Helping everyone have a safe journey

Around half of the lifts in operation in the UK are over 30 years old. During this time a number of changes to the law have been made, placing additional safety requirements on the lift equipment to reduce the risk of accidents to engineers and passengers.

Building (and lift) owners have a responsibility to ensure that all equipment is safe to use. Insurance assessors and lift engineers will identify any aspects of your lift that make it potentially under today's legislation.

A lift owner has a responsibility to ensure:

• The lift is maintained by a competent organisation
• Statutory periodic examinations
• Any defects are repaired promptly
• Document all work & repairs

Main areas of H&S risk associated with lifts and ways to reduce it:

Doors

Older lifts may have doors that close inadvertently or abruptly causing unexpected contact between the elevator and the obstruction, having the potential to cause damage. Modern door controllers reduce the likelihood of any contact by retracting at the first sign of any obstruction.

Safety curtain

The safety curtain is a device the detects any obstruction in the door way, stopping the doors from closing and preventing any damage. The earliest generation of safety curtains use a few strategically positioned sensors that would stop passengers and larger objects from becoming trapped, but may not always detect smaller objects, allowing the doors to close. The latest generation of safety curtains create a mesh of detection that covers the whole door opening, allowing the detection of the smallest obstacle.

Floor levelling

The accuracy of elevator car positioning at floor levels may diminish over time as parts of the mechanism approach the end of their operational life. This presents a major potential hazard for impaired or disabled passengers who could trip whilst using the elevator. Modern drives employ the latest variable frequency control, allowing a much greater level of position control, that can be fine tuned if necessary at each service intervals.

Car interior

Accidents can occur in relation to manoeuvring in and out of the lift. In the recent past much greater emphasis has been placed on the fit out of the car interior, to improve special awareness for passenger with a physical disability. A number of regulations have been set for specifying the position of the lift controls, the levels of lighting, use of handrails and the installation of mirror on the back wall to assist pas sengers manoeuvre in and out of the lift.