Do you need a roof access plan?

What the document actually contains

A useful roof access plan is short and specific. It names the route up: which ladder, which tower, which platform, which hatch. It states the fall protection in use, whether that is edge protection, a harness on a rated anchor, or simply working inside a barrier set back from the edge. It marks fragile surfaces on a plan of the roof. It states the maximum wind speed for the equipment in use and the weather conditions that stop work.

It also names people: who is permitted up there, who supervises, who holds the keys, and who the emergency contact is. And it sets out the rescue arrangement, which is the part that gets left out most often and matters most.

What it is not is a generic template with your address typed into it. A plan that does not mention your fragile in-plane sheets, or your parapet height, or the fact that the only route to the roof crosses a neighbouring tenancy, is not a plan.

When one is genuinely required

For any commercial roof work, the contractor has to plan the work at height and record that plan, and that record is what most people mean by a roof access plan. For notifiable projects there is a wider set of duties on the client as well, and on a managed estate the plan is usually a condition of the permit to work before anyone reaches the roof.

There is a second, longer-lived version: the plan a building owner holds for the roof itself, describing how anyone accesses it for any purpose, from cleaning gutters to servicing a condenser. That one sits in the building’s health and safety file and does not belong to a contractor at all. If your building has one, a rooflight contractor should be reading it rather than writing a new one from scratch.

Who writes it and who owns it

For the work itself, the contractor doing the work writes it, because only they know the method and the equipment. It forms part of their method statement and risk assessment. The client accepts it, and on a larger project a principal contractor coordinates it against everything else happening on the roof that week.

For the building, the owner or managing agent owns it, and it should be updated whenever the roof changes. Fitting new rooflights changes the roof, which means the plan should be updated when we finish: new fragile or non-fragile areas marked, any new anchor points recorded, and the revised layout drawn. That handover is part of the job on a commercial installation, and it goes into the operation and maintenance documentation.

What the building already holds that feeds into it

Before anyone starts drafting, it is worth asking what exists. A health and safety file from the original construction or a later refurbishment. Test certificates for any fall arrest anchors or a horizontal lifeline, which have to be inspected periodically. A roof plan showing the structure and the covering. Any manufacturer warranty on the covering, which may restrict how the roof is traversed. Records of previous access, including whether a mobile platform has been used successfully before and where it stood.

Half the time a client tells us none of this exists and then finds most of it in a folder from the last refurbishment. It saves real money, because a surveyor who can read the roof build-up from a drawing does not have to price the uncertainty.

Fragile surfaces are the line that matters most

The most important thing on a roof access plan is which parts of the roof will not hold a person. On the industrial stock around Oxford that means the translucent in-plane sheets, and it usually means every one of them, because they are past the age at which any rating can be assumed. It can also mean asbestos cement sheet, old wired glass rooflights, and liner panels on a built-up roof where the outer sheet has been removed.

Marking them on a plan is the start. On the roof itself the control is physical: covers over the sheets, barriers either side of a run, or a walkway that keeps the route away from them entirely. Signage at the access point stating that the roof contains fragile materials is the minimum, and it is worth checking yours says something true rather than something written twenty years ago. Our page on access, edge protection and roof safety covers the physical measures.

Stopping the fall, and the choices available

There is an order of preference and it is not a matter of taste. First, avoid the risk: do as much as possible from a platform rather than from the roof surface. Second, prevent the fall collectively: edge protection or guardrails, which protect everybody without anyone having to do anything right. Third, restrain the individual: a harness on a short lanyard that physically cannot reach the edge. Last, arrest the fall: a harness and a shock-absorbing lanyard on a rated anchor, which allows the fall and then stops it.

Fall arrest is the weakest option, not the strongest, because it depends on the anchor being rated and tested, on the clearance below being adequate for the lanyard to deploy, and on rescue being possible. It is what you use when the first three cannot be achieved, and a plan that reaches for it first is usually a plan written to save on scaffold.

Rescue, the part that gets forgotten

If someone falls and is held in a harness, they cannot be left hanging while an ambulance is called. Suspension in a harness becomes dangerous within minutes. So any plan using fall arrest has to say how a suspended person is brought down, by whom, with what equipment, and how long that will take.

In practice this is a strong argument for the collective measures higher up the list. A guardrail needs no rescue plan because nobody falls. If a proposed method depends on harnesses and the answer to the rescue question is that the fire service will come, that is not a plan, and it is a reasonable thing for a client to challenge.

What to do if your building has nothing

Plenty of small commercial buildings in Oxfordshire have no roof access documentation at all, and that does not stop work happening. It means the contractor surveys the roof properly and writes the plan for their own work from scratch, and it means the survey costs a little more time because nothing can be assumed.

It is also a reasonable moment to put something permanent in place. If a rooflight scheme is going ahead anyway, the marked-up roof plan, the record of what is now fragile and what is rated, and any anchor testing can be handed over as the beginning of a file the building keeps. Call 01865 704245 or email info@heritageskylightsoxford.co.uk and tell us what you hold. We install and replace rooflights only, we write the access plan for our own work rather than for your building as a whole, and our workmanship carries a ten-year guarantee.