Alectrona
Commercial guideAn older commercial roof, broadly one built before 2000, may contain asbestos, often as asbestos-cement sheeting, so the position has to be established by survey before anyone fixes an array to it or disturbs the roof fabric.
These are representative example reviews, not yet-collected customer feedback. They are written to illustrate the kind of feedback Alectrona aims to earn and are shown as design placeholders while we gather and verify reviews from our first commercial clients. Alectrona is the commercial solar trading brand of RVTC LTD.
What set Alectrona apart was the documented design pack. We had quotes from three installers, but only Alectrona handed us a full set of drawings, a single-line diagram and a design referencing BS 7671 and the G99 connection process. The whole thing read like an engineering submission rather than a sales brochure. Our M&E consultant reviewed it and signed it off without a single query. That gave the board the confidence to release the capital.
Other firms priced our roof off a satellite image and a desktop guess. Alectrona flew an in-house drone survey, fully insured and flown by a qualified commercial drone pilot, and built a 3D model of the actual roof. It picked up plant, vents and a parapet line that a flat aerial photo had completely missed, which changed the panel layout. I would rather find that out at design stage than on the day the scaffold goes up. The accuracy of that survey is the reason I trusted everything that followed.
As a finance director I was wary of being oversold a system bigger than we could use. Alectrona modelled the array against our actual half-hourly consumption data rather than an annual total, so it is sized to what we genuinely draw on site during the day. They were honest that exporting surplus is worth far less than self-consumption, and built the design around that. The capital case stacked up because the engineering was honest, not because the numbers were inflated.
We were undecided between buying outright, leasing and a PPA. Alectrona laid out all three side by side with the pros and cons of each against our balance sheet, instead of pushing the one that pays them best. They were clear about where a PPA makes sense and where capex wins, and pointed us at our own accountant for the tax treatment. The survey and design took a little longer than I expected, but the thoroughness was worth the wait. Genuinely consultative.
The install crew were tidy and well run, and worked to a clear CDM 2015 plan with a proper site induction and RAMS. What impressed me most was the handover. We received a full commissioning pack with the IEC 62446-1 test results, certification, O&M documentation and an as-built record for our maintenance team. As the people who have to live with this asset for the next twenty years, having that paperwork in order matters enormously. Nothing was left loose.
I expected the usual hard sell and got the opposite. After surveying our site Alectrona told us one roof section was not worth covering because of shading, and that a smaller, well-sited array was the better investment than filling every square metre. There was no commission-driven upselling and no pressure. For a six-figure capital project, that straight talk is exactly what you want from the people advising you. We will be using them again on our second site.
OrientationThis is a plain-English orientation to asbestos on older roofs, not formal legal or health-and-safety advice; we confirm the position for your specific roof by survey before any work begins.
Many commercial and industrial buildings still in use were roofed when asbestos products were common. The most familiar is asbestos-cement sheeting, the corrugated grey panels found on warehouses, agricultural and light-industrial units, but asbestos can also sit in roofing felts, gutters and flashings. While the material is intact and undisturbed it is generally low risk; the risk is created when it is drilled, cut or broken and fibres are released.
That is exactly why an older roof changes how a solar project is approached. Fixing a mounting system and working across the roof are activities that can disturb the fabric, so the law requires the asbestos position to be known and managed first. The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 are the framework, and this guide is a plain-English orientation to how they shape a solar install: the survey that comes first, the duty to manage your building already carries, and why the mounting choice on an older roof is almost always non-penetrative.
The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, usually shortened to CAR 2012, place a duty to manage asbestos on whoever is responsible for the maintenance of non-domestic premises. For most commercial buildings that is the owner or, depending on the lease, the occupier or managing agent. The duty exists independently of any solar project: it requires you to find out whether asbestos is or may be present, to record where it is and what condition it is in, to assess the risk, and to keep that information current and shared with anyone who might disturb it.
If you hold that duty you may already have an asbestos register and a management plan for the building. Where you do, it is the starting point for a solar project, because it tells the design team what is known about the roof before anyone is asked to work on it. Where the information is missing or out of date, establishing it is part of getting the project ready rather than an afterthought, and it is a duty that rests with the building side rather than something a contractor can simply assume away.
