Façade maintenance, Melbourne.
Planned and reactive façade maintenance for high-rise and commercial assets — sealants, glazing, panels and remedial works, delivered by rope-access teams with reporting your committee can act on.
Keep the façade watertight, safe and compliant.
A building's façade is its most exposed and expensive system. Left unmaintained, failed sealants, tired glazing and loose fixings turn into water ingress, interior damage and safety risk. 360 Access runs planned and reactive façade maintenance that catches those issues early — reaching the whole façade by rope access and EWP, without the cost and disruption of standing scaffold.
We work with owners corporations, building managers, developers and asset managers, and report back with the condition records and defect registers you need to budget, prioritise and demonstrate diligence.
A maintenance program built around your building.
Inspect & report
- Scheduled façade inspections
- Photographic condition reports
- Defect register & priorities
Maintain & seal
- Sealant & joint maintenance
- Glazing checks & minor repairs
- Panel & fixing checks
Repair & rectify
- Water-ingress investigation
- Crack injection & remedial
- Escalation to full façade repairs
Three ways façade maintenance gets organised.
Most façade-maintenance programmes land in one of three shapes — and the right shape depends on the building, the OC's risk appetite and the maintenance budget cycle:
- Cyclical programmes — scheduled inspections and works on an annual or biannual cycle. Suits buildings with steady-state maintenance need and predictable budget cycles. Cost is predictable; defects are caught in the cycle rather than between cycles. Most OCs that have been on a programme for several years run cyclical.
- Reactive maintenance — defect-driven works as issues are reported. Suits buildings with low maintenance demand or owners who prefer to spend reactively rather than commit to a programme. Cost is unpredictable; defects can accumulate before they're addressed. Common on newer buildings still under warranty and on assets being prepared for sale.
- Hybrid programmes (most common) — periodic inspection on a defined cycle (typically biannual) plus reactive call-out for between-cycle defects. Inspections produce the defect register; the register drives the works between inspection rounds. Catches issues without the full programme commitment of pure cyclical.
For OCs, the hybrid model is the typical landing point — defined budget exposure for the inspection cycle, reactive capacity for the works the inspection identifies. We work all three structures.
What maintenance looks like by building type.
Different building classes carry different maintenance patterns. We're set up across all of them:
- Commercial high-rise (Class 5) — curtain-wall and unitised glazing dominate. Maintenance focus: sealant renewal at curtain-wall junctions, glass-defect rectification, panel-fixing inspection, and periodic façade-cleaning programmes. Asset-manager driven, often through Tier 2-3 facility-management contracts.
- Residential high-rise (Class 2) — Victoria's new Class 2 maintenance manual obligations (introduced 2023-24) mean OCs are increasingly required to maintain a current façade-maintenance plan. Maintenance focus: balcony and balustrade detail, sealant renewal, water-ingress investigation and rectification, glazing checks.
- Mixed-use (Class 2 + Class 5/6) — most modern towers. Retail-podium maintenance, commercial-tower maintenance and residential maintenance all run in one programme — coordinated work-windows around retail trading, commercial occupancy and resident impact.
- Heritage and converted-industrial — Fitzroy and Richmond's converted warehouses, heritage retail strips and historic residential. Heritage-specific methodology where surveyors require it; rope access fits where scaffold doesn't.
What you get back from every inspection.
Façade-maintenance reporting is what your owners corporation, committee, asset manager or building surveyor actually relies on for budgeting, prioritisation and compliance evidence. Every inspection produces a defined deliverable pack:
- Photographic condition record — geo-referenced photos covering every elevation, with defect close-ups numbered to a defect register.
- Defect register — maintained spreadsheet listing each defect with severity (urgent / planned / monitor), recommended action, indicative cost and elevation reference. Carries forward from inspection to inspection so the trend is visible.
- Inspection report — written summary of building condition, key findings, programme recommendations and budget exposure for the next 12-24 months.
- Compliance documentation — where the building's Class 2 maintenance manual or Class 5/6 façade-inspection obligations require formal record-keeping, the inspection pack supports the surveyor or maintenance-manual owner.
- Recommendations memo — short, plain-English summary of what we'd do next and why. For OC committees who don't read 30-page technical reports.
