Elevator Decisions That Move Your Project

Episode Transcript

Mollie (Host)
Welcome back to {Brief}ly Speaking, the SEH podcast where we keep things short, sharp, and focused on what matters most in the AEC industry. I'm Mollie Sabo, your host. Today, we're looking at something that literally moves your project. Elevators. They're often treated as a late stage detail, but the reality is your elevator platform decision can make or break your building design. To help us navigate these complexities, we're joined by Russ Vicieto, founder of Argon Elevator Consulting. With over 40 years of experience in elevator design, modernization, code compliance, and litigation consulting, Russ brings deep insights into how platform choices impact project outcomes. and how early decisions can save time, money, and frustration down the road. Russ, this is exciting. You are the first person outside of our SEH experts that I get a welcome to {Brief}ly Speaking.

Russ (Guest)
I'm the inaugural guest here.

Mollie (Host)
You are the first outsider, but we're excited to have you.

Russ (Guest)
Absolutely pleased, and it's a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to it.

Mollie (Host)
So Russ, why is it important to consider your elevator platform early in the design process? And what risks have you seen if that's delayed?

Russ (Guest)
As everybody understands, all aspects of building technology has advanced considerably over the past couple of decades. Elevators are most certainly in that same category. The overall footprint in the design principle of the elevators has changed dramatically. And that's all fantastic. Now I don't want anybody to misunderstand me. It's good for the industry, but at the same token, there's some negatives when we don't understand what is happening. Meaning if we were to go back 20 through 50 years ago, we had extremely standardized products in the industry. I could take a standard overhead geared traction elevator and it didn't matter the logo that was on it. But the footprint and the overall performance of the elevator was almost cookie cutter across the industry. So what that did for the design community is it made it really simple. We could just simply say, this elevator is, you know, vertically it's X stories tall. We've got floor plates that we have horizontal movement of X people. Vertically we need to move, you know, Y people. And we're going to put this number of elevators in there to move these people. And performance wise, this company, this company, this company, they're all going to perform pretty much the same. And they're going to have almost the exact same footprint, shaft footprint, machine room or penthouse footprint, etc. Well, nowadays in this MRL market, we have completely erased all of that standardization. Every company, whether I go from a blue company to a red company to a green company, almost all design bases are different now. And so now we have to literally look at the building. We have to look at A) again, like I said, what are the floor plates? How many people are we moving? Type of building, obviously. And now we're going to say, okay, now we're going to design around this type of equipment. Well, that's great. Check that box. But now we have to go a little bit deeper, okay? Because now this company offers a design that looks like this. And one example is maybe the machine is mounted on the back of the guide rail. So the footprint of the hoist way has to be wider. Well, maybe this company, Company B, their machine is mounted at the top of the shaft on top of the guide rails. So now that shaft footprint is not as wide as the other manufacturers. Those are just a couple of very small idiosyncrasies. Then when it comes to maintaining these elevators also, so when we get into the overall cost of ownership throughout that serviceable life cycle, we can have an extremely important impact on that. I'll use the steel ropes as an example versus the rubber belts. To re-rope an elevator is pretty much a standard industry cost now. That's a few thousand dollars to rebelt an elevator if we design around one of them that uses belts for its suspension mean, well, that could carry easily a $30,000 to $50,000 rebelting cost. And it could be as frequently as every six to maybe eight, nine years, depending on elevator usage. So again, our initial design choice could have a very negative cost of ownership impact when we think we're choosing a like-for-like product, but we're not. Essentially what it boils down to, one of the favorite words in the elevator industry is proprietary product. And we have to be overly conscious and cognizant of what are we designing around? Are we painting the building owner, current owner today and future owner tomorrow? Are we painting them into a corner on some equipment that is really not going to benefit them to their fullest?

Mollie (Host)
So it really sounds like in the past it's been more of a one-size-fits-all type of option. And now we're so far past that, if you're not thinking of these options in the beginning, it can really trickle on through and cause problems significantly down the line, correct?

Russ (Guest)
Very much so, yes.

Mollie (Host)
So as somebody who is very knowledgeable about all of these options that they have now, When do you think is the best time to have somebody like you be brought into design discussions?