Before work that could disturb the roof fabric, the asbestos position has to be established by a survey carried out by a competent surveyor. There are broadly two types. A management survey records the presence and condition of asbestos in a building during normal occupation. A refurbishment-and-demolition survey is the more intrusive type, required where work will disturb the fabric, and a solar install that fixes into or works across the roof falls into that territory.
The survey tells the design team what is present, where, and in what condition, which is the information needed to plan the work safely and to choose a mounting method that does not disturb it. Where asbestos is confirmed and any work would disturb it, certain higher-risk work must be carried out by a licensed contractor under CAR 2012, while some lower-risk work may be non-licensed but still notifiable and tightly controlled. Which category applies depends on the material and the task, so it is confirmed for your roof rather than assumed. The honest sequence is survey first, design second.
The single biggest design consequence of an asbestos roof is that the mounting must avoid disturbing the sheeting. Drilling or cutting an asbestos-cement sheet to fix a bracket is precisely the kind of disturbance the regulations exist to prevent, so a penetrative fixing into the roof is the wrong approach on this fabric.
The answer is a non-penetrative mounting design. On a flat or low-pitch roof that typically means a ballasted, weight-held system that holds the array down with weight rather than fixings, spreading load without piercing the covering. On other roof types it can mean a system that clamps or bridges without drilling the asbestos material. Either way the array is supported without breaking the sheet, which keeps the asbestos undisturbed and protects the people on the roof. The structural survey confirms what the roof can carry before any ballast or support is specified, because a non-penetrative system still has to be within the roof's load capacity.
Asbestos management does not sit on its own. A commercial solar install is construction work, so the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 also apply, and the two frameworks meet on an older roof. Under CDM 2015 the design has to be planned to manage the risk before anyone goes near the roof, and what the asbestos survey reveals is a primary input to that design and to the construction phase plan.
In practice that means the asbestos position feeds straight into how the works are sequenced, who is appointed, and how the roof is approached on site. We treat the survey findings as a design constraint from the outset, specify a mounting method that keeps the fabric undisturbed, and where any disturbance is unavoidable we make sure the right, suitably licensed people carry it out under the regulations. The duty to manage your building remains yours; planning and carrying out the solar works safely around it is ours, and we set out in writing which is which before any work starts.
A survey is only useful to a solar project if it answers the design questions, so it pays to know what the report should contain. A competent survey identifies each material that is or is presumed to be asbestos, records its exact location on the roof, samples and analyses it where access allows, and grades its condition and the risk of fibre release. For an older commercial roof that usually means a material breakdown of the asbestos-cement sheeting, the ridge and verge details, any bitumen-based felts, and the gutters and downpipes, each logged with its position so nothing is disturbed by accident during the works.
That detail is what lets us turn a survey into a buildable design. The condition grading tells us whether the sheeting can bear foot traffic at all or whether crawl boards and roof ladders are mandatory; the location plan tells us where ballast and supports can sit without loading a degraded panel; and the material analysis confirms whether any unavoidable contact is licensed or non-licensed work under the regulations. We feed those findings into the same survey-led process that produces the structural roof survey and the load model, because on this fabric the asbestos position and the structural position have to be read together before a single bracket is specified. The HSE publishes guidance on surveying under the heading HSG264, which the surveyor works to, and we treat the resulting report as a controlled document that travels with the project.
The fixing method is only half of the safe-working picture on an asbestos roof. Asbestos-cement sheeting is also a fragile material that degrades with age, and falls through fragile roofs and roof-lights are a long-standing cause of serious injury, so how people move across the roof matters as much as how the array is held down. The HSE's guidance on fragile roofs, published as GEIS5, sets the expectation that work is planned to avoid loading the sheets directly, using staging, crawl boards and edge protection, and we build that into the construction phase plan rather than leaving it to the crew on the day.
The same thinking carries into the system's working life. Cleaning, inverter checks and any panel replacement all put people back on an asbestos roof years after handover, so the access strategy and the survey findings are recorded for the operations team as well as the installers. Where a planned operations and maintenance regime involves regular roof access, fixed walkways or designated routes that keep foot traffic off the fragile sheeting are designed in from the start. This is also why the mounting layout leaves the asbestos undisturbed for the full term: every future visit inherits the same constraint, and a design that respects it on day one keeps the building's CDM 2015 duties manageable for the asset's whole life.
