800 reports a year, all written by hand: the quiet problem of elevator maintenance companies

There are sectors where automation is a luxury. And there are sectors where the paperwork is so predictable and repetitive that automation should have existed long ago. Elevator maintenance is the textbook example of the latter.

Every elevator in Belgium falls under the Royal Decree of 9 March 2003. It requires at least four maintenance visits per year, an annual inspection by an accredited inspection body, and a complete written dossier per elevator throughout its operational life. A company maintaining 200 elevators therefore produces at least 800 quarterly reports, 200 inspection dossiers and dozens of breakdown reports every year. All currently done manually.

What the legislation specifically requires

The Royal Decree of 9 March 2003 establishes the following:

• —Every maintenance company must be accredited. The accreditation number must appear on every document.
• —Minimum maintenance frequency: four times per year per elevator.
• —After every visit: a written maintenance report with tasks performed and defects identified.
• —Annual independent inspection by an accredited inspection body.
• —At the annual inspection, the inspector verifies all four quarterly reports from the past year.
• —Five-yearly in-depth inspection with the complete dossier from the past five years.

The inspector does not only look at the technical condition of the elevator. They also check whether the dossier is complete. If a quarterly report is missing, the inspection is already under pressure before it starts.

What a quarterly report contains

A standard quarterly report for a passenger elevator has 30 to 50 check points: lubrication of guide rails, door alignment, brake check, emergency telephone, machine room temperature, levelling accuracy, door closing force. Each point is ticked, measured or described.

On paper, a good technician does this carefully. But then comes the problem: that paper must become a digital report. And that digital report must go into the dossier of that specific elevator, ready for the annual inspection.

For a technician with eight elevators per day, that is 60 to 90 minutes of typing every evening. Unbillable hours, after a full day on the road.

Where things consistently go wrong

Breakdown reports that never get written

A breakdown is already stressful: the elevator is stopped, the client is impatient, the technician fixes it and wants to move on. The report? That will follow later. But later sometimes becomes never. At the annual inspection, those reports are nowhere to be found, and the inspector notes an incomplete administration.

Non-conformities that disappear

A technician identifies wear on a safety component and notes it in the quarterly report. But who sees that report afterwards? If there is no system converting that non-conformity into a follow-up task and a repair quote, the building owner may never receive that information. A year later, the next inspector finds the problem still unresolved. Now it becomes a forced repair under time pressure.

Inspection preparation that takes days

For the five-yearly in-depth inspection, the complete dossier of the past five years must be available: twenty quarterly reports, five annual inspection reports, all breakdown reports, all quotes and repair records. Gathering those from paper folders and loose Word files takes half a day per elevator. For a company with twenty elevators due for their five-yearly inspection at the same time, that is ten days of pure administration.

What it costs when documentation is incomplete

An elevator that injures or traps someone inevitably leads to an investigation. The first thing a judge asks for is the maintenance dossier. If it is incomplete or reports are missing, the maintenance company faces real liability exposure — even if the elevator was technically maintained perfectly. Proof that is not in the dossier does not legally exist.

What automation looks like

A technician arrives at an elevator. On their phone they open the maintenance form for that specific elevator: their accreditation number is already filled in, the checklist items are loaded based on the elevator type. They work through the checklist, record measurements, flag non-conformities. Ten minutes of work on-site.

The maintenance report is automatically generated and stored in that elevator's dossier. If there is a non-conformity, a follow-up task and repair quote proposal appear automatically. The client receives the report the same day.

• —The inspector receives a complete dossier automatically at the annual inspection.
• —Non-conformities no longer disappear: they stay in an open list until resolved.
• —For the five-yearly inspection: export the complete history in one click.
• —No more evening work for reports: everything done while the technician is still at the elevator.
• —Accreditation number and technician details entered once, automatically on every document.

Why this matters now

The elevator sector in Belgium is ageing. Many elevators built in the 1980s and 1990s require increasing maintenance and modernisation interventions, each with their own documentation requirements. Meanwhile, enforcement by inspection bodies is growing. The administrative burden is increasing, not decreasing.

Small and medium-sized elevator maintenance companies operate without ERP systems. They have no need for an enterprise platform designed for large corporations. They need a tool that understands exactly what a quarterly report is, what belongs in an elevator dossier, and that fills it in automatically.

Lift regulations in the Netherlands, Germany and France

The Belgian Royal Decree of 9 March 2003 is the national implementation of the European Lifts Directive (2014/33/EU). In the Netherlands, lift maintenance falls under the Warenwetbesluit liften, with mandatory periodic inspection by a Notified Body (Aangewezen Instantie) such as TÜV Netherlands or Lloyd's Register. In Germany, the Betriebssicherheitsverordnung (BetrSichV) governs the use of work equipment including lifts, with mandatory wiederkehrende Prüfung by an accredited Zugelassene Überwachungsstelle (ZÜS) — in practice TÜV or DEKRA.

In France, Décret n° 2004-964 governs periodic inspection of lifts in residential buildings, with mandatory inspection every five years by an accredited body. The European Lifts Directive 2014/33/EU sets the common minimum requirements applicable across all member states. A maintenance dossier that meets the Belgian Royal Decree follows the same basic structure as what is required in the Netherlands, Germany or France — the inspection intervals and accredited bodies vary by country.