Russ (Guest)
Day one, to be quite honest with you, and I'm not even trying to be flippant about that, Mollie. Anybody in the design community that's been around for any amount of time, they know exactly what I mean when Division 14 - it's been somewhat of a industry joke for years and years and years. Yeah, sure, I'm designing a building of X stories tall, right? In the back of my head, I know it needs elevators. But I think that mindset got embedded because of that one-size-fits-all type design capability that we had for so long. Every architect, engineer out there, they knew, I don't need to discuss this immediately. I can go grab the cookie cutter footprints for the shafts. I know that a 3,500 pound car is going to be a shaft size of this size, etc., etc. And I plugged that into my model. I can get pretty deep into my design without having to discuss the elevators down to details. And so I think that that's where that habit or that behavior became ingrained in the community. But now it's really kind of rearing its ugly head because things have changed so much. Nowadays, whether it's a GC architect, I don't care who I'm talking to, have the elevator discussion literally from day one. I'll give just another example across the manufacturers. And again, I'm not going to name companies/logos because I don't want somebody to think that I'm being negative towards one. But I could choose company A. And let's say that my building is going to be a class A office building. And I know that they're going to want some nicer elevator interiors to match the interior design. Well, if I choose company A, they have weight allowances that will allow me to do that. If I accidentally choose company C out of pure ignorance, using ignorant, the true definition of the word, just not knowing. If I accidentally design around company C, now I'm going to find out late in the game, probably deep into CD Phase, if not later. I'm going to find out that I can't even put custom interiors in their product. They don't advertise that. It's not in the architectural documentation, but you're limited to only their standard interiors. I've got three projects on the calendar as we speak today that the buildings are now sacrificing because they cannot do cab interiors to match the lobby, etc., etc., that most interior designers want to do. Well, they can't. They found out after the fact it's not allowed. It wasn't engineered for that additional weight.

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Mollie (Host)
And it would have been a pretty easy change had they just asked the question up front.

Russ (Guest)
Literally would have been just shift from this product to this product, change the shaft size by a couple, two, 3 inches, post-wise, side to side dimension, and then we could have done anything we wanted with cab interiors. So like I said, answer your question literally as early as possible in design.

Mollie (Host)
And it sounds like these variations of elevator platforms, it's not just structural that it can impact. It's electrical and architectural too, now that you're talking about designs. Can you give a little bit more insight on how those are impacted along with the structural pieces of it?

Russ (Guest)
Technology has allowed the equipment to get much, much smaller. And so now we're dealing with- everybody is operating, I'll use hoist machines as an example. Everybody's operating some variation of a permanent magnet AC gearless machine. Which is great. And in marketing literature, it looks like company ABCDE, it looks like they're like-for-like. But there are some pretty significant differences between the machines. And again, I could design around company A, thinking, well, I'm designing around an AC gearless machine. While my EE is telling me that I'm going to have 208 three-phase available in the building, but I end up designing around company C, and I find out that with a 208 three-phase motor that company C has, I can't get the performance that I need in the building. I need to have 480 available to me. And guess what? Now I find out that the building is not even slated to have 480 volt three-phase in it. Again, that's just one example that we have to pay attention to. The structural side is really where it gets extremely meaningful because where we're going to carry reactions on these different products, it can be vastly different. Literally, we could have one company where we're basically going to bear all of the vertical lows down onto the pit floor, which is very easy for the engineering group to accommodate. Again, I could design around that company and then maybe somehow, some way through the design phases, somehow, it gets switched over to company C. Well, they don't have a package that offers me to carry the loads in the same manner. And now I need to bear my loads up on top of the elevator shaft. guess what? We've already had structural do all of their design work. We're not capable of bearing those loads up at the upper part of the shaft. So it literally is across the gamut. It's architectural, it's electrical, it's structural, that we have to be so cognizant of today and make sure that we know exactly what we want and we design around that particular product.

Mollie (Host)
I mean, I'm assuming you've seen that happen once or twice. That's probably pretty costly to fix then, correct?

Russ (Guest)
To be quite honest with you, it is typically so costly that it creates the opposite problem. Now the discussion becomes, okay, how do I sacrifice? How do I live with this? I've seen architects design around company A get the building literally under construction. and owner's rep ends up calling someone like me and they say, man, I just saw Division 14 is around company A here. Do they even operate here? I'm like, no, they don't. They have no service presence in that part of your state. None whatsoever. I've literally seen projects where it's that late in the game and now everybody is in, you can only imagine the panic mode at that point. Usually by that time, they end up having to completely abandon ship and redesign around something entirely different, which is not what they wanted, not what they needed, etc.