On a leased commercial building the duty to manage can sit with the landlord, the tenant or a managing agent, and the answer turns on the repairing and maintenance terms of the lease rather than on who occupies the space. A full repairing and insuring lease often passes maintenance of the structure to the tenant, which can carry the asbestos duty with it, while other leases keep the roof with the landlord. Because a solar array is fixed to the roof for twenty years or more, establishing who holds the duty is part of getting a leased-roof project ready, alongside the landlord consent the lease will usually require for an installation of this scale.
Whoever holds the duty, the asbestos register and management plan are living documents, and adding a solar array changes the building they describe. The new rooftop plant, the agreed access routes and the confirmation that the asbestos was left undisturbed should be reflected back into the register so the record stays accurate for future surveyors and contractors. We set out in writing what we did to the roof and what we did not disturb, so the duty-holder can update the plan. For a tenant weighing the investment against the lease term, the finance options and the cost of the scheme are assessed against the years remaining, and the survey work is part of the feasibility read before any of that is committed.
Our own insured pilot flies your roof and captures the real geometry and shading, so the design starts from your building instead of a satellite guess.
Booked to suit your operating hours
We model the array in bankable-grade software, size it around your daytime load, and set out generation, savings and payback across three funding routes.
Modelled, not promised
Designed and installed to BS 7671, commissioned to IEC 62446-1, connected under G99 and run under CDM 2015. Alectrona is typically the Principal Contractor.
Outside MCS, assured by the non-MCS stack
A 12-month defects period backed by an Insurance-Backed Guarantee, then ongoing operations and maintenance so the asset keeps earning for its full working life.
Kept performing, year on year
Last updated June 2026
Older commercial roofs, broadly those built before 2000, may contain asbestos, most commonly as asbestos-cement sheeting but also in felts, gutters and flashings. You cannot tell reliably by looking. The Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 place a duty to manage asbestos on whoever maintains the building, so you may already hold an asbestos register and management plan that records what is present. Where that information is missing or out of date, a survey by a competent surveyor establishes the position before any roof work.
Where the roof may contain asbestos and the work could disturb the fabric, yes. The position has to be established by survey first. Fixing and working across a roof are exactly the activities the regulations are concerned with, so a refurbishment-and-demolition type survey, the more intrusive kind required where work disturbs the fabric, is the usual starting point. The survey then informs the design and the mounting method.
Often yes, with the right approach. The key is not to disturb the asbestos material, which is why the mounting is designed to be non-penetrative, holding the array without drilling or cutting the sheeting. On a flat or low-pitch roof that is typically a ballasted, weight-held system. The structural survey confirms the roof can carry it. Where any disturbance is genuinely unavoidable, certain work must be done by a licensed contractor under the regulations, and we confirm what applies to your roof.
Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012 the duty to manage sits with whoever is responsible for maintaining the non-domestic premises, usually the owner, or the occupier or managing agent depending on the lease. That duty exists whether or not solar is planned. For a solar project, your asbestos register and management plan are the starting point; managing the building's asbestos remains yours, while planning and carrying out the solar works safely around it is ours.
It can, and the honest answer is that the cost is modelled before we quote rather than fixed in advance. An asbestos roof adds the refurbishment-and-demolition survey, a non-penetrative mounting design and, where any disturbance is unavoidable, licensed work under the regulations, all of which are scoped to your specific roof. The first feasibility read is free, and we set the figures out alongside the commercial solar cost guide and your finance options before anything is committed.
Plan for the survey at the front of the programme, because the design follows what it finds. A refurbishment-and-demolition survey has to be booked, carried out and reported before the mounting method is fixed, and laboratory analysis of samples adds a short turnaround. We sequence the asbestos survey with the site survey so the lead time is known from the start; the exact duration depends on roof size and access, which we confirm for your roof.
A guide can only take you so far. The figure you get is modelled from your own half-hourly load and a system sized from the on-site drone survey. No obligation, and systems this size sit outside the domestic MCS scheme, so the assurance is the engineering stack.