A programmed cycle your committee can budget against.
For owners corporations, the practical decision isn't whether to maintain the façade — it's the cycle. Most OC programmes run on a 12-, 24- or 36-month inspection-and-works cycle, and the building itself tells you which:
- 24 months — the typical landing point. Suits most Melbourne residential towers: standard exposure, sealants inside design life, a defect history that's active but manageable. Long enough that each cycle is worth mobilising for; short enough that defects don't compound between visits.
- 12 months — for coastal-proximity buildings, where salt exposure accelerates sealant and fixing decay, and for buildings 15+ years old, where original sealants are at or past design life and the defect rate climbs year on year.
- 36 months — for newer, low-exposure buildings with a clean defect history, often still partly under builder warranty. The inspection keeps the record current without over-servicing a façade that isn't moving.
Each programme cycle bundles the same core scope: a full façade inspection, a façade washdown (which doubles as the close pass that finds defects), sealant and joint checks with replacement of failed runs, an updated defect register, and an AGM-ready report. Anything the inspection flags as an active leak escalates straight into water-ingress investigation rather than waiting for the next cycle.
Timing matters as much as scope: we schedule the inspection so the report and works proposal land with the OC manager before the AGM — the committee resolves the works and the budget in one sitting, instead of deferring a year because the paperwork missed the meeting.
The Astorial, 668 Swanston Street.
This model isn't theoretical for us. At the Astorial on Swanston Street — a Melbourne residential tower — 360 Access delivers the ongoing façade-maintenance programme: programmed inspection, sealant and remedial works, and between-cycle call-outs, all under one programme coordinated with the building manager and funded through the building's maintenance plan.
That's the value of a standing programme over one-off trades: one contractor who already knows the building, one defect register carried forward cycle to cycle, and reporting the committee sees in the same format every time — so the trend is visible and the budget conversation gets easier each year, not harder.
Façade maintenance FAQs
What does a façade maintenance program include?
Scheduled façade inspection, sealant and joint maintenance, glazing checks and minor repairs, panel and fixing checks, and a condition report with a defect register — planned (cyclical) or reactive, tailored to the building.
Do you report back to owners corporations and asset managers?
Yes — condition reports, photographic records and a defect register after each visit, so committees and asset managers have documentation for budgeting and compliance.
How often should we maintain our building's façade?
For most Melbourne high-rise residential buildings — biannual inspection with reactive works between cycles is the common pattern. Commercial buildings with steady-state usage typically run annual. The right cadence depends on building age, exposure (coastal harder than inland), the façade-system type, and what previous inspections have turned up. We'll recommend a cadence on the first inspection.
Are Victorian Class 2 buildings required to have a maintenance plan?
Under the 2023-24 Class 2 maintenance manual obligations, residential apartment buildings (Class 2) must maintain a current building maintenance manual that includes façade-maintenance provisions. Façade inspection and works form part of fulfilling that obligation. The building surveyor or maintenance-manual owner is the right party to confirm specifics for your building.
Who in an OC commits to a maintenance programme?
Usually the committee, often based on a proposal from the OC manager. We'll provide a written programme proposal with cost ranges, deliverables and timing — the committee can approve at a meeting and the works get scheduled for the next available window.
How do we choose between a 12-, 24- and 36-month programme cycle?
A 24-month cycle is the typical landing point for Melbourne residential towers. Move to 12 months if the building is close to the coast (salt accelerates sealant and fixing decay) or is 15+ years old, when original sealants are at or past design life. A 36-month cycle suits newer, low-exposure buildings with a clean defect history. The first inspection confirms which cycle actually fits your building.
Can the inspection and report be timed for our AGM?
Yes — that's how most OC programmes run. We schedule the inspection so the condition report, updated defect register and works proposal land with the OC manager before the AGM, and the committee can resolve the works and the budget in the same sitting rather than deferring a year.
Can maintenance happen without disrupting tenants?
Yes. Rope access and EWP let us work the façade without full scaffold, using managed access zones so the building stays open.
Set up a façade maintenance program.
Tell us the building and its history — we'll propose a plan and respond within one business day.
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