Elevator Maintenance Wanted – A Dream Deferred

We have been seeing a lot of opportunities at buildings that are paying for monthly maintenance visits, or “full maintenance”, that have completely neglected elevators. It is so important that elevator companies give mechanics time to do maintenance. Elevator mechanics take the time they get to do maintenance and building owners pay a reasonable amount of money to allow the elevator company to properly maintain the equipment. It is the elevator industry's “Holy Trinity” and it requires all three parties; elevator companies, elevator mechanics and building owners to be on the same page to have a safe and responsible level of service. If you are paying $99.00 a month for elevator maintenance, you probably are not getting anything but a good price.

All of these photos are from buildings that had monthly maintenance contracts.

This took years to look like it does

This took years to look like it does

This took years to look like it does

It is a disservice to our industry and other elevator professionals out there to have elevators that look like this if we are going to the buildings on a monthly basis.

What Colley does – We do a few things differently than some of our competitors; OEMS and independents. The biggest thing we do is to watch our route numbers. It’s not always perfect but we cannot expect an elevator mechanic to complete maintenance[which includes cleaning] if they don’t have enough hours in the month to get through their routes. Our management and support team actually goes out to buildings for route audits and spot checks. When we do this, not only do we see how we are doing, we also see what upgrades the building may be interested in or would benefit from. This also allows us to be familiar with more buildings so when owners or management calls, we can say “hey, I was just at that building”. We also go to buildings of the elevator mechanic's choice that they have issues with or would like to see improvements completed. We incentivize car top and pit cleaning, provide maintenance helpers and buy a whole lot of Simple Green. 

The equation is pretty simple and always a work in progress because no one is stoked about cleaning pits, car tops, machine rooms, divider beams, door closers, back of sills, etc but it is what we signed up for when joining the elevator industry. Cleaning is the lowest hanging fruit out there for us as elevator personnel to complete. Everyone knows how to and can clean something each visit to a building. Let's keep our industry great, we can do better.

If you have any questions or would like additional information feel free to contact me at CraigZ@colleyelevator.com or 630-766-7230 ext. 107.

Also check us out on Instagram @Colleyelevator see what we have been up to.