The Anchors Holding the Crew Get Tested Before Anyone Hangs From Them

A strata approves a facade restoration, signs a contract, and books the crew. Two days before mobilization, the contractor asks for the roof anchor certification documents.

Nobody knows where they are, and it becomes apparent that nobody has arranged an inspection in some years.

The project does not start on schedule, and the delay is entirely the strata’s to fix.

The anchors belong to the building

This is the point that catches councils out. Roof anchors are permanent parts of the structure, installed in it, and maintained as part of it.

They are not the contractor’s equipment. The contractor brings ropes, harnesses, descenders, and everything else that attaches to the anchor, and they connect all of it to a fixed point that the building owns.

Responsibility for that fixed point being suitable, sound, and documented sits with the owner, which on a strata building means the strata corporation. It does not transfer to whoever is working on the building that week, and it does not lapse because the last few contractors did not ask.

A contractor who declines to attach a worker to an anchor with no current documentation is giving the correct answer. That is the response a strata should want, and it is worth remembering during the frustration of a delayed start.

Certification, inspection, and load testing

These three terms get used interchangeably and mean different things.

Inspection is assessment of condition: visual and tactile examination of the anchor, its fixing, the surrounding structure, and any associated hardware, looking for corrosion, damage, movement, or deterioration.

Load testing applies a defined force to the anchor to confirm that it and its connection to the structure perform as required. It is a physical proof rather than an opinion, and whether it forms part of a given assessment depends on the system, its age, its history, and the judgement of the professional involved.

Certification is the documented outcome: a qualified professional recording that the system has been assessed, what was found, what was tested, and that it is fit for its intended use as of a stated date.

The recurring interval is set by regulation and by the certifying professional rather than by the strata’s preference, and reassessment is also triggered by events: a fall arrest, structural work near an anchor, visible damage, or any change to the roof that affects the anchor or its substrate. The framework is set out in the post on WorkSafeBC roof anchor recertification.

What actually concerns the people testing

The anchor hardware is rarely the worry. It is manufactured, rated, and generally sound.

The concern is the fixing into the structure, and specifically the condition of the substrate around it. On an older concrete building, the concrete holding an anchor has been exposed to the same carbonation and chloride ingress as the rest of the structure, and it is frequently in a location, at the roof edge, with the highest exposure on the building.

An anchor bolted into concrete that has deteriorated around the fixing can look entirely sound from above. The hardware is clean, the plate is tight, and the material it is fixed into has lost capacity. That is exactly the condition testing exists to find, and it is the reason a visual inspection alone is not always sufficient.

The same deterioration mechanism is described in the post on concrete cover depth testing, and on buildings where cover is marginal, the anchor locations deserve particular attention.

Buildings with no compliant anchors

Older buildings in this region frequently have no anchors, or have anchors that predate current requirements and cannot be certified.

That does not stop facade work. It changes how the work is accessed, and therefore what it costs. Without compliant anchors the options are a lift, a swing stage with its own counterweighted rigging, or scaffolding, and each brings different constraints. On a downtown site the lift and swing stage options bring the street use permitting described in the post on swing stage permits and street use.

The comparison between access methods, and where each one makes sense, is set out in the post on rope access versus boom lift.

Retrofitting anchors is the other option, and it is worth considering on a building that will need repeated exterior work over its life. It is structural work: the anchor is only as good as what it is fixed to, so the design has to establish that the structure at each location can take the load. That is an engineered exercise, not an installation.

What the assessment actually looks at

Understanding what happens during an anchor assessment makes it easier to judge whether the one your building received was thorough.

The assessor works through each anchor individually rather than sampling. They examine the visible hardware for corrosion, deformation, and wear, and they check that fasteners are tight and that the base plate sits properly against its substrate. They look at the concrete or structure around the fixing for cracking, spalling, or staining that indicates deterioration behind the plate.

They also look at things that are easy to miss: whether the anchor is the type it appears to be, whether it has been modified, whether anything has been added to it, and whether the roof assembly around it has been altered since installation. A roof recover that raised the roof level relative to an anchor changes its geometry and can change how it loads.

Where testing is performed, the applied force and the result are recorded per anchor. That per-anchor record is the useful output, because it establishes which specific points are approved and at what capacity.

Anchors and roof work interact

The connection between anchor certification and roofing work catches buildings out repeatedly.

An anchor penetrates the roof assembly. Any roof replacement or recover has to address every anchor penetration, which means the anchors are disturbed, reset, or reflashed as part of that work. The membrane termination at each anchor is a detail with the same requirements as any other roof penetration.

Two consequences follow. Roof work triggers reassessment of the anchors that were disturbed, and the roofing contract has to specify how anchor penetrations are detailed rather than leaving it to be sorted out on site. Both are frequently omitted from roofing scopes.

The related planning issue is access. Where a roof is being replaced, the anchors may be unavailable during the work, which affects any facade work scheduled in the same period. On a building coordinating both, that sequencing needs to be established at planning stage rather than discovered when two crews need the same roof.

Get the answer before tender

The expensive version of this problem is the one at the top of this post: certification checked two days before mobilization.

The inexpensive version is checking it before the tender goes out. Knowing the anchor status early means the access method can be specified and priced correctly by every bidder, and the strata is comparing like with like.

It also means that if recertification or retrofit is required, it happens on a normal timeline at a normal price, rather than as an expedited job with crews already booked and a schedule already committed.

Three things belong in a strata’s records permanently and should be locatable in under a minute: the current anchor certification, the drawing or schedule showing where the anchors are, and the date the next assessment is due. Buildings that keep those alongside the depreciation report and the insurance documents never have this problem.

Buildings that keep them in a binder that moved offices twice have it every time.

Sources and further reading

• WorkSafeBC, Occupational Health and Safety Regulation Part 11, fall protection and anchor requirements, referenced 2026
• Canadian Standards Association, CSA Z91 Health and Safety Code for Suspended Equipment Operations, referenced 2026
• Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians, Safe Practices for Rope Access Work, referenced 2026
• Allweathercoating access planning records, Metro Vancouver, 2026