Services / Safety & Compliance
Lifts and escalators carry people — and the obligations that come with that sit with the owner, not the maintenance contractor.
Risk score
for every identified hazard, so works can be prioritised
WHS
owner duties assessed against the Act and Regulations
DPVT · AFSS
certified consultants on the team
Under WHS law an owner must identify the hazards associated with plant and eliminate or minimise the risk so far as is reasonably practicable
Our hazard identification and risk assessment inspects the equipment inside and out, scores every hazard, and can be tendered for implementation
DDA audits, incident investigation and independent expert reporting
Responsibility for the safe operation of vertical transportation rests with the building owner or owners corporation. Engaging a maintenance contractor does not transfer that duty. Where an incident occurs, the questions asked are whether the risk was known, whether it was assessed, and whether reasonable steps were taken. The answers need to be documented.
A documented risk and compliance position for each asset, with non-conformances identified, ranked by severity, and paired with a practical remediation path. Evidence you have assessed the risk and acted on it.
What we provide
Hazard & Risk Assessment
We carry out detailed risk assessments, combining site inspections, hazard identification and risk management plans written for the specific site, to support safe, compliant and reliable assets.
Decal Supply
Durable, code-compliant safety decals designed for long-term visibility and compliance across your escalator and moving walk assets.
FAQ
Whatever time you are prepared to have a resident wait. The response time in your maintenance agreement is what actually governs how quickly someone is released. Entrapment response should be specified separately from general breakdown response, and most agreements we review do not separate them.
If your agreement sets a single response time covering everything from a stopped lift to a person trapped in a car, you have no distinct entrapment commitment to enforce. The fix is straightforward and is best made at renewal: a separate entrapment response time, a defined measurement point, and a stated consequence when it is not met.
It depends on the extent of the works, and it is one of the more commonly misunderstood areas of lift compliance. Our rule of thumb is to aim for full compliance wherever it is practicable. The code does not force an untouched part of an older lift up to current requirements during a partial upgrade, but it does actively encourage an equivalent level of safety to a new lift wherever that is physically and economically achievable. On any partial upgrade we recommend including the safety and code-compliance items as a minimum.
Where you are altering or replacing specific parts only (door equipment or fixtures, say), it is the newly installed equipment that must meet current standards; the retained components are generally only required to meet the standard that applied when they were originally installed. New lifts are designed and built to AS 1735.1.2, an identical adoption of the European standard EN 81-20:2020, with testing to AS 1735.1.3 (EN 81-50:2020). Significant alterations to an existing installation can trigger requirements that a like-for-like repair would not. The position that applies should be established for the specific installation and the specific proposed works, before the scope is fixed. That is exactly what we do at feasibility stage.
The principal series is AS 1735, “Lifts, escalators and moving walks”. New passenger and goods passenger lifts are built to AS 1735.1.2, an identical adoption of EN 81-20:2020, with component design, calculation, examination and testing under AS 1735.1.3 (EN 81-50:2020).
Other parts commonly relevant: AS 1735.11 for fire-rated landing doors; AS 1735.12 for accessibility features; AS 1735.19 for lift emergency communications; and AS 1735.5.1 and AS 1735.5.2 for escalators and moving walks, the latter dealing specifically with improving the safety of existing units. Alongside the standards sit the National Construction Code, the Disability (Access to Premises — Buildings) Standards, and workplace safety legislation. Which of them bites on any given building is a question worth establishing before works are scoped rather than after.
Not with the series as a whole. The NCC deals with lifts in Volume One, Part E3 “Lift installations”, supported by Specification 24, and it calls up only a small number of AS 1735 parts directly.
This surprises people, and it is a common source of error in specifications. Much of the building-related content of the AS 1735 series was consolidated into the Code itself and expressed as performance requirements. The EN-based parts that new lifts are actually built to apply through plant design registration and through contract specification rather than through the NCC. It is one of the reasons a specification written by someone who has not read both documents can end up requiring the wrong thing.
Where a lift serves an accessible building, the Disability (Access to Premises — Buildings) Standards set minimum car dimensions that vary with travel distance, together with requirements for handrails, control buttons, automatic audible announcement of levels, and hands-free emergency communication.
The requirements that apply depend on the building, the lift type and the travel. They are also an area where the referenced editions of the underlying standards and the versions currently published do not always align, so the position is worth confirming for the specific installation before works are specified.
A stretcher facility is a lift car sized to carry an ambulance stretcher, required by the National Construction Code in certain buildings, with minimum internal car and door dimensions set by the Code.
Whether a stretcher facility is required depends on the building's classification and rise. It is a matter to establish at design stage on new buildings, because retrofitting stretcher capability into an existing shaft is rarely feasible.
Very likely yes. Lift emergency phones that rely on the copper telephone network or older mobile networks are being progressively cut off as those networks are decommissioned, and a lift emergency phone that cannot connect is a live safety problem.
The relevant standard requires the emergency call to reach a person or a permanently staffed monitoring centre at all times, with battery backup and documented monthly test calls. Buildings that have not migrated their lift phones to a current network should treat this as urgent rather than scheduled work, and should confirm that the monthly test call regime is actually being performed and recorded.
We'll assess your assets against current obligations and document where you stand.