Improve the safety of your lift with Schindler Lifts

Is lift maintenance alone, enough to prevent costly slips and falls on your premises? A lift's ability to stop and level at each floor is critical to the safety of passengers on your premises. Yet in many cases, lifts are unable to level accurately and consistently to meet the stringent code requirements for safe floor levelling.

This can result in slips and falls, which are the most frequent type of building accident and can result in severe injuries, especially to the head and back. This problem may be more frequent when a building's clientele includes elderly people.

However, while this is certainly a good start, maintenance is sometimes not enough to ensure safe and consistent floor levelling of a lift, under various load conditions, over time.

Australian Elevator Association President, Norm Argent, explains, "excessive wear and tear can often be an exponential problem for ageing lift equipment. There are plenty of lifts out there still using older mechanical components that have a lot more moving parts, and are a lot more susceptible to wear and tear."

The advent of computerised lift control systems means older lifts can be improved to the same level of ride quality and safety, as much newer installations. "You don't want friends and colleagues noticing your lift for all the wrong reasons! Newer electronic technology reduces the number of unnecessary lift breakdowns, based on a combination of fewer moving parts, more sophisticated speed and levelling. It all means a much safer, more reliable system for everyone," he said.

Advances in technology allow ageing equipment to be upgraded easily and economically, without the need for expensive lift system overhauls, and so help reduce the likelihood of accidents at floor levels.