TL;DR — Haven Compliance provides window safety inspections across Liverpool and south-west Sydney — from the apartment towers rising around the Liverpool CBD along Macquarie Street and Memorial Avenue to the villa groups and townhouse complexes of the surrounding catchment. Every openable window is tested against section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015: the 125mm opening limit and the 250 newton force requirement. Liverpool’s new towers run 80 to 150 lots across ten to twenty storeys — we plan the access logistics, test every window, and deliver the digital certificate the same day. Fixed per-unit pricing: call +61 2 8000 0287.
Haven Compliance — a NSW window safety specialist working south-west Sydney’s fastest-growing strata market. Liverpool has established itself as the region’s commercial and residential centre, and the strata development that followed shows it: substantial apartment towers around the CBD — along Macquarie Street, Memorial Avenue and the blocks surrounding Liverpool station — alongside older medium-density buildings on the residential streets and a growing population of townhouse and villa groups in the catchment.
We work with the strata managers and owners corporations responsible for that spread, at both ends of its scale. For a five-unit villa group off Terminus Street, one technician completes the inspection in a morning and the certificate arrives that afternoon. For a sixteen-storey tower on Macquarie Street, the same disciplined process runs from a pre-planned inspection program built with the building manager — and delivers the same day-of-inspection certificate and report.
Growth suburbs inherit the duty at scale: every new tower adds hundreds of qualifying windows to somebody’s responsibility. The rule lives in section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 and has applied statewide since 13 March 2018: owners corporations must see complying safety devices fitted to every qualifying window — one that opens, above an internal floor sitting two metres or more over the outside ground, with its opening starting below 1.7 metres from that floor.
The compliance test has two numbers: 125mm and 250 newtons. The device must cap the opening at 125mm or less — or be a robust screen — and must hold against 250 newtons of outward force, verified under the AS 5203:2016 method. Adult release for cleaning or ventilation is permitted where the device re-engages; a common flyscreen is not a device and never was. The section covers windows inside lots just as it covers the stairwell landings.
For the record, against two errors that have circulated about Liverpool: no legislation requires yearly inspection — the annual habit is prudence, not compulsion — and the statutory penalty for a non-compliant scheme peaks at $550. What ought to move committees is the preventable fall and everything that follows it through the courts and the insurer. Records stay filed for 7 years, per section 180.
Scale, and the speed it arrived. Liverpool’s newer CBD towers are substantial buildings — 80 to 150 lots across ten to twenty storeys — which concentrates the compliance obligation: a single scheme can carry more qualifying windows than an entire street of older stock, all under one owners corporation and one strata manager’s advice. Managing a roll that mixes buildings of that size with small villa schemes requires a provider who operates reliably at both scales, because the failure modes differ but the duty does not.
The tower stock carries the modern profile — construction-installed restrictors, integrated window systems, hardware that has never been force-tested since handover — plus the defect-period complication: committees often assume window devices are the builder’s problem long after they have become the scheme’s. The older medium-density streets and villa groups carry the retrofit-era profile: devices added piecemeal across years, or single-storey configurations where careful assessment determines which windows genuinely qualify.
Add south-west Sydney’s demographic reality — Liverpool’s apartments house young families at among the highest rates in the state — and the duty here is as far from theoretical as it gets.
Construction-installed devices failing on force in the tower stock — present since handover, never verified, loosened by years of family use. Defect-period blind spots — buildings whose committees assumed window hardware was still the builder’s responsibility while the warranty clock ran out. Retrofit gaps in the older medium-density streets, where devices were fitted to some elevations and not others. Renovation losses across a suburb refurbishing constantly.
And flyscreens standing in for compliance, which they never do — an insect screen fails the 250 newton test every time. The consistent Liverpool lesson: new construction is not the same thing as current compliance, and the gap between them is found only by testing.
As a logistics plan first. Large occupied towers need access coordination with residents, lift scheduling for equipment, and security access across multiple floors — all of which we plan with the building manager before the inspection day so none of it becomes a delay on the day. The resident notice template goes out with the entry notices, the floor sequence is published, and residents do not need to be home. On site, the technician works floor by floor: every qualifying window identified, physically tested against the 125mm and 250N requirements, and photographed — common property included.
Villa groups and small schemes run the same process in miniature: one morning, every window, done. The full on-the-day detail is in our inspection process guide. Documentation lands the same day: photographic report, unit-by-unit register formatted for the scheme’s section 180 records, digital compliance certificate, and — where windows failed — a fixed per-window remediation quote. Approved work is installed with REMSAFE hardware, force-tested, and re-verified into the register, with on-the-spot replacement where the committee has pre-authorised it.
