Assessing lift maintenance performance of high-rise residential buildings

Lifts are essential vertical transportation facilities in tall buildings but they inevitably degrade with time. Aging lifts, in particular, require effective maintenance to ensure safe and reliable operation. Nevertheless, scant research has been undertaken to empirically examine the performance of lift maintenance services. To provide much-needed insight into this issue, this paper presents an in-depth case study to investigate the maintenance performance of 24 lifts in the eight high-rise buildings of a 24-year-old residential estate in the densely populated Hong Kong metropolis. Adopting both quantitative and qualitative research methods, a tripartite of primary corrective maintenance data, information collected from interviews with the estate's facility management personnel and on-site observations were analysed. Emergent factors that engendered high maintenance demand, including peak traffic periods during non-weekdays and false fault calls, were revealed. The effect of three archetypes of floor-serving configurations (lifts serving every floor, odd numbered floors and even numbered floors) on the lift maintenance performance, as identified, constitutes useful feedback information for lift zoning design and maintenance planning. Benchmarks of time-based lift maintenance performance indicators, including response time, repair time and downtime, were established. Suggestions for automatic data collection and tracking in the Industry 4.0 era, which would enhance the performance evaluation process, were also recommended. The approach of this study is original and it proves useful for empirical assessment of lift maintenance performance. Future research can take this approach and the study's findings as reference to investigate the maintenance performance of the lifts in other buildings.