While the Montecasino leisure and retail complex in Fourways, Johannesburg, has its own maintenance team and specialised contractors, the complex occasionally requires work-at-height and confined-space experience for maintenance work, with rope access specialist Skyriders assisting in this regard.

Earlier this year, the company did maintenance work at the complex on several aspects, including replacing an anchor system on a bell tower used to suspend advertising banners, explains Skyriders marketing manager Mike Zinn.

Owing to wear-and-tear, some of the anchors had started to come loose, and the whole system had to be inspected for safety reasons and to mitigate any risk.

Zinn notes that Skyriders technicians needed to redrill and fasten loose anchors that were used for large advertising boards in the complex, as well as place new chemical anchors, which were ideal for some of the porous bricks these anchors were attached to.

This was followed by a Skyriders technician conducting a visual inspection on the newly installed anchors to make sure they were secure, as well as other components that were part of the banner.

The company also assisted with maintenance plumbing, installing new piping, replacing roof tiling, waterproofing the tiling and high-pressure washing of walls.

Zinn emphasises that rope access enabled Skyriders technicians to perform this maintenance without the need for scaffolding.

“Montecasino is a multistorey facility, and is almost a 24-hour operation, outside of Covid-19 regulations, with the casino and restaurants. The alternative for the complex – to build scaffolding that interferes with patrons’ movement and requires no-go areas because of possible falling objects – is not feasible. “Our technicians access the work area quickly, conduct the work and pack up our gear quickly. “Using scaffolding can be unsightly and time-consuming to build and pack up, and it remains there until the job is finished.”

It is also uneconomical to build expensive scaffolding for simpler aspects of the work, he adds.

Zinn says the required labour for working at height is more expensive, but this is negated by there not being any requirements for building scaffolding and other similar structures to conduct work at height.

Further, the team involved continued working at night, which is useful for conducting maintenance work on retail facilities that are generally closed at night.

“Having small, flexible teams that are well led by our management team and supported by safety and quality managers, our technicians are able to consistently deliver projects on time and safely. “Our technicians have fantastic site knowledge, and this has a lot of benefits when we conduct maintenance with our regular clients”.

As Skyriders regularly conducts maintenance work for the Montecasino complex, Zinn enthuses that, in the future, the company would like to use its drones to inspect the roofs of the complex.

Greenstone Project

Zinn highlights that, similar to the work that was conducted at Montecasino, Skyriders conducted a maintenance project earlier this year at Greenstone Shopping Centre in Modderfontein, Johannesburg.

“There was a massive storm, and the centre needed significant maintenance, done by a specialist contractor, on the roofing and ceiling. “We came up with a solution where we installed large work platform nets, made by local manufacturer Industrial Netting. This enabled us to connect the nets to our technicians’ lifelines, and then walk on these nets and carry out the maintenance on these ceiling boards.”

Using the nets allowed for maintenance to continue while customers shopped at the mall. The nets prevented falling debris from causing a safety risk to customers, and negated the need for floor space when scaffolding is used.

“We came up with a solution where the retail spaces stayed operational during the day and a lot of the work was done at night without interfering with normal business. “Moving into the future, when confined space and height is a restriction, we can carry out refurbishment and maintenance and save clients time, effort and money,” he concludes.