Does a lift upgrade need a declared design? Usually not, and here is the test

Since the Design and Building Practitioners scheme came in, owners replacing a lift in New South Wales have been asking whether they now need a declared design. In most cases the answer is no, and knowing why saves a lot of money and time.

Two regimes, two different objects

The confusion comes from having two sets of rules apply to the same job.

The lift product itself is regulated under the Work Health and Safety Act. Design registration, plant registration, the AS 1735 series, competent persons: that is the plant regime, and it has applied to lifts for a long time.

The Design and Building Practitioners scheme regulates something different. It deals with the interface between the lift product and the building. Not the machine, the way the machine meets the structure.

Once you separate those two, the question resolves. A declared design under the DBP scheme is about the interface. If the interface does not change, there is nothing for the scheme to regulate.

The test in one line

If the replacement lift meets the same specifications and does not change the interface with the building, it does not need a declared design.

That is the position on advice from the Department, and it is the position the industry has taken. It covers most modernisation work: a controller upgrade, a drive replacement, new doors on the existing openings, a car refit, even a full replacement dropped into the same shaft with the same openings, travel, speed and load.

The practical trigger is the building work, not the lift work

There is a simpler way to test it on site. Is there a development application for the building, with a building practitioner appointed to the project?

If there is no DA and no appointed building practitioner, the upgrade or replacement does not require a design practitioner in vertical transportation to register a declared design. The mechanism itself explains why: for a design practitioner to submit a regulated design statement, there has to be an appointed building practitioner to submit it to. No building practitioner, no pathway, and no requirement.

If the lift work is part of a broader project that does have a DA and a building practitioner, you are in the scheme, and the vertical transportation design will need to be declared like the rest.

Where it stops being obvious

The interface question is where judgement comes in. Some things that look like lift work are actually building work.

Changing the number of landings served. Cutting a new opening. Changing shaft dimensions, pit depth or headroom. Moving or removing a machine room. Changing structural loads on the shaft or the machine beams. A change of lift type that changes how loads are transferred into the structure, such as moving from a geared traction machine in a room to a machine-room-less arrangement supported off the shaft.

Each of those changes the interface, and each of them typically brings building work with it, which means a DA and a building practitioner, which means you are in the scheme anyway. The two tests tend to give the same answer, which is a good sign that both are pointing at the same thing.

The mistake that costs the most

The expensive error is not missing a declared design. It is assuming that because the DBP scheme does not apply, nothing applies.

The plant regime has not gone anywhere. Design registration under the WHS Regulation is a separate question with a separate test, and a modernisation that sails past the DBP question can still need a new or altered design registration. They are decided independently, and on most jobs the plant question is the one with teeth.

Run both tests, in this order. Does the scope change any of the basic design parameters of the lift, which decides the registration question. Does the scope change the interface with the building, or is there a DA with an appointed building practitioner, which decides the declared design question. Write down both answers before the scope is priced.

For owners approaching a modernisation

Ask your contractor for their position on both questions in writing, at tender stage, with reasons. Two things happen when you do. You find out whether they have thought about it, and you get a document that fixes the answer at the point the scope was agreed rather than at the point somebody queries it.

If a tenderer has priced a declared design into a like-for-like replacement in a building with no DA, that is worth a conversation. If a tenderer has priced nothing at all on a job that clearly changes the shaft, that is worth a longer one.

The Australian Elevator Association put this question to the Department and published the response in its Industry Position Paper IPP-06. Requirements are jurisdiction-specific and change, and the framing here is ours.

General information only, and specific to the New South Wales scheme. Not advice on a particular project.