We have a Sydney office and work across the metropolitan area. We advise owners corporations, building owners and facility managers on vertical transportation. We do not sell, install or maintain lifts, and we take no commission from anyone who does.
Our Sydney officeLevel 20, 201 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2000
What we do for Sydney 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 Sydney buildings
The largest strata market in the country
Sydney has more strata-titled apartment towers than anywhere else in Australia. That means a great many owners corporations making significant capital decisions about lifts, often for the first time, and often with only the incumbent contractor’s view of the situation to go on. A second opinion is not an insult to the contractor; it is ordinary governance.
Lifts inside defect claims
Where lift equipment forms part of a building defect claim, it needs assessing by somebody independent of both the builder and the maintenance contractor. That is a different exercise to a routine condition report, and it needs to be documented as such from the outset rather than reconstructed later.
Constrained CBD cores
Much of Sydney’s commercial stock predates modern lift dimensions. Modernisation is regularly about what will physically fit and function within an existing shaft, not about specifying the best available equipment. Establishing that envelope first saves a great deal of wasted quoting.
A high volume of claims work
Water ingress, impact damage and entrapment all generate claims, and the quality of the initial assessment tends to determine how the rest of it goes. Loss adjusters engage us directly for this reason.
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 Sydney owners and managers
We have a defect claim that includes the lifts. Can you help?
Yes. Assessing lift equipment within a defect or insurance claim is core work for us, and being independent of both the builder and the maintenance contractor is the point.
Do we have to change maintenance contractors to engage you?
No. We advise the owner. We do not replace your contractor and we have no interest in who holds the maintenance contract.
How quickly can you attend?
It depends on what has happened. Tell us on the phone and we will give you a straight answer about timing rather than an optimistic one.
We are an owners corporation and the strata committee is split. Can you present to a general meeting?
Yes. Presenting findings to a committee or a general meeting so owners can ask questions directly is often the most useful part of the engagement.
Do you act for loss adjusters and insurers?
Yes, as well as for owners. In either case the assessment is the same — we describe what happened and what it will take to put right, and we are not quoting the remedial work.
Our building is only a few years old and the lifts already have problems. Is that normal?
It is more common than it should be. Early and repeated faults in a newer building usually point at either the original installation or the maintenance regime, and establishing which one it is early matters, particularly while a defects claim is still open.
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 officesGold Coast · 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.