Excellence at Every Turn

We begin this year celebrating our amazing 2024 ELEVATOR WORLD Project of the Year Award winners (half of which are featured in these pages; the other half will be featured in the next issue). We commend them all for their hard work and dedication to excellence, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. If seeing these winners makes you think, “I had a great project this year, too,” send it to us for next year’s awards. We welcome your submissions. Our 2024 winners are as follows:

• Elevators, New Construction. Schindler Elevator Corp. for Banque Nationale, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
• Elevators, Modernization. TK Elevator for the Humboldt Bank Building, San Francisco, California, U.S.
• Escalators, New Construction. Otis Elevator Co. for the Elizabeth Line, London Underground and Railway, London, U.K.
• Escalators, Modernization. Otis for Singapore Mass Rapid Transit, Singapore
• Inclined Lifts. Hill Hiker for the KSA Expo 2020 Pavilion, Dubai, U.A.E.
• Platform Lifts and Stairway Chairlifts. Day Elevator & Lift for Earl Hall, Columbia University, New York, New York, U.S.
• Private-Residence Lifts. Global Tardif and ElPro Elevators & Lifts for Crescent Heights in Calgary, Alberta, Canada
• Special-Purpose Lifts. Eshel Lifts Ltd. for CASA Boutique Hotel in Nahariya, Israel

In this issue, we also highlight two major events from the last quarter of 2023, both of which were successful by almost every measure. In Big Show, Big Changes, your author reports on interlift 2023. In its last year in Augsburg, Germany, the expo was marked by nearly 19,000 visitors, more than 500 exhibitors, new and innovative products, and many international speakers. In Champagne, Castles and Collaboration, Kaija Wilkinson highlights the fourth International Elevator and Escalator Symposium, a collaboration of Liftinstituut and ELEVATOR WORLD. It was held in Edinburgh, Scotland, bringing together leaders to discuss some of the industry’s most important topics.

Our focus this quarter is Digitalisation, and we offer two articles on the topic.

• Rethinking IoT in the Elevator Industry by Rob Wurth. The author estimates that 6.5% of elevators use the Internet of Things (IoT). He recommends the industry rethink IoT usage, so we don’t lose control over its impact on customers.
• IoT Takes the Elevator World into Industry 5.0 by Christian-Erik Thoeny. Standalone elevators are being replaced with networked VT systems with a common operating system.

In this issue, we also hear from Kapok 88’s Richard B. Annable about the results of the 2023 UK Lift Industry Golf Day and from Matt Lear of Statius Management Services Ltd., who looks back on 20 years of memorable moments with the company in The Good, the Bad, the Strange. Cathy Whittail writes about how Pickerings is faring in its 170th year in Pickerings Go From Strength to Strength. We also welcome a new correspondent this issue: Jason Halligan has been in the elevator industry for many years and has taken to journalism, allowing him to share his industry knowledge in new ways. His first article for EW UK, How Manchester Is Reinventing Itself, sheds light on that city’s growing skyline. His photographs do a fine job illustrating Manchester’s impressive expansion, and we chose one of them for our cover. Thanks, Jason, and welcome aboard.