Guide
Four methods cover most high-rise exterior cleaning, and each has a different cost profile in time, disruption and risk. Here is how they compare, and how to choose for a specific building.
Scaffolding gives full access to a facade and suits repairs and painting. For cleaning alone it is heavy: build time measured in days to weeks, permits for street occupation, blocked entrances, and a crew working at height for the whole cycle.
Rope access is quick to mobilise and reaches most facades, and it remains the right choice where a surface needs hands on it. Its limits are throughput and exposure: progress depends on the technicians, the finish depends on how each operator works, and the whole method is built around people at height.
Where a building already has a BMU or cradle, using it avoids new setup. The trade-offs are coverage, scheduling around other trades, and maintenance of the equipment itself.
The drone carries access while water, pressure and chemistry stay on the ground and reach the nozzle through the tether. Setup is a trailer and a crew, not a scaffold, so entrances stay open and tenants keep working. Cleaning becomes a planned cycle rather than a project, which is why glass towers on a regular schedule are the most common drone use case.
Where a surface cannot be reached or cleaned safely from the air, that gets identified during the inspection and covered by another method.
Ask four questions: What is the surface? How high and how accessible is it? How much disruption can the site tolerate? And how often does it need to be cleaned? A one-off heavy clean on a difficult facade and a quarterly cycle on a glass tower are different problems, and they can justify different methods.
Questions
No. Airspace, site rules, wind, obstacles and the surface itself all matter. Every operation is assessed before flight, and where a drone is not suitable we say so at inspection stage.
It depends on height, area and frequency. For regular cleaning of large glass areas, drone access usually wins on time and disruption; for small or heavily soiled areas that need hand detailing, rope access can be the better tool.
No. The scope is the exterior surface, which is the part exposed to weather, salt and pollution.
Setup is the trailer and the safety checks, so phases can start within days of approval rather than weeks of scaffold build. The schedule itself is set by area, wind and access.
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