The question every asset manager asks
An asset manager at a housing provider is building a long-term capital plan for their estate. They email all their contractors asking for expected replacement and major repair costs by year. For lifts, your account manager has a rough idea: the older traction lifts in the tower blocks will need controllers soon, and a couple of hydraulic lifts have been troublesome. But turning that into a year-by-year plan per lift takes a senior engineer's time, and it ends up as a paragraph in an email.
The asset manager wanted a table. They get a paragraph. When budgets are set, your lifts are underfunded, and next year the modernisation you advised gets squeezed.
Why lifecycle advice rarely lands
Lift companies hold a lot of the information needed for lifecycle planning, but not in a form that produces a forecast.
- Component details, such as controller and drive models and ages, are incomplete.
- Engineers' views on condition are in their heads or in service notes.
- Fault history is in the job system, not summarised per lift.
- Cost ranges for typical works live with the estimator, not in a table.
- Nobody owns producing forecasts for customers.
What vague answers cost
When owners cannot budget properly, lift work gets deferred until it becomes urgent, which is harder for everyone. Your firm misses the chance to be the adviser who helped plan the work, and when the budget arrives, the work may go to tender with someone else's specification. Owners also value a contractor who gives useful forward planning, and it helps at renewal.
Forecasts built from your own records
We build a lifecycle forecasting tool that combines what your firm already knows into a per-lift, per-year view.
- Each lift's component records are the starting point: controller, drive, door equipment, ropes or hydraulic unit, and signalling, with installation or replacement years where known.
- Your technical team sets expected lives for component types, as your own working assumptions, and indicative cost bands for typical works.
- Fault history per lift, from call-outs grouped by category, is summarised to show where components are giving trouble.
- An engineer's condition assessment can be recorded against each component during routine visits, using a simple scale.
- The tool proposes a year for each piece of major work, which your technical manager reviews and adjusts before anything goes to the customer.
- The customer receives a forecast table by lift and year, with notes, exportable to Excel for their capital plan.
| Forecast input | Source | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Component ages | Lift component records | Engineers and office |
| Expected lives | Your working assumptions | Technical manager |
| Condition | Engineer assessments | Engineers |
| Fault history | Call-out records | Automatic summary |
| Cost bands | Estimator's ranges | Estimator |
The forecast is your advice, presented clearly. It is not a guarantee of when components will fail or what work will cost, and it says so on the page.
An example of the output
For a housing provider with lifts across a dozen blocks, the forecast might show, block by block, that four lifts have controllers your technical manager expects to need replacement within the next few years, two hydraulic units whose fault history suggests earlier attention, and door equipment on several lifts that could be grouped into one programme. Each item has an indicative cost band and a short note. The asset manager drops the table into their capital plan, and the conversation about modernisation starts on a planned footing.
What changes for your firm
Account managers can answer the asset manager's request with a proper document instead of a paragraph in an email. Your technical manager's judgement is applied consistently across lifts. Customers budget earlier for major work, and you are positioned as the firm that helped them plan it.
Is this where you are?
- Customers ask for lifecycle or capital plans and you reply by email.
- Component ages are unknown for many lifts.
- Major work comes as a surprise to building owners.
- Modernisations are tendered after you advised on them.
- Engineers' views on condition are not recorded anywhere.