Tower schemes get their best pricing from scale; villa groups pay a small-scheme minimum rather than tower rates. We price per unit, fix it pre-booking, and let three things shape it — units, access, windows. Hourly drift does not exist here; the number agreed is the number paid. Haven’s standard rates apply in Liverpool as everywhere: a single property is $250 + GST, buildings of 2 to 10 units are $490 + GST, and buildings of 11 or more units are quoted on request — always fixed before booking, with the digital compliance certificate delivered the same day.
Where devices fail, remediation is quoted per window using REMSAFE hardware, itemised so the committee approves exactly what it sees, and worn or damaged devices are replaced on the spot where authorised. Committees watching the budget should know the two levers that actually move it: single combined projects over split engagements, and grouped neighbourhood runs over one-off visits. Everything else is rounding. Every deliverable sits inside the fee — report, register, photographs, certificate, hardware attendance — so the quote is the cost.
When Liverpool schemes compare providers, compare completions: the inspection that arrives cheap and documents extra almost always finishes dear.
Get the window hardware position tested and documented before the building’s warranty windows close — not after. During a new building’s defect liability period, hardware that was installed non-compliant or has failed early is the builder’s problem to fix; the day the period closes, it becomes the owners corporation’s. A baseline inspection during the period converts ” we assume the builder did it right” into a tested register — and where devices fail, the finding lands while the remedy is still someone else’s invoice.
We provide tower committees with exactly that: a window-by-window audit, photographed and formatted so the strata manager can put failures to the builder as defect claims with evidence attached. It is one of the highest-leverage compliance moves a new building can make, and Liverpool — with more new towers than anywhere in the south-west — is where it pays most often.
Strata managers whose portfolios have grown with the suburb — larger rolls, bigger buildings, and compliance workloads that compound accordingly. Grouped scheduling, per-building registers and automated renewal reminders keep the whole roll on one rhythm. Owners corporations and committees from tower schemes to five-unit villa groups. Property managers and landlords across Liverpool’s deep rental market, using unit inspections and end-of-lease window safety audits.
Building managers in the CBD towers, for whom we turn access logistics from a burden into a plan. Our south-west Sydney coverage extends across the broader region — the South West Sydney location page covers the wider catchment, and portfolio scheduling crosses it freely.
Because scale punishes shortcuts. In a 150-lot tower, a provider who samples floors, skips occupied units or reports ” devices sighted” leaves the owners corporation carrying hundreds of untested windows behind a clean-looking certificate. Our model is every window, physically tested, photographed and logged — at villa-group scale and tower scale alike — with the finding-to-fix chain inside one company and pricing fixed before work begins.
And the industry honesty, stated plainly here as everywhere: NSW operates no official certification scheme for window safety inspectors, and no statute mandates annual inspections. The obligation is continuous compliance. What we sell is that state, held cheaply and proven properly.
With a cycle sized to the buildings. Tower schemes roll onto the annual reinspection and maintenance program with their floor-sequenced logistics already templated from the baseline — year two costs a fraction of year one’s coordination. Villa groups and small schemes slot into grouped runs across the south-west. Every cycle retests every device, completes maintenance-grade fixes in-visit, rolls the register forward and hands the committee a one-page summary of what changed; automated reminders find the manager before each anniversary.
Best practice rather than statute, as we always note — but for managers advising committees on buildings of Liverpool’s scale, the annual cycle is what reasonable management looks like in calendar form: one agenda item per building per year, no surprises, no archaeology.
Typically one to two days depending on access and floor count, planned floor-by-floor with the building manager. Documentation — report, register and digital certificate — is delivered the same day the inspection completes.
Yes. A window safety audit during the defect liability period turns failed or non-compliant construction hardware into the builder’s defect claim rather than the scheme’s future expense. Test before the warranty clock runs out, with evidence formatted for the claim.
Where the criteria are met, yes — a qualifying window needs its internal floor 2m+ above the outside ground with the opening starting below 1.7m. Single-storey configurations often have few or no qualifying windows, but that determination should be made on-site, not assumed.
No — no statute fixes an inspection interval, despite what some marketing claims. Yearly retesting is sound practice; the actual legal duty is a building that complies continuously.
Every qualifying window physically load-tested to the 125mm and 250 newton standard and photographed, on-the-spot REMSAFE replacement where pre-authorised, and same-day delivery of the report, register and digital compliance certificate.
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