What is Elevator Maintenance?
Elevator maintenance is a systematic inspection carried out by service technicians to keep elevators in good working condition. The process involves finding, diagnosing, and fixing problems before they cause system breakdown, malfunction, or shutdown. Elevator maintenance is usually performed at least once a month to prevent costly repairs and sustain asset lifespan. An elevator maintenance checklist is a tool used in the examination of mechanical, structural, electrical, and safety systems to ensure that elevators function properly and operate safely.
Importance of Elevator Preventive Maintenance
Elevators, or lifts, are crucial investments for multi-story buildings as they play a significant role in transporting people and freight as quickly as possible between floors. According to the National Elevator Industry, Inc. (NEII) report, there are 18 billion trips on elevators in the US every year. With all those passengers utilizing this equipment, regular elevator or lift maintenance is imperative.
Elevator preventive maintenance inspections are critical in ensuring compliance with building regulations and ensuring all equipment is in good working condition. Elevator malfunctions can inconvenience tenants, cause costly repairs and create safety hazards. Performing regular elevator maintenance inspections can mitigate these risks.
Regular maintenance checks provided by elevator inspection companies help ensure public safety and guarantee smooth and efficient building operations. Further, elevators that are well maintained also significantly increase the marketability of properties and lessen the risk of liability issues and tenant dissatisfaction. It is crucial for elevator inspection service firms to choose the right technology that can aid their technicians in providing efficient inspections.
What is Elevator Maintenance Checklist?
An elevator maintenance checklist is a tool used by service technicians to ensure the safety of elevators before their operational use. It is used to record the inspection details including inside the car, top of the car, and machine room. It helps assess potential risks that could cause equipment defects and malfunctions.
What to Include on Your Elevator Maintenance Checklist Form
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) work in conjunction to establish maintenance requirements for elevators. Below are the following requirements to include on your elevator maintenance checklist:
- Inspect and repair operating components.
- Clean, lubricate, and adjust all the elevator components.
- Execute electrical equipment tests of electrical wiring.
- Check the elevator speed and ensure telephone is operational.
- Maintain safety equipment such as door operation.
Elevators should be inspected on a periodic basis and preventive maintenance can be done monthly depending on the usage of the elevator.
How Do You Inspect an Elevator?
Here are the top 3 tips for elevator maintenance inspection:
- Communicate with tenants: Let tenants know that scheduled maintenance is occurring, use signs and notices. Avoid high foot traffic periods and always ensure alternative elevators or stairs are available. Include signage on all key floors that the elevator stops at.
- Perform the Inspection: Performing an elevator equipment audit helps determine the condition of equipment, the types of necessary repairs, and other services needed. Inspect below major parts to ensure elevator safety:
- Inside the car: Check the condition of signs and operating device symbols, button functions, ventilation, lighting, car door force when opening and closing. Ensure emergency devices are available and in good working condition.
- Top of the car: Examine if the travel cables and hoistways’ are operational and properly adjusted. Apply the appropriate lubrication for rails, governor ropes, suspension means, chains, etc.
- Inspect machine room: It’s crucial to assess the conditions of equipment in the machine room. Supply the required lubrication to the suspension means, gears, bearings, and other mechanical equipment that needs lubricating.
- Prepare report: Complete a comprehensive report of the inspection including photos of any equipment defects and a description of any operational issues. Well-documented reports are required for regulatory compliance, fire safety requirements, and maintenance logs.
Technology to Streamline your Elevator Maintenance Inspections
Organizing and managing paper-based elevator maintenance reports are burdensome to elevator service technicians as they consume too much energy and time. Generate faster and more comprehensive elevator maintenance reports using a mobile app like SafetyCulture. Make elevator maintenance inspections easier with SafetyCulture with the following advantages:
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Conduct inspections on the go
Perform elevator maintenance on your handheld device anytime, anywhere, even if you’re offline. All inspections will automatically sync to the cloud once you get connected to the internet. Capture photo evidence of equipment defects, take detailed repair notes to clarify the elevator system damage, and assign corrective actions according to the priority level to immediately mitigate the risks.
