Finding a Path

Hope is like a path in the countryside. [At first], there is nothing — but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.

— Lu Xum

My thoughts for the new year are on the future and how our industry is changing. However, as I write this in very early 2022, the future still seems a bit fuzzy. Business is booming in some areas, while in others, jobs have slowed down. Supply chain failures continue to hamper manufacturing. Inflation has some buyers on the fence. The latest COVID-19 variant is receding, but as we approach the end of a two-year run, life has not returned to normal. We are still learning to operate in a post-pandemic world.

We went into 2021 with great hope and enthusiasm. While it was certainly better than 2020, it wasn’t as stellar as we had hoped. So, we walk into 2022 with some uncertainty. Like the Chinese quote above, it seems we must wander this way and that until a new path becomes clear. Some things in the elevator industry are already changing:

Our industry is in motion, both consolidating and contracting. Large companies are still buying small ones, but small and mid-size companies are also banding together to grow, cover more territory and share knowledge.

Part of the motion in the industry, private equity firms are still a question mark. Such firms discovered the elevator industry several years ago. Now, they have discovered the accessibility industry.

The environmental landscape is changing. In the future, buildings will be greener and more flexible. The elevators that serve them will have to adapt.

Trade education has never been more important. Our population is aging, and the technology of our industry can be lost if we fail to focus on training and innovation.

New technology (remote monitoring and data collection, to name a few) along with artificial intelligence (AI) may make us safer and faster.

We will explore all these things and more in the months to come. Meanwhile, this issue we report on the most interesting and challenging projects completed in the past year in our ELEVATOR WORLD’s 24th Annual Project of the Year news. We even highlight one winner, The National Ski Jumping Center of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, as part of our focus topic on Residential Lifts and Accessibility. The complex and technically challenging inclined lift project was completed by Suzhou Rhine Lift Manufacture Co. Ltd. and helped Olympic skiers move up and down between the bottom and the top of the ski jumping platform.

Other focus articles in this issue include:

Platform Lifts. AreaLift, a division of LiftingItalia, has redesigned its screw lift and offers a platform lift, EasyPlat.

Luxury Accessibility Solutions by Clare Brophy of Handicare. This product spotlight looks at a new offering for the homelift market as demand in Europe increases.

Extra Accessibility. Swedish-based Aritco offers a range of residential lifts that include its standard HomeLift, the small-footprint 4000 and the HomeLift Access. 

This book contains so much more, including TK Elevator’s largest infrastructure project in the U.K. in Elevating HS2 and a goods lift modernisation project by Knowsley Lift Services in Modernising History.

New Year wishes to all as we search for the path forward!