Mollie (Host)
So let's zoom in a little bit. You brought up earlier machine roomless elevators, MRLs. And they've become increasingly more common, you said. So can you walk me through how those are different from traditional systems and maybe some of the design challenges that they could introduce or benefits they introduce?

Russ (Guest)
Good question. I probably should have mentioned that earlier. So in somewhat of a nutshell, the machine roomless traction elevator was designed many years ago. We brought it into the United States in approximately 1996, but it was designed with the intention of being the green, the economical elevator. That was before green was as prevalent as it is now. It was before we even started using the word sustainability. It was designed to replace the hydraulic elevator in the elevator industry because hydraulic elevators are just grotesquely inefficient relative to energy consumption, maintenance, potential contamination of soil since they run hydraulic fluids, etc., etc. When we talk about the MRL elevator, we're talking about a direct replacement for the hydraulic elevator. People hear that it's a traction elevator, and it is, and they try to liken it with a traditional overhead traction elevator, meaning a traditional overhead traction elevator has an elevator shaft of a footprint, you know, X by Y, and then above that elevator shaft is a penthouse. And that's where the vast majority of all loads are carried. That's where the elevator hoist machine is physically setting up there. So all of the reactions are basically born up onto that penthouse floor. There's access up onto the rooftop to get in there, etc., etc. Tremendous amount of room to maintain the elevator because you're literally walking in a large room that has the controllers, electrification and hoist machines. We completely turn that design on its head. We bring all of the hoist machine, suspension means, everything into the elevator shaft itself. And so now we have a hoist machine and the vast majority of the electrification, in most cases the motion control drives, they're all now mounted at the top of the elevator shaft underneath the building lid or the roof. So it's in a very compact space. And so it brings in all new codes and idiosyncrasies relative to how do I maintain that elevator? How do I rescue people when there is an elevator entrapment? So how do I access the relevant components in order to rescue them, etc., etc. All of that's been ironed out. Codes, you know, now how to address all of these, but the design is very different. I'll use as an example accessing the overspeed governor, which most everybody in your audience will have at least a pretty decent idea what that device looks like. When it's upstairs in an overhead penthouse, I just simply walk in the elevator machine room and it's right there on the floor in front of me. I can access it, I can test it, I can repair it, etc. It's right there. When it's inside the shaft, now I have to have an access means from outside the shaft, so we have to design around that. So we have to design some weird things in a building like access portals into the shaft and so forth. And then like I mentioned earlier, I won't repeat it, but where we're going to bear the loads on the building. That's really the biggest difference between the MRL and the overhead traction is, you know, am I going to bear those loads somewhere low down in the pit floor? Am I going to bear them up at the top of the roughly 11 to 13 feet above the uppermost landing, or am I going to bear them up on the roof in a traditional overhead setting? So it looks similar to an overhead traction elevator, but functionally it performs relatively well compared to an overhead traction and electrification because where we're going to put our disconnect and run our electrification, those are the things that look very different between an MRL and a traditional traction elevator.

Mollie (Host)
Now, do those have as many design bells and whistles that you can add in as traditional platforms?

Russ (Guest)
As a general rule of thumb, that answer is no. But just as a broad statement, a couple of the manufacturers have a pretty wide variety of performance features, functional features, etc., that we can make their MRL look and perform very similarly to a traditional overhead traction. But a couple of the other manufacturers, that is absolutely not the case. They have much more limitations on how much weight we can add to the car, i.e. custom cab interiors, etc. How fast we can get the elevator to run, its overall performance, and so forth. So I typically park that answer as a resounding no, unless we have some very clear, discerned conversations early in design, very early in design.

Mollie (Host)
When balancing upfront costs versus long-term ownership, how should building owners approach elevator selection?

