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By Ben Gjerland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Lift Association HLF - 28 February 2019

Building bridges between professions

In Norway the building regulations are challenging as in many other European countries. Borders between different specific professional groups create interfaces of rules and the understanding of them are not always clear.

Specific rules regarding normal ventilation and of smoke evacuation in lift shafts have been clear for the lift industry but not so clear for the fire and ventilation consultants and builders.

For buildings lower than 8 floors the builders do not want to build an airlock area with its own ventilation in front of the lift due to costs and the possibility of “easier” regulations. The consultants engineer normal ventilation or combined with smoke evacuation for the lift shaft.

EN 81-20 demands that the shaft is only for the lift and its components. The normal ventilation of the shaft and possibly evacuation of smoke are for the lift only, but the other side does not know the lift rules and has a different understanding of the solution.

Lift standards do not allow the servicing of the equipment for the ventilation and smoke detection from the lift shaft.

The lift industry demands that the smoke detector must be serviced from outside the shaft. A pilot tube with a sniffer could solve the smoke detection, but the normal ventilating- and smoke equipment must also be placed outside the shaft and serviced from there. The planning must also consider ingress of water, sleet and snow together with lift equipment demands itself.

This create a lot of rework, higher costs, possibly delays and redesign of the building if detected late in the process. How come?

The placing of their equipment and the service access to them, has been thought by the fire and ventilation consultants, to be inside and through the lift shaft and the use of the lift as a service platform for their equipment.

The unclear building regulation has been one part of the problem, but the common misunderstanding from the “other” part as they are not familiar with the lift rules has been another.

As a result, from several of these cases, the RIF (Consulting Engineers’ Association) and HLF (Norwegian lift Association) have cooperated and have created a “guide”. It represents a clarification from two cooperating associations to create “first time right” on building sites for ventilation contractors, fire consultants and lift companies to understand the building rules and the connection between them and the lift standards.

The unclarities have been informed in the Directorate of building acts, as new suggested text for the update of their guideline for the building regulations, by the two Associations.

A surely positive and profitable achievement for both Associations and their members.