Modernising hospital lift stock

The lifts are on two sites: four at Scunthorpe General Hospital and three at Princess of Wales Hospital, Grimsby.

Scunthorpe General Hospital lifts 9 & 10 are a duplex pair of lifts that serve 4 floors with 8 metres travel. Another duplex pair of lifts, 11 & 12 in the same hospital, serve 6 floors with 16 metres of travel.

A group of triplex lifts 1, 2 & 3 at Princess Diana of Wales Hospital, Grimsby, provide service over 3 floors with 4 metres of travel.

All of the existing lifts were beyond their life expectancy and, although previous part improvements had been carried out, the lifts were proving unreliable. Stannah Lift Services were contracted to carry out major improvement works to bring the lifts up to new/current regulations which included incorporating new landing doors and frames with formal fire certification.

Stannah carried out all civil building works and attendances by acting as Principle Contractor within the requirements of the Construction, Design and Management Regulations 2007 (CDM), providing site entrance protection, storage / site office establishment and managing the disposal of waste for recycling or environmental disposal as appropriate.

Stannah also managed all deliveries in conjunction with hospital activities. To maintain hospital routines, each lift upgrade was completed in rotation so that at least one lift, within each group of lifts, remained in service.

The electrical power supplies, shaft and machine room lighting were all replaced, plus significant decoration of all machine rooms and shafts. All 7 lifts were stripped back to guides, retaining only steelwork sections of the slings and counterweights. The remaining equipment was replaced, increasing the speed to 1.0m/sec, incorporating Duplex and Triplex controls.

The design of the lifts at Scunthorpe was modified from Geared to Gearless to improve efficiency and power consumption, whilst the design at Grimsby remained Geared as the cost to modify the 2:1 suspension arrangements to gearless would not have been financially beneficial, compared to the potential energy cost savings.

Work covered the modernisation of landing and lift car controls, operating buttons and indicators; the replacement of safety gear with progressive, standards-compliant, bi-directional equipment; and new, fire-rated landing entrance frames and full depth architraves. Energy saving features ensure the lifts meet with the latest building requirements.

Each lift car was completely replaced with new resilient steel cabins. Finished to North Lincolnshire Hospital Trust’s specification to reflect corporate image, the lifts now have a robust but aesthetically pleasing finish, incorporating LED tube lighting to save energy.

Hinged access panels within the lift car make tube future replacement and cleaning quick and easy.

The new equipment includes electronics that record the activity of the lift on a day-to-day basis.

Planned maintenance is in place as the lifts handle a substantial amount of traffic, but overall there has been a huge reduction in service call-outs and a significant increase in reliability, giving the hospital better circulation of human traffic at a reduced operational cost.

Part of a nationwide network providing 24 hour, 365 days a year support, the East Midlands branch of Stannah Lift Services provides on-going service support for both hospitals and will monitor the condition of other lift stock in the hospital buildings and advise on the best way to obtain optimum performance whilst aiming to reduce running costs where possible.