Planned Preventative Maintenance for H&S & Maintenance Managers
A PPM programme built around the questions that actually sit on your desk: is this asset compliant, where is the risk, and why does the same fault keep coming back. For sites in Plymouth and within a 40-mile radius.
Built for the Person Who Carries the Risk
A roof is a fixed asset on a plan, until something on it fails and it becomes a workplace safety incident. As the H&S or Maintenance Manager, that's your exposure whether the fault sits with a failed anchor point, a fragile rooflight nobody signed off, or a plant upstand that's been leaking into the fabric for a year. Sherford Roofing runs PPM programmes for commercial and industrial sites across Plymouth and the surrounding 40 miles, built specifically around that exposure, not a generic maintenance checklist.
Every visit is structured to give you three things directly: a statutory-compliance record you can produce on request, a documented reduction in the specific hazards a roof presents, and a pattern of recurring faults reviewed with your own maintenance team so inspection intervals get tighter where they need to and stay efficient where they don't.
Statutory Compliance: A Record, Not Just a Repair
Roof-level assets and roof-mounted plant carry their own legal obligations, separate from the roof covering itself. Fall-arrest anchor points fall under the Work at Height Regulations 2005. Roof-mounted machinery and its access routes sit under PUWER and the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. Overarching duty for maintaining a safe workplace comes from the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. In practice, that means being able to show, not just claim, that these have been checked on a defensible schedule.
Every PPM visit produces a dated, photo-backed report and a priority-rated defect log, built to sit in your existing H&S file or CAFM system rather than create a separate paper trail to manage. If an HSE inspector, insurer, or your own internal audit asks when roof-level plant access or fall-protection provision was last checked, the answer is in the file, not reconstructed from memory after the fact.
Dated inspection records for fall-arrest anchors, access routes and roof-mounted plant, held against the regulations that actually apply to them.
Fragile surfaces, degraded edge protection and unsafe access points identified and flagged before they become a live hazard.
Reactive failure logs reviewed with your maintenance team, so recurring faults change the inspection schedule instead of repeating on it.
Risk Reduction: What We're Actually Looking For
A roof presents a specific, recurring set of hazards, and PPM is where they get caught before they become an incident report. Every visit checks:
- Fall-arrest anchor points — visible corrosion, secure fixing and correct signage, with formal re-certification coordinated with your specialist provider where a test certificate is due
- Fragile surfaces — rooflights and ageing sheeting identified, checked for degradation, and flagged where signage or edge protection isn't adequate
- Safe access routes — walkway boards, ladders and hatches checked for secure fixing and safe condition before your team or a contractor next needs to use them
- Roof-mounted plant — upstands, kerbs and penetrations around AC units, extract systems and similar equipment, a common source of both leaks and structural stress
- Drainage & slip hazards — gutters, outlets and roof surfaces cleared, since standing water and debris are a routine cause of slips during access
- Edge protection — permanent guardrails and parapet condition checked wherever roof-level access is routine, not just at handover
Incident Prevention: Closing the Loop With Your Team
Most recurring roof faults have already shown up somewhere, in a reactive call-out log, a near-miss report, or a maintenance ticket that got closed without anyone asking why it happened three times this year. Treated in isolation, each one looks minor. Reviewed together, a pattern usually points to a specific zone, detail or piece of plant that needs a shorter inspection interval, not just another repair.
As part of an ongoing PPM contract, we sit down with your maintenance team periodically to review reactive failure logs alongside our own inspection history. Where the same defect, or the same location, keeps recurring, we adjust that zone's inspection frequency accordingly, tightening it where the data says risk is building, and leaving well-performing areas on the standard cycle rather than over-inspecting everywhere equally.
Risk-Based Intervals, Not a Flat Schedule
A twice-yearly baseline applies to every roof we maintain, but it's a floor, not a ceiling. A zone with a clean history stays on that cycle. A zone with a repeat fault, an upstand that keeps leaking, a walkway that keeps needing re-fixing, moves to quarterly or tighter until the underlying cause is resolved and the pattern stops. That adjustment is reviewed with you, not made unilaterally.
PPM for H&S & Maintenance Managers: FAQs
Yes. Every visit produces a dated, photo-backed report with a priority-rated defect log, built to sit alongside your existing H&S documentation, not replace it. It's designed to demonstrate that reasonable, regular inspection and maintenance has taken place, which is exactly what an HSE inspector or insurer will want to see if there's ever an incident.
Yes, both are checked on every visit as standard where present. Anchor points are checked for visible corrosion, secure fixing and correct signage, and fragile roof lights and rooflight panels are identified, checked for cracking or degradation, and flagged if edge protection or signage isn't adequate. Where formal certified testing of fall-arrest equipment is due, we're happy to coordinate timing with your specialist provider.
We start from a baseline of twice-yearly full inspections, then adjust per zone based on risk and history, not a flat schedule applied everywhere. Areas with a recurring defect pattern, an upstand around ageing plant, a valley gutter that keeps blocking, move to a tighter interval. Areas with a clean history stay on the standard cycle. That adjustment is reviewed with your team at each visit, not set once and left.
Yes, that's the intent. We're not there to take over your maintenance function, we're there to provide the specialist roof-level inspection, defect data and documentation your team can act on, feed into your CAFM or asset system, and use to brief contractors or budget holders. Reactive failure logs your team already holds are genuinely useful to us too, they help us spot patterns your walk-throughs might miss from ground level.
We're based in Plymouth and work within roughly a 40-mile radius as standard, covering Plymouth itself, Saltash, Tavistock, Ivybridge, Totnes, Newton Abbot, Torbay, Liskeard, Callington, Launceston, Bodmin and Okehampton. For multi-site portfolios with sites outside that radius, get in touch, we can often still help as part of a wider contract.
Yes. We regularly attend alongside facilities and H&S teams, and can be present for insurer surveys or internal audits to answer technical questions on roof condition, access, and fall-protection provision directly, rather than leaving your team to relay information secondhand.
Reduce Roof-Related Risk, With the Paperwork to Prove It
Statutory-compliance-focused PPM for sites in Plymouth and within 40 miles. Book a compliance review, no obligation.
Or call our office: 01752 741888