The Spice of Life

If indeed, variety is the spice of life, we have a very flavorful issue for you this month. Our focus and special section centers on Turkey, where we have just completed our first year in business as the magazine ELEVATOR WORLD Turkey. We have a great staff there and are anxious to share a small part of their work in this very diverse area of the world. EW has been traveling to Turkey for well over 25 years, and the reception we receive from the Turkish elevator industry is remarkable.

Istanbul is a bridge between the Middle East and Europe. Visitors from Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Egypt, the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia and more who want to meet with their peers in the industry from Europe and Asia can easily visit in Turkey and have no problems obtaining visas. Istanbul has been a world capital since 4 BC, and today, the ancient and modern stand side by side. There is a vibrant elevator industry here, with strong manufacturing, many suppliers and a sky filled with cranes. They have more than 350,000 elevators and 17,000 escalators working under the EN 81 family of standards. My father used to say that a trade magazine is a “magarena” — a gathering place for people to present their products, exchange their views, inform on standards, brag about new projects and learn the techniques necessary for doing business.

Inside the magarena of our Special Turkey Regional Section, you will find news of Ҫelikray’s move to central Istanbul, where it produces guide rails and tripled its business share in 2015. Mesan Asansör, a manufacturer of elevator cars and doors, grew from occupying 800 m2 in 2006 to 6,000 m2 in 2014 and now exports to Europe and Africa. Hyundai Elevator Turkey is supplying a major project in Istanbul, a financial center that includes retail. The new airport will sport a tulip-shaped air-control tower, which reminds all that tulips originated in Turkey. Hasan Basri Kayakiran writes about a Green Motion Smart Elevator Energy Management System that he expects will save at least 70% in energy use and put power back into a battery for use during power interruptions. Buga Otis Asansör celebrates 150 years of working in the country. This is the only international elevator company manufacturing in Turkey that exports to five continents. A major project in Istanbul is the Finansbank Crystal Tower, one of the newest and most dramatic buildings in the city, elevatored by Otis.

From Turkey, we dash around the world, touching down in such locales as China, London, California, South Korea and New York. Starting off in California, our own Associate Editor Kaija Wilkinson worked with Mike Shaw of Republic Elevator Co. to tell the story, Mission Impossible, of modernizing the clock tower at the 1920 Santa Barbara County courthouse. The fact that Republic had to raise the top landing 10 ft. and still preserve all of the historic value of the building made the project more than challenging.

Leading up to the U.K.’s LIFTEX 2016 in May, we have a pictorial from John Gale, Spotlight on London, of projects going up in London. 

In South Korea, Hong-gu Hur writes about the escalator industry in the area and of the longest escalator there. South Korea’s Escalator Technology Is Climbing outlines long units in other areas of the world and touts Hyundai’s 57-m-long escalator in Daegu’s Sinnam Subway Station.

Imagine for a moment the challenge of the installation on our cover. The Mount Tianping Cliff Elevator in China by Wang Qibing and Huang Yuanfeng documents the four-year project by a team from Sicher Elevator. It was a vertical jobsite for workers secured by safety ropes. The glass elevator rises 120 m beside a waterfall.

Finally, this month, the Continuing Education (CE) article by John W. Koshak, Maintenance Control Program Changes, completes a series of three code update CEs requested by the states. All are available online and, together, comprise three contact hours (0.3 CEU). Having a maintenance control program, introduced in the 2000 code, is now enforceable. Koshak notes that reliably maintained equipment will have an achievable number of callbacks — two a year for escalators, three a year for hydraulic elevators and four a year for traction elevators — a maximum, according to Ron Schloss.

So, dig into the spice of this varied issue!