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Improve productivity
Optimize elevator inspections by transforming paper-driven elevator inspections into an automated digital process. Equip elevator inspectors with smart checklists to help them efficiently perform maintenance activities and easily attach media for precise details. Automate workflows to notify elevator inspectors of their assigned work order.
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Save time and produce accurate reports
Manually compiling elevator inspection results into a comprehensible report is time-consuming and, frankly, just not fun. Elevator inspectors can focus on performing their best for the next client, as professional reports are auto-generated after every inspection and delivered with ease to key recipients. Reports are also immediately saved in SafetyCulture’s cloud so you wouldn’t need to worry about losing them again.
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Have the higher ground on maintenance
Upgrade to a predictive maintenance strategy for elevators with the combined power of data analytics and temperature sensors. Data gathered from elevator inspections are pushed to and organized in a central dashboard to let you easily know recurring elevator issues or view a technician’s productivity report. Meanwhile, SafetyCulture’s temperature sensors help alert you as soon as the elevator system control box goes beyond ideal temperature limits.
Elevator Maintenance with SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) & IoT Sensors
An elevator inspection software is a powerful tool that can help streamline the inspections of elevator technicians and improve the quality of their work. The software, especially when partnered with an elevator IoT (Internet of Things) solution, can enable technicians to serve more clients and help keep elevator operations as safe as possible.
Recently, elevator inspection software and IoT sensors have been a winning pair for elevator inspections. Together, they help maintenance personnel be on top of elevator safety concerns through a combined preventive and predictive maintenance strategy. If you’re wondering what impact SafetyCulture’s technology can bring to your operations, here are some ways it can help bring your inspection game to the next level:
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Leverage the power of preventive and predictive maintenance
It is crucial that elevator downtime be minimal and planned. With SafetyCulture, you can leverage technology to implement a preventive and predictive elevator maintenance strategy to minimize disruption.
With an elevator inspection software, you can utilize inspection data to easily see recurring issues and determine the right amount of maintenance for a client. You can take it up a notch by integrating the software with temperature sensors and gain extra visibility into elevator performance. With this pairing, it becomes easier to proactively monitor the temperature in strategic locations (e.g., system control box); elevator technicians will be alerted via their mobile elevator inspection app should there be temperature changes so they can prevent sudden breakdowns. -
Help more clients strengthen elevator safety code compliance
With a more streamlined safety strategy, you can reach more customers and provide your expertise in helping them comply with elevator safety codes, such as the ASME A17/CSA B44.7 for US and Canada and the 2014/33/EU, EN 81-20, and EN 81-50 for Europe. Using elevator inspection software, inspection firms and building administrators can collaborate on creating digital elevator maintenance checklists to ensure they have a personalized set of requirements that meet both international and local elevator safety standards. Clients can also use these digital checklists via the elevator app to conduct internal checks and immediately report issues.
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Satisfy customer expectations
Demand for elevator maintenance will be greater as multi-level residential and commercial buildings continue to rise to meet population and business growth; with this comes increased expectations for great customer service from elevator inspectors. By arming your technicians with powerful tools such as the SafetyCulture elevator inspection software and IoT sensors, they are empowered to deliver the right solutions to clients’ problems—contributing to improved first-time fix rates and better quality of customer service.
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Keep elevator inspectors happy
To keep inspectors happy, you need to equip them with tools that help them focus on the job at hand. The SafetyCulture elevator inspection software can provide them that edge as it helps them minimize administrative paperwork and concentrate on performing efficient inspections. It also makes it easier to facilitate real-time communication, see equipment history, retrieve old inspection records, and furnish professional reports using only a handheld device.
Elevator Maintenance FAQs
Elevators in general need quarterly maintenance but for other types like commercial lifts, conducting maintenance at least twice a year is ideal. Scheduled elevator maintenance can help proactively catch issues before they lead to elevator breakdowns that can be costly to repair.
Elevator maintenance can cost from $3,500 to $10,000 depending on the number of elevators to be maintained. The types of elevators and can also affect the maintenance cost as well as the type of building where the elevators are located.
Regardless of how often elevators are used, they need to be replaced when they reach their 20th to 25th year. The reason for the need to replace elevators when they reach this number of years in service is that they have parts that inevitably breakdown.
