A contact has been asked by a lift maintenance company to provide (ie buy) temporary shaft protection whilst the company is working on the lifts. They have specified the type of protection - ie they are not satisfied with normal multi purpose plastic barriers.

I have said that I'm surprised that a lift maintenance company does not provide their own specialist barriers for short termwork. It's their workplace surely they should be taking whatever steps are needed to protect members of the public (and their own staff) from the risk? If I was the maintenance company I would not be happy relying on whatever the customer provided for me for such a safety critical application. It feels like a tree surgeon coming on site and expecting me to provide them with specialist access eqipment and chain saw PPE.

Is this common? Any lift people out there able to shed some light on this?

Ray - what is "Chapter 8"?- note my superb professionalism admitting to the limits of my competence!

Richard

"Chapter 8" refers to the relevant section in The Traffic Signs Manual (for Road Works and Temporary Situations) where this type of barrier is specified for use.

Since the HSE withdrew their guidance on working near, and having open landings, this guidance has been transferred to the Lift & Escalator Industry Association, HSE worked with them on the guidance, and IIRC in that it is deemed that it is down to the duty holder in the premises to supply suitable protection and provide to the lift contractor, then down to the contractor to use it appropriately.

No, this is not normal! Good service with qualified employees should bring everything and install it themselves for the safety of others.

But is it down to the lift contractor ?/

They are working in YOUR premises and you have a duty to provide a Safe Place to Work,

After all, as you need to ensure the safety of your own people, and others affected by the works, (IE stop them falling down the lift shaft), why shouldn't you provide the protection ?

It's also possible a lift contractor has quoted for providing the protection but your purchasing/procurement people chose not to accept the lift contractors cost of providing it.

Not sure I agree. The protection is only there while the maintenance / service work is being undertaken. Therefore, the rest of the time the company has to store maintain inspect etc. Surly the engineers would take what they need from job to job, that way they can take what they need for that job. It would seem daft that an engineer goes to four sites in a day so 4 sets of barriers etc have to be bought by four companies, opposed to one set taken with them, with one lot of inspection and servicing. Good if you are in the lift protection barrier business.

Of course, the guidance has been written by the industry body, so let’s see who should pay for the protection, their members or the customer and have them pay for and administrate the service / inspection and purchase and they decide what exactly will be needed.

So, do people have their own scaffolding in case a contractor needs to come and do some work on the outside of the building? Personally, I find it hard to get those long poles under my desk.

Very cynical mood today sorry.

Chris

No, this is not normal! Good service with qualified employees should bring everything and install it themselves for the safety of others. We also sometimes had such workers, so we immediately sent them home, because security in the office is above all! As a result, one day, we decided to hire people to repair the elevator from this service -- hinchong.com. I haven't seen this for a long time in 7 years of working in the office. Clean, neat, highly qualified specialists arrived, who did everything as needed in just a few hours. I was shocked by how wrong we were when choosing elevator maintenance services.

This post ran its course back in 2019

It was resurrected April 2022 by Tiltovich and now we have another user under the name Easterly promoting a service provider who seems to have no user profile.