Professional Lift Maintenance and Repairs

A lift maintenance engineer undertakes a planned preventative maintenance programme as agreed with your contractor. Your lift maintenance engineer helps to prevent costly breakdowns by regular checks and replacement of worn parts, with the aim of keeping your lift performing at maximum efficiency.

The regular maintenance checks include detailed inspections of the interior and exterior of the lift cabin as well as checks in the machine room or control panel, the pit, and the lift shaft. Lift maintenance engineers, from independent lift companies, are trained to maintain and service all types, makes and models of lift which includes:

• Passenger lifts in all types of building from office blocks to hospitals, hotels, airports and even nuclear facilities
• Goods lifts – both those that take passengers with goods and those that are goods only
• Dumbwaiters, trolley and document lifts in hotels, restaurants and offices
• Mobility lifts including step lifts and all types of wheelchair platform lifts
• Escalators in supermarkets, shopping centres and airports
• Scissor lifts used for loading and unloading products in a warehouse or manufacturing facility
• Industrial doors used in manufacturing and warehousing
• Dock levellers and docking equipment

A lift maintenance engineer will check all the parts of a lift for wear and tear, including:

• Lift car interior walls, handrails, lighting, floors, skirtings, electronics and control buttons
• The lift pit
• Top of the cabin
• Ropes/cabling
• Guide rails, rollers and levelling devices
• All connections
• The lift shaft
• Door operation on every floor
• Control buttons and panels
• Machine room – if you have one

Minor repairs and adjustments will be made there and then, where possible. Where parts are needed, the client will be informed and provided with a quotation.

It is a legal requirement that lifts are serviced regularly. The number of times that a maintenance engineer attends a lift depends on the type of lift and the amount of use it gets. For example:

• heavily used lift such as hospital and hotel lifts are normally serviced 6 to 12 times a year-month
• for average usage, a lift is usually serviced four times a year

If a lift is being maintained regularly, it will suffer fewer breakdowns.

If a lift is not being maintained regularly, breakdowns are more likely and this will often be due to worn or broken components or poor lubrication.

It is a legal requirement for lifts to be serviced. The owner or dutyholder has responsibility for ensuring this happens.

LOLER Thorough Examinations do apply to passenger lifts.
Passenger lifts, by law, must have six monthly Thorough Examinations (LOLERs) ie 2 per year.
Goods lifts need only one Thorough Examination each year.
Without these current LOLER certificates the lift should be shut down.

Lifts normally last 20-30 years but the lifetime of a lift can extend way beyond that with regular maintenance. Some well-maintained lifts are over 100 years old. When lifts start to get worn, a refurbishment program is recommended to bring it up to date for electricity efficiency, interior design and to ensure the lift remains safe.