Russ (Guest)
Upfront cost, I usually tell owners, architects and so forth, for the most part, upfront cost is going to be nearly at par. As long as we're in a competitive bid situation. And that's somewhat of a whole other conversation. But actually I should make it part of this conversation. As a rule of thumb, and this is true with most industries, if Division 14 is being competitively bid, we're going to see that upfront cost of that elevator system. We're going to see that upfront cost probably come in a competitive bid, oh, within 8 to 13% of each other. If it is a sole source, meaning design team, let's say design team goes through design, drawing's already done, spec is done, and then general contractor comes on board and they go ahead and negotiate, my favorite term, with their favorite Division 14 contractor. 100% of the time they pay more and they pay more anywhere from 15 to 23, 24% more. I have never seen one of those negotiations come in less than what we would have gotten it in a competitive bid situation. Almost everything I have been mentioning has been based upon global manufacturers that operate in the United States. But in the United States, we are very blessed in that we have the Global Four. We actually have two additional global manufacturers that operate within the United States, but they don't operate in every state. They're not even licensed to operate in every state. And I've seen where a contractor designs around one of those manufacturers because they're familiar with them in like California. And while I saw it here in Colorado just maybe about four years ago, they designed around a manufacturer they were comfortable with and familiar with in California. They designed around it for a building here in Colorado and they got clear into CD Phase and that's when they brought me on board. And I looked at them and I said, you do realize that company doesn't even operate in Colorado. Zero. I don't mean limited. I mean zero. They not even licensed to operate in Colorado. Had to do a complete redesign. Shafts were the wrong size, etc., etc. But that cost of ownership comes into play also because again, like I said, if somebody is not operating or maybe they're not even operating the best maintenance in that particular market, we want to make sure that we're designing around a company that is A) operating their service in that market and B) providing good service in that market. because we don't want to just make the assumption that just because company A has a service arm in that market that they're operating a good and professional and ethical service arm in that market. So you have to understand the industry before you can basically pin the owner into a corner on whose equipment is going to be in the building and who's going to maintain it in the future.

Mollie (Host)
It is complex. It's not just a quick and easy solution, unfortunately.

Russ (Guest)
That's a really good way to put it, Mollie, because I never want somebody to think, oh, come on, this guy, what do you think you're trying to recreate the space shuttle? That's not what I'm saying at all. And pretty much anybody in my role in the industry says something similarly. We are not the most sophisticated product out there. We're getting more complex and more sophisticated as technology improves. It's mainly our industry. If you don't know the industry idiosyncrasies.. Who's making this? How does that one compare to that one? Who's operating in that particular part of the country? Who's operating really well in that particular part of the country? Who can serve your client, who you're designing and building for, who can serve them long term? You have to understand all idiosyncrasies in the market in order to do your client right, if you will. That's when you need to understand the industry. You can't just pick a product out of a catalog and say, "I'm good to go."

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Mollie (Host)
It really is such a long-term decision-making process. I feel like it is kind of a late stage decision, like, oh, I need an elevator. I'm just going to plop this one in. But it sticks with the building, like you're saying. And it has a lot of wear and tear as anything would. And like you said, that insider knowledge is invaluable in the market.

Russ (Guest)
It is. And just one more aspect of that becoming part of the building. It's been this way for years, but especially more pronounced today with the just extraordinarily high costs of erecting a building nowadays is the footprint, the size of the elevator. 99% of the time, the very first question I get from the design team, what's the minimum size we need in this building? And they're talking about the capacity, which capacity under code equates to the footprint of the elevator. It's going to be X feet wide by Y feet deep. Well, they automatically go to the minimum size because they want to keep costs down. Minimum size and minimum number of elevators. Well, again, once that elevator shaft, because the elevator shaft more often than not becomes part of the core of the building, Once that elevator shaft is erected, guess what we can never do in the future? I've tried for 40 years to find that shaft stretcher. You can't. It doesn't exist. There's no way I can look at a structural, you know, 10 years from now and say, hey, this new owner of the building, you know, they want to do this build out. They've got a new tenant, but they need a bigger elevator for whatever reason. And guess what we can't do? So again, it's these very early conversations when we're envisioning the building with the ownership, what is your future goals for the building, etc., etc. And I'm telling you right now, probably 50 to maybe even 70% of the time, it would make much more sense to design around a larger shaft and larger elevator than what we need today just to kind of future proof that building. I'm only 58 years old, but I'm seeing this issue. It is exploding today with the necessity to convert commercial office space to residential buildings. And I'm probably talking to a community that knows this far better than I do. The cost of that retrofit can be unbelievably high. Okay. Well, guess what one of the number one obstacles that we're recognizing is today because they want to go to a residential building that was an office building, but they need bigger elevators because guess what people need to move up and down in a residential building.

Mollie (Host)
Couches!

Russ (Guest)
Bigger stuff. Bigger stuff, mattresses, chest of drawers, etc. And we're stuck with these small 2,500 pound capacity elevators that were put in that building in 1982 and they don't cut it. They simply don't cut it. So now we're having to completely tear out a bank of elevators, reconstruct the shaft, etc., etc., doing nothing more than adding all of this additional cost.

Mollie (Host)
I mean, it really shows how your decision making now can so enormously affect you down the road. And as you're speaking, I just keep thinking, this just sounds like a marriage. it can't be based on what fits you right now, this relationship, but is this gonna serve me in the future? You're stuck with this for life, this elevator and your partner. So be smart about it. Ask the right questions ahead of time. We talked a little bit when you brought up the MRLs. You had mentioned that they were kind of the green version. So I'm assuming that will play into this answer. But can elevator platform selection support sustainability goals or energy efficiency targets?

Russ (Guest)
Most certainly. Since I'm located in Denver, I will use the city and county of Denver as an example. Long story short, Energize Denver brings in some requirements and they're staged over a few years. But 2026, I think, is the first milestone. Building owners, I think it's minimum of 20, I think it's 25,000 square feet or bigger. They are now being mandated to meet some energy improvement goals. ironically, Division 14 equipment, elevators and escalators were not specifically named in that policy. In most similar policies around the country that I have worked with, they did not name the equipment specifically either. However, we do get the benefit with this, as I mentioned earlier, as the equipment technology has advanced, With these AC gearless machines, whether it's an MRL or a traditional overhead gearless traction elevator, we can put on what's called a regenerative drive. And basically what that means is your elevator system will intermittently, I won't get into all the technicalities of it, but intermittently that elevator system becomes a generator and it regenerates power back into the building. That's just one example, but that's the most profound example. We can cut, depending on the elevators, usage, size, and so forth, we could see energy savings on the low side, 30, 34%, maybe on the high side, 60, 70%. And we can combine it with a lot of other things, things like all LED lighting, programming that turns the cab lights off when it's not being used, similar to lighting in the building nowadays, right? So if we combine all of that into the design, and again, we want to do that early because we need to make sure that we accommodate for it and make sure we're getting the right manufacturer who has the best equipment to accommodate those needs, then we can meet a lot of the sustainability goals. Even though some of these policies did not name elevators and escalators specifically, we can still meet the goals because we can generate the energy efficiency for that building and that'll get recognized to achieve their goals.

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Mollie (Host)
That's amazing. I didn't know that there were that many sustainability options. And in today's day and age, that's, I feel like such a selling point.

Russ (Guest)
It really is. And to be quite honest with you, even though we're not talking about it today, I mentioned that the MRL, the genesis of it was to do away with the hydraulic elevators. All but one elevator manufacturer still manufacture and install hydraulic elevators. We now today have a product that's available for the hydraulic industry also that we can use a very green or sustainable drive for a hydraulic elevator also. But again, I have to know about it very early because it does require some different things for design. But if I know about it early enough, we can design around that and we can achieve some pretty remarkable energy savings. Even if it's a shorter building, let's say two, three stories, we can still bring some very significant energy savings to that building and still use a hydraulic elevator if that's the right product for that elevator. So it is important that the design community understands when it comes to vertical transportation, technology has improved not just in the traction market, but it has improved in the hydraulic market also. Unfortunately, in the hydraulic market we only have one manufacturer that has kind of reached this sustainability- let's call it a goal/achievement for a hydraulic product. So again, we have to know about it early, make sure we design around that one particular manufacturer, then we can meet the goals of that building if necessary.

Mollie (Host)
If somebody wanted to reach out to you, they're starting a building design and they're like, I got to get my elevator design figured out early. How could they reach you?

Russ (Guest)
Pretty simple. Best way to reach me for time zone reference, I am in Denver, Colorado, so mountain time zone. And e-mail is usually the best. And my company name is Argon Elevator Consulting, but the e-mail address is Russ, R-U-S-S, at Argon Consulting, A-R-G-O-N consulting.com (russ@argonconsulting.com).

Mollie (Host)
You have shared so much and given me so much more to think about now and to look at as I go into an elevator. it's really clear that it's just all about informed decision making. Thank you guys for listening to {Brief}ly Speaking. Be sure to follow the podcast for more focused conversations on what matters most in the AEC industry