Engineering Simulation Project Targets Hospital Elevator Delays

A final-year capstone project from Dalhousie University’s industrial engineering program is helping explore practical ways to manage elevator delays at the QEII Health Sciences Centre’s Halifax Infirmary (HI) in Canada, where construction-related changes have affected how patients and visitors move through the site and increased elevator use, leading to congestion and some delays, according to Nova Scotia Health. Engineering students Ankitha Nikesh, Navaneeth Krishnan, Samuel Boucher and Stanley Stephen Durairaj developed a simulation model focused on elevator performance under various stress scenarios, including mechanical breakdowns and high-traffic periods. The simulation was designed to test how elevator wait times change during different operating conditions. Through in-person observation and data collection, a computer model of the public elevator operations at the HI site was constructed and used to test different scenarios. The project was named one of the top 20 by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE), and one of the students was invited to present it at the IISE 2025 Annual Conference & Expo in Atlanta in May.