Back in the day we didn’t have car top controls but now it is rare to find a lift without one. I am allowed to say “back in the day” as I felt distinctly old walking round LIFTEX and seeing my industry colleagues. I got the distinct impression I was keeping the average age in our industry up!!!!

When inspection controls became a requirement there was even a retrofit design which involved wiring the car top control such that the up button put a top floor call on in the car and taking your finger off the common button broke the safety circuit and brought the lift to a stop. The bottom floor car button was used for down travel. Hard to imagine you would get away with something like that these days but it meant that you could install a car top control on an existing lift without having to hang new trailing flexes.

In the modern world of course, we now have inspection controls in a multitude of places including the car top, pit, control panel and sometimes in the lift car itself if access to components is afforded by means such as lowering the lift car ceiling. It is important that operatives working are safe at all times and recently we have become aware of inspection controls that can operate simultaneously in an unsafe manner.

In reality such circumstances are unlikely to be identified by a single operative undertaking maintenance as there would be no reason (other than by accident) to have more than one inspection control switched to inspection mode.