The work, the tickets, the pay, and keeping a cleaning round profitable.
Rope access window and facade cleaning is where a lot of techs start, and where plenty make a steady living. It is the high-rise glass, cladding and facades a cradle cannot reach, cleaned on ropes. This guide covers what the work involves, what you need to do it, and the admin side that keeps a cleaning round in profit.
Traditional squeegee work and water-fed poles, both run from ropes on high-rise glass, curtain walling and cladding. The bread and butter is recurring contracts: the same towers, offices and blocks coming round on a schedule, so a good round is predictable income rather than one-off jobs. Facade inspection and minor repairs often ride alongside the cleaning.
IRATA certification for the rope access, the right kit kept in date, and public liability insurance are the baseline. The cleaning itself needs no separate ticket, which is why window cleaning has a lower barrier than inspection or offshore, but the rope work and the kit rules are exactly the same. Your kit still needs a LOLER thorough examination every six months.
Rates sit below NDT and offshore, but recurring work makes up for it in reliability. Pure cleaning also often falls outside CIS, unlike construction-linked work, so the deduction that hits inspection invoices frequently does not apply here (check each job against our CIS guide). For a sense of where cleaning sits against other sectors, see rope access day rates.
A cleaning round lives or dies on admin: invoicing the same buildings on time, every time, and not letting a kit date lapse mid-contract. Cowstail saves your rate once, turns a regular into a clean invoice in a tap, tracks who has paid, and reminds you before each LOLER exam. See what Cowstail does or the invoice generator.
Yes for the rope access itself. The cleaning does not need a separate qualification, but working on ropes at height does, and most contracts will ask for IRATA certification and the right insurance.
Pure window and facade cleaning often falls outside the Construction Industry Scheme, while cleaning that is part of a construction job can fall inside. It is judged job by job, so check each contract.
Less than inspection or offshore work, but steady, especially on recurring contracts where the same buildings come round on a schedule. Rates rise with height, access difficulty and volume.
Yes. It is one of the most common entry routes: steady work that lets a Level 1 build logged hours and experience toward Level 2 without needing specialist tickets first.
Related: day rates, CIS, Kit & LOLER, for self-employed.