Alectrona
Commercial guideInstalling a rooftop solar array is work at height, governed by the Work at Height Regulations 2005 and planned under CDM 2015, so fall prevention, safe access and fragile-roof risk are managed before anyone goes near your roof.
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 working at height, not formal health-and-safety advice; we confirm the specific access plan, edge protection and fragile-roof controls for your site before any work begins.
A commercial solar project puts people on your roof for days at a time: setting out mounting structure, lifting and fixing modules, running cable and working close to roof edges and rooflights. That is work at height, and it is the part of a project where the greatest physical risk sits. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 set the framework for how it is planned and carried out, and on a commercial install that planning happens under CDM 2015 alongside the rest of the construction work.
This is a plain-English orientation to how a competent contractor keeps people safe on your roof, so the safety side of a project is something you can see and check rather than take on trust. It covers how the work is planned, how falls are prevented, how access is arranged, and the particular hazard of fragile roof surfaces that catches out poorly planned roof work.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 are the framework that governs any work where a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury. They do not ban working at height, which would make a rooftop solar install impossible. Instead they set out a hierarchy that a competent contractor works through: avoid the work at height where it can reasonably be done another way, then prevent falls using the right equipment and a safe place to work, and only then reduce the consequences of a fall using collective measures before personal ones.
In practice this means the work is planned, properly supervised and carried out by people with the right training and equipment, and the means of access and the working platform are chosen to suit your roof rather than whatever is to hand. The Health and Safety Executive publishes guidance on how the Regulations apply to construction and roof work, and that guidance, together with the Regulations themselves, is the basis for how a method statement and risk assessment for your project is written before anyone goes up.
The first aim is always to prevent a fall rather than to arrest one. On a flat or low-pitch commercial roof that usually means a safe working platform with edge protection: guard rails or a managed exclusion zone set back from the perimeter and from any opening, so that the people fixing the array are working inside a protected area. Where edge protection is not practicable for part of the work, fall-prevention or fall-arrest systems with suitable anchor points are used, but these sit lower in the hierarchy and do not replace a properly protected working area.
Safe access to and from the roof is planned with the same care. Depending on the building and the roof, that means a mobile elevating work platform, a stair tower or a scaffold, chosen so that people and materials reach the roof safely and the work below is kept clear. The route is planned in from the start, and the area beneath the work is managed so that your staff, occupants and visitors are kept away from any risk of falling tools or materials while the array goes up.
Fragile roof surfaces are a leading cause of serious injuries and fatalities in roof work, and they are the hazard most likely to be missed on an older commercial building. A surface is fragile if it will not safely bear the weight of a person and any load they are carrying. Rooflights, including ones that have been painted over or hidden by years of dirt, ageing fibre-cement and cement sheets, and corroded metal decking can all fail without warning when stepped on. The danger is that they often look solid until the moment they give way.
A competent survey identifies fragile materials and rooflights before any work is planned, and the method statement then sets out how they are managed: covering, guarding or barriering them off, planning walkways and load paths around them, and never relying on a surface to bear weight unless it has been confirmed safe to do so. On an older roof this is one of the most important things a survey establishes, and it is a reason the work is planned from a measured survey rather than from a drawing or an aerial photograph alone.
Work at height on a commercial install is planned and managed under CDM 2015, the construction framework that governs the whole project. The principal contractor sets out the access strategy, edge protection, fragile-roof controls and exclusion zones in the construction phase plan before work starts, and supervises them on site. The method statement and risk assessment specific to the work at height sit within that plan, so the safety of the people on your roof is part of a single, accountable set of arrangements rather than a separate concern.
For an Alectrona project we carry these duties as part of the engineering scope. We survey the roof, identify any fragile materials and rooflights, choose the access and edge-protection method to suit your building, and brief the people doing the work before they go up. You are not expected to manage any of this yourself. What you should expect to see is a clear plan for how your roof will be worked on safely, and we confirm the specifics for your site at survey.
The two documents that govern the work on the day are the risk assessment and the method statement, often handled together as a RAMS. The risk assessment identifies what could cause harm on your specific roof and who could be affected, then records the controls that bring each hazard to an acceptable level. The method statement is the step-by-step account of how the job is actually done: the sequence of work, the access and edge-protection arrangements, the equipment, the rescue plan if someone ends up suspended in a harness, and the points at which work stops. These are not generic templates pulled off a shelf. They are written against the survey of your building, because the controls only mean anything if they match the real roof, its edges, its rooflights and its load paths.
The Health and Safety Executive's guidance on risk assessment and on roof work sets the standard the documents are written to, and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 are the underlying duty to assess and control risk. A worthwhile check for any building owner is simply to ask to see the RAMS before work starts and to confirm it names your address, your roof and your hazards rather than a typical industrial unit. A method statement that could describe any roof in the country has not done its job. This planning is part of the wider construction arrangements set out under CDM 2015, and it draws directly on the structural roof survey that establishes what the roof is made of and what it can bear.
The Work at Height Regulations 2005 require work at height to be carried out by people who are competent, or by those under the supervision of someone competent, so a fair question is what competence actually looks like rather than taking the word on trust. For roof work it rests on three things: training, experience and the right equipment used correctly. Installers should hold current training appropriate to the access method and the fall-protection systems in use, and anyone using a harness needs to be trained both to wear it and to be rescued from it, because a fall arrested by a harness is the start of a problem and not its resolution. Supervision on site means a competent person is present who can stop the work if conditions change, with the authority to do so rather than only a name on a form.
