Construction Magazine June 2018 | Page 18

CONSTRUCTION STRATEGIES

change the face of London ’ s transport network , and reinforce the UK ’ s position at the head of global innovations . Yet it also offers a practical solution that could ease congestion in dozens of underground networks across the world too .”
A waiting game While MULTI ’ s potential to transform the design of buildings and metro installations is apparent , there is also an important facilities management dimension to consider . Elevator downtime can have an enormous impact on the productivity of a building , a costly problem given that , worldwide , more than 12mn elevators make 7bn trips moving more than a billion people every day .
“ Downtime is a big issue ,” Schierenbeck says . “ If we look into the service part of the elevator business we predict that every elevator , on average , has a tendency to stop four to six times a year . This translates into overall downtime for the elevator industry at around 190mn hours annually .”
A study by Columbia University sheds further light on the issue . It found that in 2010 , office workers in
18 June 2018