Ask the Expert: The Elevator Playbook with Michael Walsh
In the latest episode of Ask the Expert, series, Michael Walsh, Vice President of Elevator Construction Consultants at STO Building Group (STOBG), shares key insights into elevator system planning, coordination, and innovation. From design-phase red flags to the rise of AI-powered elevators, Walsh breaks down strategies that keep projects on schedule and performing at their best.
HOST
Michael Walsh
Vice PresidentElevator Construction Consultants
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Ask The Expert:
The Elevator Playbook with Michael Walsh
Hello and welcome to Ask the Expert, a series on the Building Conversations podcast, where STO Building Group (STOBG) experts answer questions from our listeners. I’m your host, Michael Walsh, Vice President of Elevator Construction Consultants at STOBG, and today we’re diving into elevator performance, reliability, and innovation, covering key design considerations, installation best practices, and the future of vertical transportation.
So, we have question number one. What factors should developers and contractors consider early in the design phase to avoid costly issues later? The earlier we get involved in design, the better off we all are. Finding mistakes in the early design really helps to solidify the end result being the, the construction documents. The lead times on elevator equipment can run it, it varies on the type of equipment, but anywhere from sixteen to up to 60 weeks depending on the equipment. So the earlier you can buy your package, the better off your project will be in delivery and maintaining your schedule.
The worst thing that you can have happen is discover a problem day of and then have to react and purchase something that was unexpected. Another area that we really find that we need to focus on is within the BIM modeling. We recently did a page turn with the BIM model in pre-construction, and we found nineteen design mistakes by looking and walking through the building on the BIM.
Question number two. How important is it for general contractors to have standardized checklists for elevator installations and inspections? Every elevator company puts out a number of different checklists. One of the first checklists that you’ll see is a site readiness checklist. It contains everything that must be in place before the elevator contractor starts. Everybody looks at a checklist as a piece of paper, but every single thing that’s on there allows the elevator company to maintain their schedule.
We’ve taken all the elevator company checklist and we’ve incorporated them into a single spreadsheet, and all of this information is available to everybody that needs it. The next checklist that you get into is your what they call temp use checklist, which is your construction use or temp use elevator. Then when you get into the final stages of the installation process, the elevator company is going to provide us with another checklist, and that is your final inspection checklist. They are going to tell us everything that we need to do on our end to make sure that all the ancillary systems within the building are ready for the state inspection of the elevators. So these checklists become critical in everything that we do for the success of the elevator installation.
Question number three. What best practices can project teams follow to integrate elevator tasks seamlessly into the overall schedule? Understanding the process and where we fall in the schedule with regard to the elevator is instrumental in making sure that we maintain our schedule properly. The big thing with the elevator companies is they’re going to give you a very generic listing for their schedule, and it is going to look like something like start installation, install rails, you know, install car machine room, very vague, very general, and they put timelines on it. We need more details because of having to tie in with all the other systems in the building. It’s very easy to say, you know, install the rails, but if we don’t have the steel in place prior to installing the rails, it becomes a problem. There are so many times when we start running along and everything is going well, and then we get to a certain part of the project. Entrances are always a big thing, you know, wanting to have your entrances in place so we can finish the walls around the entrance frames and doors.
Without that being built into the schedule properly, it can be a real miss and create situations where we have to do out of sequence work, which ultimately drives change orders and delays to your project.
All right, next question. How can pre-inspection checklist improve efficiency and reduce the risk of inspection failures? Failure is really—it’s the worst thing that can happen because a failure on any project for your elevators usually comes at the worst possible time. When we are trying to open our doors and get our TCO or CO, these pre-inspection checklists are there to help all of us succeed and not paying attention to what’s on those checklists, it’s just going to create problems because if it gets overlooked, then we have a delay. We did an analysis of elevator inspections and the estimated cost that’s attributed to a failed elevator inspection, a cost to the project. And the average cost—we’ve determined—to be about $30,000. So when you look at a failed inspection, not only is it impacting your schedule, but it’s impacting your project budget as well. The other problem with a missed elevator inspection is you’re subjected to a delay with the authority, having jurisdiction coming back in to do the reinspection. You know, in Pennsylvania, they’re running four to six weeks. In New Jersey, it’s about the same. Here in New York, it can be up to 20 weeks of a delay if we’re not prepared for it.
All right, next question. What are the most exciting innovations in elevator technology and how are they shaping building design? Everybody, right now, the buzzword is AI and the elevator industry is no different. Smart elevator technology has been out there at least 30 years, if not longer, with the innovation of destination dispatch. The advancements there have been exponential because of AI, the elevators today, a lot of focus is being done in the background on making sure that the dispatching of elevators in a group is properly accomplished.
Other things that are occurring, you know, we’ve got now the ability to use RFID. So when somebody swipes into a turnstile, it automatically assigns them an elevator. I love going into a building like that, Overseas, we see a lot more innovations overseas. It just takes longer here in the United States to get through patent. So overseas, ThyssenKrupp has developed an elevator and it actually came out three or four years ago. It’s called the maglev, and it is a magnetically operated elevator that only travels up and down the hoist way. That can also go sideways in multiple hoist waves. So now that technology has the ability to have elevators passing each other within the hoist way for better traffic distribution, it’s a huge benefit in high rise installations.
All right. Next question. What is Elevator Construction Consultants and why is having a dedicated elevator expert important to a project? Elevator Construction Consultants was formed because we have a real problem in the industry with ancillary systems and the elevator and passing inspections. Today we run at about 97% efficiency. That has risen probably about 20%, 30%, over the last five years, which is why we formed Elevator Construction Consultants. We saw that there was a demand and a need, and now we offer it to, you know, every CM out there.
And we also offer our services to the architects, the engineers insurance professionals, insurance adjusters. It’s given us a broader scope to allow us to offer more services and work with building owners and managers. And one of the greatest things that I’m starting to see is that when the project teams move to the next project, they’ve now learned what our expectations are and what our process is. And it even streamlines our process even further because now we have everybody working cohesively and understanding how important those checklists and our schedules are.