Full Circle

A funny thing happened to me at a recent National Elevator Industry, Inc. (NEII) Field Safety Committee meeting in New York. One of the attendees was the grandson of a man who was on the original committee, started by Elevator World, Inc. in 1973. I was at that first meeting, working for my father at Elevator World. In fact, when I went back to the archives for pictures, I was standing next to the man’s grandfather in one of the photographs. Many thoughts went through my head over this small coincidence. The first was, “I have been doing this way too long!” But, the second thought was, “What a great symbol for our industry: family members following in the footsteps 45 years later and still actively involved in safety.” We both came full circle.

One of our features this month is about a family business coming full circle. Balancing Act by Matt Irvin is about Tri-State Elevator, a third-generation family-owned business. Chip and David Nyborg run the company, started by their grandfather more than 80 years ago. It focuses on modernization and work across all five boroughs in NYC, and into Connecticut. George Nyborg used to run his advertisement for the Tri-Lok invented by the grandfather when I was handling advertising for ELEVATOR WORLD 30 years ago. Full circle again.

We cover many events this month, starting with Journey to Johannesburg by Shem Oirere, our correspondent in Africa. This was the inaugural Global Lift & Escalator Expo 2019, the first in sub-Saharan Africa. Managed by Virgo Communications & Expositions, Ltd., it was a success with 63 exhibitors and about 1,400 visitors. A three-day congress accompanied the expo with local and international speakers. Another large event was ISO/TC 178 Plenary Meeting 2019 in Frankfurt and Implications for the Future by Louis Bialy. It was hosted by VDMA, the German mechanical engineering association with 3,200 corporate members. It traces its history back to 1892. It was resolved that a cybersecurity standard would be developed, and a new “digital technologies” ad-hoc group was established.

Two smaller events were Elevator Security and 26th Annual IAEC-NY Fundraiser. The former, by Desirée Miranda, focused on American and European associations meeting with Brazilian industry leaders. The president of Elevators Association of Mercosul said it was a good opportunity to learn the safety practices of more developed countries. The latter, by Lee Freeland, was a great event in which consultants and friends gathered at Guastavino’s in NYC to raise money for the Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation. There was lots of fun and very successful fundraising.

Our focus this month is on Special Application Lifts. The first of two articles is A Panoramic Incline by Jonatan Martín Hurtado and Roberto Encinas. thyssenkrupp installed an inclined (74°) machine-room-less elevator in the port city of Puerto Viejo in Spain. It has remote monitoring and cloud- based predictive-maintenance solutions. In Shapeshifting Space by Borja Brañanova, thyssenkrupp struck again, providing elevators for the Dubai Opera House that can transform the space from a theater to a concert hall or an exposition hall by relocating 900 of 2,000 seats to and from the basement.

A new type of article, 10 Questions, provoked a ton of response when we ran the first one in September. It’s back this month with Johannes de Jong, a KONE veteran and founding partner in Elevating Studios, a European consultancy. Our new assistant editor, Victoria Pruitt, takes him through some of his favorite jobs and why he is still pushing for an elevator system to be used in emergency evacuations.

We are running two papers from the International Elevator & Escalator Symposium (IEES) 2018 in Istanbul:

• Panoramic Car Safety by Dr. Iraklis Chatziparasidis and Dr. Dimitrios Giagopoulos, an engineering study carried out by KLEEMANN
• The IoEE: Connecting Equipment, Customers and Passengers by Matthias Schiller and Dr. Clarissa Falge: they say the Internet of Things will be in 95% of electronics for new product designs in 2020. For elevators, the “Internet of Elevators & Escalators” gives massive new data streams to aid better decision-making.

It’s only a month away from the next IEES, this time in Las Vegas on December 3-4 at Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino. Hope to see you there!