The Lift Consultancy is based on the Gold Coast. Our office is at Level 13, 50 Cavill Avenue in Surfers Paradise, and it is where most of our work starts. We advise building owners, body corporates and facility managers on vertical transportation, and we have done since the firm began. We do not sell, install or maintain lifts, and we take no commission from anyone who does.
Our head officeLevel 13, 50 Cavill Avenue, Surfers Paradise QLD 4217
What we do for Gold Coast buildings
The services owners and managers ask for most often are maintenance auditing, reviewing a contract or quotation before it is signed, and advice on whether to modernise or replace. The full range:
- Maintenance auditing and mandatory inspections
- Witness testing and commissioning
- Due diligence and capital planning
- Modernisation and full replacement
- Tendering and contract negotiation
- Project management
- Insurance claim management
- Peer review
- Feasibility studies
- Portfolio management
- WHS compliance
- Reporting
What we see in Gold Coast buildings
Salt air
Beachfront and near-beachfront towers deal with corrosion that inland buildings never see. It turns up in shaft steelwork, pit components, door gear and machine room equipment, and it is usually found late, because nobody looks in a lift pit until something stops working. On a coastal building, the interval between condition inspections matters more than it does two suburbs inland.
Short-stay and holiday letting
A tower with a high proportion of holiday letting has a different demand pattern to a residential building of the same size. Luggage, check-in and check-out peaks and far heavier door use all shorten the life of components that a standard maintenance regime assumes will last. Where a building has shifted towards short-stay over time, the maintenance schedule often has not shifted with it.
The age of the stock
A great deal of Gold Coast high-rise went up between the late 1980s and the mid 2000s. Much of it is now at the point where controllers and drives are becoming difficult to support, and owners are being asked to make expensive decisions with very little independent information in front of them. Obsolescence is rarely announced — it is discovered when a part cannot be sourced.
Committee turnover
Body corporate committees change, and the memory of what was done to the lifts five years ago tends to leave with them. A written history that belongs to the building rather than the contractor is worth far more than it sounds, and it is the single cheapest thing a committee can put in place.
Sectors we work across
Residential and strata-titled towers, commercial office buildings, hotels and short-stay accommodation, retail centres, healthcare and aged care, education, government and local council property, and industrial facilities. The equipment differs, the commercial questions rarely do.
What independence actually means
Plenty of firms describe themselves as independent. It is worth being precise about what it means here, because the word is doing real work.
We do not sell lifts. We do not install them. We do not maintain them. We hold no agency, distributorship or referral arrangement with any manufacturer or maintenance contractor, and we take no commission, rebate or finder’s fee from anyone who does. There is no version of a recommendation from us that earns us money somewhere else.
That matters most at exactly the moments it is hardest to tell — when you are handed an upgrade proposal, when a contractor says a component is beyond repair, or when a maintenance agreement is put in front of you to sign. Our answer costs us nothing either way.
Who actually does the work
Advice is only as good as the person giving it, so it is worth knowing who is behind ours. Our team holds qualifications across both the electrical and mechanical sides of vertical transportation:
- Sidney Bastos — Managing Director. BBA and Licensed Electrical Contractor.
- Tony Berry — Director. Licensed Design Practitioner (DPVT).
- Stephen McIlroy — Mechanical Engineer, RPEQ.
- David Moors — Electrical Engineer.
- Hong Liang — Chartered Engineer, CEng FCIBSE.
- Nancy Li Liang — BEng, MBA.
You can see the full team and their backgrounds.
Accreditations and memberships
The Lift Consultancy is CM3 prequalified and Australian Owned Certified, and holds membership or accreditation with:
- Australian Elevator Association
- Lift Engineering Society of Australia
- Engineers Australia
- International Association of Elevator Engineers
- Smart Strata
- PICA Group Community Select
- Rapid Global
Common questions from Gold Coast owners and managers
Do you charge for an initial conversation?
No. Tell us what is happening with your lifts and we will tell you honestly whether you need a consultant or not. We would rather say no than take on work a building does not need.
We are a body corporate. Who engages you, the committee or the manager?
Either works. Most engagements come through the committee directly, or through the strata manager acting on the committee’s instruction. We are comfortable presenting to a committee or a general meeting if that helps the decision.
Do you work outside the Gold Coast?
Yes. We work across Australia, New Zealand and the wider APAC region, with offices in several states.
Our building is right on the beach. Does that change anything?
Yes. Salt-laden air accelerates corrosion in the shaft, the pit and the machine room, and it affects components that would last considerably longer a few kilometres inland. It is worth reflecting that in how often the equipment is inspected and in how you plan for replacement.
The lift company has told us our lifts need replacing. Should we believe them?
They may well be right. The question is whether the scope and the price are reasonable, and whether replacement is the only option — sometimes a targeted modernisation achieves the same outcome for considerably less. That is a judgement worth getting from someone who is not quoting the work.
How long does an audit take?
For a typical Gold Coast residential tower, attendance is usually a day or less and the report follows within a couple of weeks. We will give you a firm timeframe before you commit to anything.
Choosing a consultant
If you are weighing up more than one firm, we have written a plain guide to what to look for and what to ask — including the questions that separate genuine independence from the word on a website. It applies whoever you end up engaging, including if that is not us.
How to choose a lift consultant
Talk to us
Tell us what is happening with your lifts and we will point you at the right consultant. There is no charge for the initial conversation, and if you do not need us we will say so.
(07) 5509 0100 · admin@theliftc.com · Contact us
Our officesSydney · Melbourne · Canberra · Perth · Auckland
We also travel toBrisbane, Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islands — and elsewhere on request. See where we work.