Back ground - We have been getting
a tremendous amount of calls for maintenance proposals and more than ½ the time
the reason is that the incumbent company doesn’t even show up, but, the
building is still being billed. I only
go on a small percent of the walk throughs but I get to see all the pictures
and when we are only showing up to take service calls we are deferring
maintenance and putting the building owner’s elevator equipment in a
compromised position.
What’s the big deal? Elevator maintenance
is important because the elevator is most likely the most complicated piece of
equipment in the building. We have
hundreds of moving parts on an elevator and it is very important that you have
a qualified and competent service technician reviewing your equipment on a
regular basis. If no one is looking at
the equipment, cleaning the equipment, etc your issues will snowball to having
a elevator that looks like the surface of the moon because no one has cleaned
it or having an electrical or mechanical failure because we are not checking
the critical components of your elevator system[start contacts, motor brushes,
suspension cables, etc]. You also are
required to have functioning emergency phones, lights, fireman’s recall, etc
that should be checked on a regular basis to ensure they function correctly in
the event of an emergency.
How often should
someone come? This is a good question. Every elevator is different and should be
looked at differently. At Colley we sit
down after we visit a building and ask questions like; What kind of building is
it? What is the traffic like? What is the environment? Who is using it? Etc. Ultimately we can give our recommendation
for how frequent someone should visit but if the elevator contractor recommends
X and the building owner only wants to pay for X minus Y then the choice for an elevator contractor is to give
it to them or walk away from the opportunity.
Make sure when you talk to a potential elevator maintenance company you
ask them “why are you recommending quarterly/monthly/bi monthly, semi
annual visits”? What are my building’s needs.
Monthly to Quarterly – For many generations
the elevator technician has been going to most elevators on a monthly
basis. This has been changing over the
last 10 years. Now we go quarterly or
“systematically”. “Systematically”
typically means as little as possible. This goes back to the conversation you
have with your current or potential elevator contractor and finding out why
they come to your building when they do and if it makes sense for your
elevator(s). The biggest issue with no going
to buildings on a monthly basis is who is going to exercise fireman’s recall
Phase I & II, it is required to be checked monthly in our elevator code and
is a State of Illinois/City of Chicago requirement.
OEMs – The Otis, Schindlers,
Kone, Thyssen Krupp’s of the world are very busy and in our area do not have
the man power to go to the maintenance stops on a regular basis. We are seeing deferred maintenance. We are hearing buildings who call in at 8am and get “if you want someone out
there today, it will be after hours at $900.00 an hour”. There are a lot of great elevator mechanics
at OEMs, the issue is they don’t have the hours in the day to complete the
required work load. Some of this is due
to looking for short term profits[you remove a few guys here or there and the
bottom line looks better], some of this is due to a lack of elevator mechanics
available.
Remote monitoring – I am not yet a
believer in remote monitoring yet. I’m
sure the different remote monitoring devices have great capabilities to capture
data
There
is something to be said about having trained eyes and ears riding your elevator
to identify if something doesn’t feel right.
Remote monitoring is a wonderful selling point but I’m not sure how
great it works in practice other than allows the company implementing it to not
send an elevator mechanic to the building. I have not seen an elevator monitoring device
from an OEM that will tell you if your elevator pit is filled with water or you
have a pipe that is dripping on your controller in the machine room that is
about to damage your solid state circuit boards. If I’m wrong, please let me
know.
[Not sure any remote monitoring system will pick this up]
Take away – Preventative
maintenance is required on anything with moving or building critical parts;
furnace/AC, alarm systems, sprinklers, elevators, etc. Your elevator is a huge capital investment
and the building’s users rely on it to get around in the building. Educate yourself on what you are getting from
your elevator contractor and it should make sense to you as an building manager,
building owner and elevator contractor.
We collectively need to be on the same page on what type of elevator
maintenance your building requires.
Hey! Sign up for our mailing list! We should be getting a
monthly email going out sometime in Q1 of this year.
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.
