Vertical Transportation: Elevators, Escalators & Moving Walks

Planning, Design & Modernization Solutions

From elevators in high-rise buildings to escalators and moving walks in public transit centers and airports, vertical transportation is essential to moving people and goods through modern infrastructure.

With people in the U.S. traveling more than 2.85 billion miles in elevators and escalators each year, it is critical that building owners work with a consultant that can assist with:

Accessibility.
Enhancing people flow.
Increasing energy efficiency.
Interpreting safety codes.

Planning & Design Solutions

Gannett Fleming’s multidisciplinary designers, industry experts, and analysts have a single focus: To help clients achieve their goals through integrated design and program management for the planning, design, and modernization of escalators, elevators, and moving walks.

Our success is our proven ability to:

Identify and understand client needs and goals.
Remain at the forefront of industry applications and life safety code enforcement issues.
Plan, develop, design, and implement building transportation solutions.

We provide design documents and specifications for the installation of:

Elevator systems.
Escalators.
Moving walks.
People mover systems.
Related equipment.

We determine building equipment loads and impact calculations and prepare and certify documents according to professional engineering standards.

Maintenance Management

Having safe and reliable elevators and escalators that operate according to specification is an essential responsibility of building owners. Building owners must implement, support, and oversee a maintenance program to ensure vertical transportation works safely and reliably.

Building owners can benefit from using a third-party consultant to perform periodic evaluations and confirm that maintenance is being provided. The third-party consultant can be invaluable for providing reassurance and peace of mind that the building’s vertical transportation is safe and reliable.

Gannett Fleming provides maintenance audits and maintenance management to:

Verify the maintenance contractor is meeting the code requirements.
Review maintenance records to ensure equipment is receiving preventative maintenance.
Help the building owner plan for future improvements or modifications.
Review the current maintenance contract to ensure the building owner receives full benefits.
Evaluate the overall performance of the maintenance contractor to make sure they are meeting the obligations of the maintenance contract.

Modernization Solutions

There comes a time in the vertical transportation life cycle when it no longer makes financial sense to invest in hard-to-find spare parts and expensive service calls. With lifespans of about 30 years for an overhead traction elevator, 20 years for an escalator, and 15 years or fewer for a machine room-less elevator, your existing elevator or escalator may be nearing the end of its useful life.

Developing a modernization plan can be key to avoiding service disruptions, decreasing energy consumption, and increasing passenger safety. Throughout the modernization process, Gannett Fleming evaluates current technology, systems, and integration design against these criteria:

Functionality best suited to a client’s needs and pedestrian traffic patterns.
Design flexibility and expansion capacity to accommodate new and future technologies.
Total cost-effectiveness.
Related building systems and design issues.

The Value of a Diversified Team

For over 100 years, we’ve been innovating and partnering with clients to pioneer solutions to some of our communities’ most pressing infrastructure challenges. Using an integrated design approach, our vertical transportation specialists work in concert with our architects and engineers to find the best solutions for our clients. Our diversity of services, clients, and people allows us to look at projects with a broader perspective to identify roadblocks our clients might not know about at the start of the project.

Your Partners for Vertical Transportation

Gannett Fleming provides vertical transportation solutions to commercial, institutional, and public clients for the planning, design, and modernization of moving walks, elevators, and escalators. The flexibility of the services we offer allows us to work: