Elevator Maintenance Checklist: 10 Things Every Building Manager Should Track

A scheduled AMC visit catches most problems before they turn into breakdowns. But if you're a building manager who checks nothing in between visits, you're basically relying on luck to catch anything that comes up in the gaps, and luck isn't a maintenance strategy. Here's the list we'd actually want you tracking in-house, and none of it requires any technical training to notice.

1. Door alignment and closing speed. If a door starts closing noticeably faster or slower than usual, that's often the first sign of a failing sensor or a worn track. Don't wait for it to get worse before you mention it to anyone.
2. Unusual noise. Grinding, clicking, or a new rattle during travel is worth writing down even if the lift's still running fine. It's rarely going to fix itself, and it's much cheaper to address early than after it's caused a bigger failure.
3. Ride smoothness. Jerky starts, jerky stops, or levelling that's slightly off from the floor should get reported, not just tolerated because "it's always been a bit like that." Small drift tends to get worse, not better, over time.
4. Emergency alarm and intercom. Test this monthly. Genuinely, this is the one component nobody notices is broken until someone's actually trapped and needs it, at which point it's far too late to discover the fault.
5. Cabin lighting and ventilation fan. Simple stuff, but it's frequently the first thing that fails and the last thing anyone bothers to report, especially in buildings where residents assume "someone else will mention it."
6. Machine room and shaft cleanliness. Debris, water getting in, or any sign of pests in the shaft or machine room should go straight onto the agenda for the next AMC visit, rather than waiting to be discovered during an inspection.
7. Fire-rating of landing doors. Check for damage or any unauthorised modification, especially after any building renovation work happening nearby, since it's surprisingly common for contractors doing unrelated work to accidentally damage landing door assemblies.
8. Load sign and capacity notice. Just confirm it's actually present, legible, and matches the certified capacity. Easy to overlook, easy to check, and it matters for both safety and compliance.
9. Log of every breakdown call. Date, symptom, resolution. This record is honestly the single best way to tell whether your AMC provider is keeping up or just showing up, and it's invaluable evidence at renewal time.
10. ARD (Automatic Rescue Device) function. If your lift has one, make sure it's tested periodically. This is the system that brings the cabin to the nearest floor safely during a power cut, so it needs to actually work when it's called on, not just sit there as a checkbox on a spec sheet.

Who should actually own this checklist

In most buildings we work with, this ends up being the facility manager's job, or a designated committee member if there's no dedicated facility staff. Whoever it is, the important thing is that one person owns it consistently, rather than it being everyone's job and therefore nobody's job in practice. A shared spreadsheet or even a simple notebook by the lift lobby works fine, the format matters far less than the consistency.

This doesn't replace a proper AMC visit

Think of this list as what happens between visits, not instead of them. Our maintenance page covers what a scheduled visit actually includes, and our AMC contracts page explains how often those visits should happen based on how much traffic your building actually sees. Between the two, you get proper coverage rather than a gap where nobody's really watching.

A simple habit that makes all of this easier

Building managers who keep this list somewhere visible, a printed sheet near the lift lobby, a shared note on a phone, tend to catch problems earlier than those relying on memory alone. It doesn't need to be sophisticated. It just needs to actually get checked, and checked by the same person consistently, rather than being everyone's vague responsibility.