for platforms, walkways, ladders and guardrail; AS/NZS 1891 for fall arrest. Plus fixings, clearances, certification and inspection intervals.
- So the quotes are comparable. Without a common scope every installer prices a different system and you're choosing on a number that means nothing.