Compliance

The volume and range of legislation impacting directly or indirectly on lift operation increases every year. For example, Statutory Instrument 2005 No. 894 The Hazardous Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2005.

These regulations defined and increase the controls that must be put in place to dispose of Hazardous Waste Materials, including registration of the producers site(s) with the Environment Agency, and the referencing of all materials as contained within the European Waste Catalogue or the Environment Agencies guidance document WM2. This impacts on all areas from the manufacture of the lift until its eventual disposal, and as a result forces manufacturers and service providers alike, to consider more carefully the materials that are being incorporated into the product, as ultimately they will need to dispose of them.

One way of controlling this, so ensuring effective compliance, is via an ISO14001:2004 Environmental Management System which covers all aspects of lift manufacture and service which impact on the environment. It relates to a producer’s environmental policies, planning, systems and procedures, checking and review: in this way it formalises the way in which a company meets its legal obligations regarding environmental compliance.

ISO14001’s overall approach is about continuous improvement rather than one-off activities. It requires manufacturers to continually identify opportunities and put in place programmes for improvement in areas such as greater energy efficiency, waste reduction and ultimately an increase in overall performance.

Building performance

Another EU regulation which impacts indirectly on lift performance relates to the energy efficiency of new buildings, setting stiff targets for carbon reduction.

The Government has also increased energy efficiency standards for new buildings through an amendment to the Building Regulations which came into effect on 6 April 2006, with the broader goal of improving overall standards by around 40%. Ultimately, all buildings will require Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), using whole energy consumption – including lifts - as the basis for compliance.

As a result, pressure for change is increasing from the end-user community, who face parallel regulatory pressures to improve their energy performance. For, critically, not only does this reduce any harmful impact on the environment but also delivers cost benefits to both the user and manufacturer communities.

Product design

All of these issues are key to ensuring that proper emphasis is given to the effective operation and usage of a lift installation throughout its lifetime, if an organisation is to meet all its social and regulatory responsibilities. Yet, important though these are, the most obvious considerations will inevitably centre on the product itself, its manufacture, installation and maintenance.

There is no doubt that manufacturers have recognised this and are playing their full part in addressing environmental concerns. As a result, today’s passenger and goods lifts are far more energy efficient than their counterparts a decade ago.

The evolution of machine room-less lift technology offers a particularly striking example here. By incorporating the lifting machine and control system within the lift envelope, the need for a separate machine room is removed, so dramatically reducing the amount of space required.

And in the latest designs this is achieved without compromising the level of robustness or ride quality needed in hard-working commercial environments. Further, compact gearless machinery helps reduce noise levels for example and, as a result of broader improvements in lift equipment design, maintenance requirements have been significantly reduced.

Little surprise therefore that in the UK there has been a significant take-up in machine room-less lift options, in particular in costly town and city-centre locations.

The imperative to go green goes beyond new lift provision however. It is equally important to ensure that existing lifts contribute to the overall energy performance improvement of the building as a whole. And here, new motors, controllers and operating systems in particular can all deliver substantial reductions in energy usage.

New technologies also impact positively on the manufacturing process. For example, the latest modular lift and machine room-less lift designs incorporate far fewer components, so improving production efficiencies as well as substantially cutting installation times.

Ease of maintenance

Once in use, a lift must be maintained properly if it is to continue to operate in the most efficient way throughout its lifetime.

Issues such as rapid response times and flexible service levels from a truly regional or national network of maintenance engineers, backed up by a rapid parts and replacement delivery service, are normally considered principally in terms of customer service quality.

It is true that ensuring disruption is kept to a minimum is important to ensure business continuity, yet service quality also has wider implications. For example, one advantage of using locally-based engineers is that the length of each journey to and from the customer will be minimised, so reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Similarly, it is important for such service support to be able to manage the controlled disposal and recycling of waste materials such as used hydraulic oils.

At first sight, lift provision may not seem the most obvious target for a business looking to improve its environmental credentials. Yet scratch below the surface and it is clear that, for the lift operator and service provider alike, there is much that can be done to ensure lifts operate at optimum efficiency – so providing maximum benefit to the user while at the same time limiting the negative impact on the environment.

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