Lift Management was established after managing director and joint owner Steve Cook became increasingly aware that there is an acute shortage of GOOD properly trained lift engineers in the industry. This is partly because years ago the major lift companies stopped taking apprentices, and partly because many lift companies exploit the fact that as surprising as it may seem, you do not need any specific qualifications to work on lifts. The legislation just says it has to be a "competent person" with no definition of what a competent person is. We know of many lift companies using personnel with no formal training or qualifications, including some of the larger ones. They are learning on the job, at the customers expense.
Steve completed an apprenticeship with Otis in 1980 gaining all the formal qualifications. He remained on Otis for 2 years before being asked to move to a smaller company (W.J.Furse, Nottingham) where an ex Otis manager had taken over the London office. He spent the next 3 years as a breakdown troubleshooter covering the whole country from the Midlands down, including Devon & Cornwall, being asked to go to any lift giving repeated problems or where the area engineer could not find the fault. Steve comes from a family of lift engineers. His Father worked for Otis for more than 20 years before moving to Kone & then Schindler. His younger brother is a successful lift consultant and completed an apprenticeship with Kone, and his youngest brother also completed an Otis apprenticeship & now works for himself (and sometimes for Lift Management), and is a top rate engineer.
Over the years Steve has designed and built complete lifts to go into Nursing homes with restricted space, installed all types and makes of lifts, carried out major refurbishment including for some of Kone's best customers such as M & S, London Transport and 32 floor Centrepoint in London. He has worked in Royal Palaces, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Cathedral, numerous government buildings, Tower Bridge and most of Londons landmark buildings.
In 1985 Steve left Furse to start as a freelance sub contractor. As a sub contractor Steve was asked to do work for Kone, Thyssen, Schindler, Express (now Otis) as well as Furse and numerous other lift companies. A few years ago Steve realised that he was sometimes saving large service contracts from being lost due to the companies poor performance for comparatively little reward. It would be better to go direct and get the contracts himself.
We have a vast network of contacts built up over many years. We can often source hard to get hold of parts, wiring diagrams and technical information on different products including Spanish & Italian package lifts. We believe there is no lift problem that we can't solve.