Equipment carries its own discipline. A mobile elevating work platform is plant that must be inspected and operated by a trained operator, and any scaffold is erected, inspected and tagged by competent scaffolders before anyone uses it. Fall-arrest harnesses, lanyards and anchor points are inspected before use and on a recorded schedule, because webbing and stitching degrade with sunlight, weather and age. The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 and the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 sit behind how this plant and equipment is selected, maintained and used. The same standard of competence and access discipline carries through to the life of the system, which is why the people who install your array safely are the people best placed to run a safe maintenance regime on it afterwards.
Working at height is governed as much by conditions as by equipment. Wind is the decisive factor on a roof: large solar modules act as sails, and lifting or carrying a panel in a gust is a genuine fall risk to the person holding it as well as a dropped-load risk to anyone below. The Work at Height Regulations 2005 require work at height not to be carried out in weather conditions that endanger health or safety, so a competent contractor sets wind limits in the method statement and stops lifting or panel-handling when they are exceeded. Rain and frost change the picture too, because a wet or icy roof surface and a fragile rooflight become far less forgiving underfoot. These pauses are not delays invented on a whim. They are the plan working as intended.
The ground around the building matters just as much as the roof. The area beneath the work is managed so that falling tools, offcuts and materials cannot reach your staff, occupants, visitors or the public, which usually means barriered exclusion zones, signage and a managed loading and unloading area for plant and panels. If your building sits close to a boundary, a footpath, a yard in daily use or a neighbouring unit, that constrains where access plant can stand and how the exclusion zones are set out, and it is settled at survey rather than discovered on the first morning. A clean, well-segregated site is also a safer one for the dropped-object and fire risks that overlap with array layout under RC62 fire safety.
Because work at height is the part of a solar project where the most serious physical risk sits, it is worth knowing what good looks like before you sign. The Health and Safety Executive's published guidance on roof work and on the Work at Height Regulations 2005 gives a building owner a plain reference point, and a competent contractor will welcome the questions rather than bristle at them. Ask to see the site-specific RAMS naming your roof. Ask how the roof was surveyed and how fragile materials were identified, which on an older building ties directly to the asbestos position the survey also has to establish. Ask what the access method is and why it suits your building, and ask how the area below the work is kept safe.
The answers should be specific to your site rather than generic reassurance. A contractor that surveys properly, often using a drone survey to reach edges and rooflights safely before anyone goes up, and that can show you who is supervising and what stops the work, is managing the duty rather than papering over it. The contractor's own and the project's insurance cover sits alongside this, and the way a competent build is documented and assured is covered in our guide to commercial solar insurance. None of this asks you to become a safety expert. It asks the contractor to show their working, which a competent one is set up to do.
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
Yes. Setting out mounting structure, fixing modules, running cable and working near roof edges and rooflights all take place where a person could fall a distance liable to cause injury. That brings the work within the Work at Height Regulations 2005, and on a commercial project it is planned and managed under CDM 2015 alongside the rest of the construction work.
They require work at height to be properly planned, supervised and carried out by competent people, working through a hierarchy: avoid the work at height where reasonably possible, then prevent falls with the right equipment and a safe working area, and only then reduce the consequences of a fall. A method statement and risk assessment for your project are written on that basis before anyone goes onto the roof.
The aim is to prevent a fall rather than arrest one. That usually means a protected working area with edge protection, such as guard rails or a managed exclusion zone set back from the perimeter and any opening. Where edge protection is not practicable for part of the work, fall-prevention or fall-arrest systems with suitable anchor points are used, but these sit lower in the hierarchy and do not replace a properly protected area.
Fragile surfaces are a leading cause of serious roof-work incidents because they can fail without warning. Rooflights, including painted-over or dirt-covered ones, ageing fibre-cement sheets and corroded metal decking can give way when stepped on, and they often look solid until they do. A competent survey identifies them first, and the method statement then sets out how they are covered, guarded or worked around so that nobody relies on a surface that cannot bear weight.
On an Alectrona project we carry these duties as part of the engineering scope. As principal contractor under CDM 2015 we set the access strategy, edge protection and fragile-roof controls in the construction phase plan, brief the people doing the work, and supervise it on site. You are not expected to manage any of this yourself; we confirm the specifics for your roof at survey.
Safe access and fall protection are a normal, costed part of any compliant rooftop install rather than an optional extra you can decline. The amount depends on your roof: edge length, height, surface type, whether scaffold or a mobile elevating work platform is needed, and how fragile or constrained the roof is. Because every roof differs, this is established by survey rather than from a list price. For how the wider project is priced, see our guide to commercial solar cost.
The survey, the site-specific RAMS and any access plant such as scaffold are arranged before the install rather than on the day, so they sit within the project lead time rather than adding a separate delay. Once on site, weather can pause panel-handling and lifting when wind or surface conditions exceed the limits set in the method statement, which is the plan working as intended. We confirm the realistic access and weather allowances for your roof at survey so the programme is honest from the start.
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.