It’s happening more and more in the State of Florida. You schedule an inspection, the inspector comes out to perform his duties, and when all is said and done you receive a copy of the inspection report, and on its is written either:

Mandatory Upgrades required to meet code
Fire Service Operations not up to code
Door restrictor required
A17.3 Section 3.11.3 Fire Service Operations

…. you get the picture.

As if you didn’t have enough problems. The roof is leaking and needs to be replaced, concrete restoration in your building is 4 years overdue, and just last week the Board of Directors approved that big plumbing job to remedy all of the leaks in upper floor units. Now you get what essentially amounts to a very large bill to upgrade your elevators; and what’s worse, you have 30 days to get it done!

Yeah, not so much.

As is the case in Florida (and quite frankly the entire Country), difficult financial times have made it virtually impossible to contract for a modernization to meet the requirements of A17.3-1996. If you’ve taken the measures to secure a proposal from your service provider to take care of the aforementioned inspection violations, you’re likely of the opinion that there are far too many zero’s in their price.

This article isn’t going to tell you how to make all of that disappear. If we could do that, we’d be living in a bottle at Major Nelson’s house. What we CAN do, is tell you how to buy yourself enough time to put together the money to take care of this problem — down the road.

The Florida Senate has been working on a bill to allow for substantial time to remedy these inspection violations, and it contained very specific language to that effect. Senate Bill 1332 (download here) was (is) designed as an amendment to Chapter 399 of the Florida Statutes. The description is as follows:

Elevator Safety [CPSC]: Requires that the DBPR perform certain functions relating to conveyance inspections and the certification and licensing of elevator professionals and companies. Permits elevator owners 3 years following a revision to retrofit an elevator to comply with noncritical revisions of the Elevator Safety Code. Revises provisions relating to the requirements for elevator accessibility for the physically handicapped, etc.

You can track the progress of this bill yourself at this location. Currently is has been withdrawn from consideration and likely won’t be addressed until sometime early next year (we believe). This doesn’t mean that your ship has sailed before you could even get on board. The Bureau of Elevator Safety is still the department that considers variances for time, and at its sole discretion can approve up to 3-4 years to complete this work; provided you can meet certain criteria. Essentially you’re going to need to prove that this is a financial hardship for the residents of the building, and that certainly won’t be difficult to do. You’ll also need to provide a proposed schedule to complete this work and copies of any documents that can support that.

Specifically, if you intend to file for a variance yourself, you’ll need to follow the guidelines of Florida Statutes Chapter 120.542. You can view that entire Chapter at this location. We understand that this is a difficult undertaking for those who are both unfamiliar with the protocol as well as the requirements of the elevator code. To that end, we are always willing to assist in applying for a variance. Simply call or write to us with the specifics of your building/elevator(s), and we’ll try to guide you through it. If you’d like to dump the whole mess into our lap and have us run with it, we can certainly do that too. Again, call or write to us and we’ll be happy to discuss all of your options.

We know this is seemingly unjust to have a department just arbitrarily start enforcing codes that necessitate the spending of thousands and thousands of dollars of your hard-earned and/or saved money. We understand that you’ve had “no problems” at all with your elevators and you don’t see why you have to do this now. We’re aware that this code requirement did seem to just sneak up on you and you definitely weren’t prepared for it. We really do know. In as much as we’d like to tell you that this is temporary or will likely get repealed; it’s not – and it won’t. We would like to try and help you through it though.

As a part of our services, we can take a look at your inspection report to verify that everything you were written up for is valid. We can help you through the Petition for Variance process, and if need be, we can develop specifications that will bring your elevators into compliance and send those specifications out for bid.

Basically, if you need help – no matter what it is – let us know and we’ll do everything in our power to assist you.