John Newbold, director of lift consultancy business, SVM Associates, who has worked in the lift business for almost 40 years, outlines some of the challenges faced, and lessons learnt, from assisting both Estates and Capital Project Departments manage their lifts.
A central aspect of the Authorising Engineer Lifts AE (L) role is an annual audit. Our audits consider a broad range of advice and standards relating to lifts. These include healthcare-specific guidelines such as those detailed in HTM 08-02: Design and maintenance of lifts in the health sector, and the Premises Assurance Model, lift-related standards including BS EN 13015, BS 7255, BS 9999, and BS EN 81-80, and statutory requirements PUWER, MHSWR, and LOLER.
How do we manage compliance?
Of these we find LOLER compliance to require the most active management. With passenger-carrying lifts requiring six-monthly Thorough Examinations, there is frequent opportunity for a lapse in process to expose the Trust to statutory risk. We have seen lifts in service without a current Certificate of Thorough Examination discovered only through the occurrence of an accident. This need not be a serious accident, but a trip, fall, or collision with a door that at best will strengthen the effectiveness of any commercial claim, and at worst lead to legal action against the Trust. This situation can occur if the process is simply relying on the Competent Person under LOLER (often an insurance company) to schedule and complete their regular inspections. Lifts can be omitted from a regular LOLER inspection if they are isolated, awaiting repair, and then returned to service by the lift contractor inadvertently without a Certificate of Thorough Examination. We have seen good processes to manage this – including a traffic light compliance board for each lift mounted in the Estates office, and a lock-off, tag-off process that requires current certification on lift reinstatement
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