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ELEVATOR REPAIRS PRIORITIZED
from GTA April 2021
by MediaEdge
Shelved legislation now set to come into force in July 2022
BY REBECCA MELNYK
Ontario is kicking the dust off elevator repair legislation that was passed in May 2018 during the previous Liberal government’s tenure, but never proclaimed into law. In a move meant to achieve better elevator availability and stricter maintenance requirements, recently approved regulatory changes allow the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) to impose financial penalties for noncompliance with legal requirements.
Elevator outage data must also be reported to the TSSA for online publication. In a statement, the Ministry of Government and Consumer Affairs decreed owners of elevators in a long-term care home or residential building will need to report all prolonged outages (i.e., of 48 hours or longer) to the TSSA, along with the cause of the outage and certain characteristics of the building/elevator via an online form. Prospective homebuyers would be able to search an address and gather this data.
Both changes are expected to come into force July 1, 2022. They arise from: last summer’s government consultations on the previously shelved legislation; the Auditor General of Ontario’s recommendations in the 2018 Value-for-Money audit of TSSA; and a report by former Superior Court Justice Douglas Cunningham, which assessed elevator availability in Ontario. In particular, Cunningham’s work was prompted in response to prolonged breakdowns in multistorey residential buildings and long-term care homes.
FINE-TUNING THE LEGISLATION
Although it’s a viewed as a gain for consumers, industry experts suggest the legislation falls short of addressing some intricacies elevator contractors face on the job. For instance, they maintain elevator contractors can be at an inherent disadvantage trying to comply with the new requirements in problematic older buildings.
“If it’s older equipment that hasn’t been modernized and the contractor has been advising the owner to upgrade the equipment for the past five years, does this still become the elevator contractor’s responsibility to maintain the equipment in excellent running condition?” muses Rob Isabelle, Chief Operating Officer with the elevator specialty firm, KJA Consultants, and a member of the TSSA’s elevating devices advisory council.
Additionally, contractors sometimes delay repairs if a client is in arrears on its invoices. Currently, it’s unclear if contractors will have to repair an elevator in those circumstances.
“There will be some cases where the elevator contractor should be working harder to fix the elevator; there’s other cases where the
contractor is probably not responsible to fix the elevator,” Isabelle maintains. “There are a number of details that will need to be worked out between now and July 1, 2022, and once this gets rolled out, every party will realize this isn’t a simple issue.”
There is also uncertainty about what will happen with the data the TSSA collects.
“What is the purpose of the information?” Isabelle asks. “Somebody will want to get that data, and that’s why the elevator contractors are concerned.”
He argues it’s open to misinterpretation, particularly in the context of the estimated 45,000 elevators in the province. “A large contractor might have reported more than 30 elevators shut down for two days, but on a percentage basis of units maintained this number could be much less than that of a contractor who services only 300 elevators,” Isabelle notes. “That (smaller) contractor might only have 10 down, but on a percentage basis, that contractor could be doing a worse job than the larger ones.”
Meanwhile, there is little direction or definition of adequate levels of service in other codes, standards or regulations. For example, the Cunningham report highlighted the absence of requirements for buildings to provide adequate elevator service for the expected number of users. The Ontario Building Code is also silent on the issue. Nor has there been any movement on developing and instigating such standards, despite recommendations.
“Where a building should really have four elevators, some developers are installing only three,” Isabelle observes. “Moving day, you’re down to two elevators, and if one is broken, you’re down to one elevator. That’s a problem out there.”
REBALANCING SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Even in a highly regulated industry, with a small group of elevator mechanics (roughly 3,500 in Ontario), the majority of repairs are performed quickly except for a smaller percentage of cases where shutdowns are longer-lasting.
The Cunningham report found in 2017 that TSSA data and expert analysis placed average availability across residential and institutional buildings at 97%, with 3% non-availability representing the equivalent of 10 days out of service annually. Most buildings with low availability were in the Greater Toronto Area, which also hosts the most elevators. Condos reported the lowest average availability by building type, at 93% of the year.
Three years ago, when this legislation was drawn-up, the industry faced what Isabelle calls ‘the perfect storm.’
“There was a ridiculous amount of work and not a lot of qualified technicians to address it,” he recounts. “Work volume has reduced and the union has let more people in; schools have started elevator apprenticeship programs. We’ve been able to rebalance the supply and demand.”
Since COVID-19, elevator modernizations have also shut down, creating fewer call orders.
“Right now, we have the opposite issue; it’s quite slow because a lot of commercial office repairs are delayed,” Isabelle adds. “Office building owners are not spending money. Residential building owners have put their modernization work on hold pending the pandemic. Post-COVID, there will be a boom in elevator modernizations.” ■
________________________________________________________________ REBECCA MELNYK IS THE EDITOR OF CONDOBUSINESS.
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