Reimagining Elevators in Commercial Buildings

March 31, 2022 • Nick Fortuna

A long wait in a congested elevator lobby isn’t merely an inconvenience. For building owners and managers, it can represent a real hit to their bottom line, frustrating their existing tenants and leading prospective tenants to consider other properties.

Creating additional elevator shafts may not be a realistic option, but thanks to advancements in elevator technology, there are easier ways to boost passenger throughput and maintain guest satisfaction, according to Jon Clarine, head of digital services at Atlanta-based TK Elevator.

Throughout the pandemic, TK Elevator has seen increased demand for destination-dispatch systems, which naturally reduce the number of passengers in each elevator car to promote social distancing. Even as COVID-19 gradually abates, Clarine predicts interest in that technology will remain strong because it allows occupants traveling to the same floor to be grouped together in the same elevator car, maximizing efficiency.

Visitors use a keypad in the lobby to select their desired floor and are assigned a specific elevator. Since guests no longer are packed together at random in the first available car, they experience fewer stops on the way to their floor.

Want to avoid contact with frequently touched surfaces such as elevator buttons? There’s an app for that, Clarine said. After downloading the app, users can enter their desired floor number and receive an elevator assignment right from their mobile devices, an ideal solution for occupants of office and residential buildings who typically visit the same floors time after time.

For a customized experience, smartphone users can enter information about their daily routine into the app, including the floors they usually visit and their typical schedule, according to Melain Wielkens, national director for service sales and national accounts at TK Elevator.

Beacons installed in the elevator lobby will recognize that user’s smartphone as he or she approaches and automatically call an elevator to go to the pre-selected floor. Users gets a notification from the app and then just have to tap a button on their mobile device to confirm their desired destination, Wielkens said.

“Property managers are always looking for a way to differentiate their building from the one next door, and this is a very simple way to add that cool factor and improve the experience for their tenants,” she said.

Another key to boosting passenger throughput is to eliminate downtime for elevator cars, and new technologies are helping property managers due just that, Clarine said. Sensors and artificial intelligence are being used to collect and analyze data about elevator performance, including the speed, smoothness and vibration associated with up-and-down movement.

Armed with that data, building managers can schedule an elevator to be serviced before it breaks down. The data allow technicians to identify the problem and fix it right the first time, maximizing uptime, he said.

In newer elevator models, accelerometers can be installed to monitor the performance of elevator doors, one of the most common maintenance issues resulting in downtime, Clarine said.

In tall office buildings and residential towers, optimizing throughput might mean placing two elevator cars in the same shaft, Wielkens said. New technology is allowing property managers to have two cars operating independently in the same hoistway, using the same guide rails and landing doors. Each car has its own traction drive, controller, ropes, counterweight and governor.

In some applications, passengers use a ground-floor elevator that can reach most of the floors in the building, while guests traveling to the highest floors take an escalator to the second floor to access the upper elevator car. In other applications, a “garage” may be installed that allows the upper elevator to travel above the top floor, enabling the lower elevator to reach the top floor, Wielkens said.

During periods of low passenger flow, the control system can switch off one of the cars, reducing power consumption by 20 percent to 30 percent, she added. The control system monitors the distance between the upper car and the lower car, automatically decelerating them when they come into close proximity and eliminating the risk of collision.

The twin-elevator system can boost passenger throughput by up to 40 percent without increasing the square footage devoted to elevator shafts, providing more useable space for building tenants, Wielkens said.

“It’s all about getting building occupants to their destination as fast as possible,” she said.