A Plan for Managing an Escalator Service Outage

Business buildings are busy places, and often have countless floors tickling the sky, which can be a pain if an escalator is out of service. If an escalator goes down in your building, you’re responsible for avoiding chaos and coming up with a plan of action. Granted, there’s always the elevator to fall back on, but that will disrupt the flow of traffic heavily. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered and will discuss below how you should react to an escalator service outage.

Maintenance and Safety Inspections

Before the escalator power shuts off, your plan should already be taking place behind the scenes. By law, you’re required to have your escalator inspected and carry out regular maintenance, which will help to reduce the risk of power outages. Whenever you have any work or inspections, you should keep an accurate log, which will protect your business. To ensure quality maintenance is completed, having regular escalator inspections carried out by professionals is essential.

A Grounding Halt

Unfortunately, incident has struck and the escalator has come to a grinding halt, which can lead to people falling over – now it’s time to put your emergency escalator plan into action – but what is that?

Before you do anything else, you need to divert people to alternative access, which includes stairways and elevators. Doing this will let people know that they’re in for a workout, which may cause them to abandon their venture.

With access to the escalator blocked, you need to call in your service provider. Every minute that ticks by is a potential loss of revenue for your business, so your service provider must offer around-the-clock support. If they’re going to arrive out-of-hours, you need to make sure that they can gain access.

When your escalator comes to a halt, the change in ground movement can cause people to fall over, which can turn into downhill dominoes. Therefore, you will need to call the relevant emergency services. In some rare cases, your service provider won’t be able to get the escalator working again. If this happens, you will need to monitor traffic within your building and find a replacement, which can be costly.

Common Problems

Understanding common escalator problems will help you to avoid the escalator issues. Continue reading to find out more:

• Power outages. No matter how much maintenance you have done, you can’t avoid a power cut. However, if the power outage is only on your escalator, the trip switch may be the culprit.
• OS shutdown. Escalators typically run using an operating system, which tells it which way to move. If this fails, your escalator may start to misbehave, which can lead to sudden direction changes and injury.
• People. Humans are also responsible for escalator accidents. For example, spilled drinks can make their way into the electricals, which would result in system failure.

Escalator outages can cause chaos within your building, which means you need a detailed plan in place. Taking essential preventative measures, including maintenance and inspections, is always more effective than facing a service outage.