Ontario plans elevator availability law
The Canadian Press
25 January 2018
Ontario plans to pass legislation in the spring aimed at addressing
elevator availability and reliability as part of its commitment to
tackle what has become a growing vertical mobility issue across the
country.
The planned legislation is in response to a report to be released
Thursday that aims to define and enhance elevator reliability by
ensuring building owners perform preventive maintenance — seen as key
to minimizing thousands of annual entrapments and other unscheduled
shutdowns.
"There are currently no minimum preventive maintenance standards in
Ontario to minimize future availability issues," retired justice
Douglas Cunningham writes in his 57-page report obtained by The
Canadian Press. "Compliance with minimum maintenance standards for
safety, shown to signal more effective preventive maintenance
practices, is at an all-time low."
In fact, Cunningham reports, only one in five residential buildings are meeting minimum rules for scheduled maintenance tasks.
Other recommendations include forcing contractors to report outages
over 48 hours or when half the elevators in a building are out of
service — 80 per cent of buildings have only one or two lifts — and
having a defined plan to restore service. Outage information should be
publicly available, Cunningham says.
Cunningham says that while the four big elevator companies have painted
a somewhat rosy picture of the situation — some critics have referred
to multinational giants Kone, Otis, Schindler, and ThyssenKrupp as an
oligarchy — there is widespread concern about elevator availability,
which he wants to see defined as "the ability of a building's elevating
devices to transport persons as and when required."
Overall, Cunningham finds a "diverse and complex set" of interrelated
issues underlie outages, including maintenance, capacity problems and
labour shortages. He also notes in passing cases in Europe, Israel and
Japan involving systemic anti-competitive practices by the big elevator
companies.
Increasing elevator problems reported
The Ontario government last year ordered the provincial safety
regulator — the Technical Standards and Safety Authority — to
commission the study after The Canadian Press found increasing problems
with residential, nursing home and other elevators across the country
and a private member's bill aimed at addressing the issue gained
all-party support.
The latest available figures, for example, show firefighters in Ontario
responded to 4,577 calls by people trapped in lifts in 2016. Industry
figures peg entrapments that year at 9,649. Additionally, the report
notes, elevator outages are enormously problematic for people with
mobility issues, and can hamper first responders in emergencies.
Condominiums reported the biggest
availability problem.
Part of Cunningham's study — carried out by consulting firm Deloitte —
involved a survey of building owners. Condominiums reported the biggest
availability problem. Overall, one in five respondents reported having
an elevator out of service for 18 days or more in any given year.
Elevator age appears to play little role.
The study also reviewed jurisdictions such as Vancouver, New York and Singapore.
Liberal backbencher Han Dong introduced his private member's bill last
year that would punish contractors for extended elevator downtime and
mandate "traffic studies" to ensure new residential buildings have
sufficient elevator capacity. No standards exist at the moment.
Cunningham, however, asserts Dong's bill is based on anecdotal rather
than "robust" evidence. The problem, he finds, is the "acute absence"
of reliable data that undercuts efforts to comes to grips on the extent
of the problem and potential fixes.
Gathering needed data and tackling the issue will take years, involve
several ministries, the safety regulator, contractors and building
owners, the report finds.
One issue is that no regulatory authority is responsible for elevator
availability — as long as the devices do not pose an active safety
threat to users.
Timelines for returning elevators to service
Nevertheless, sources have told The Canadian Press that Consumer
Services Minister Tracy MacCharles — also responsible for accessibility
issues — was expected to announce on Thursday plans to begin tackling
the issue by introducing enabling legislation this spring and
regulations in the fall.
Longer-term government plans call for setting timelines for returning
devices to service — which Cunningham and the province say would make
the province the first jurisdiction in the world to do that. Other
planned initiatives include stronger enforcement tools and fines around
maintenance, and tackling a shortage of qualified elevator mechanics.
Building code amendments would ensure new highrise buildings have a suitable number of elevators, according to the government.
The government also plans to ensure data on elevator uptimes are
publicly available, sources said, suggesting would-be tenants for
example would have information about a building, and authorities would
have a better idea of where the problems are.
The government is also looking to develop education and awareness
materials for building owners and residents on compliance with
requirements for notice of service disruptions.
One thorny issue is whether the current safety authority should be
given responsibility for availability. The fee-for-service authority,
seeing itself caught potentially in a conflict between enforcing safety
and ensuring availability, opposes taking on the extra mandate.
Cunningham was given an earful from disaffected contractors and owners
about their lack of trust in the safety agency, which he said needs to
act as a "modern regulator" that incorporates broad and frequent
industry input into its decision-making.
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