We have an Auckland office at 11–19 Customs Street West, and work across New Zealand. We advise body corporates, building owners, facility managers and developers on vertical transportation. We do not sell, install or maintain lifts, and we take no commission from anyone who does.
Our Auckland office11–19 Customs Street West, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
What we do for Auckland 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 New Zealand buildings
A compliance regime of its own
New Zealand does not work the way Australia does. Lifts sit within a building’s specified systems and carry their own periodic certification and inspection obligations, and the paperwork attached to that is not optional. Owners who also hold Australian property regularly assume the two regimes line up. They do not, and the assumption tends to surface at the worst possible moment.
Seismic considerations
New Zealand designs for earthquake in a way most of Australia does not. That affects lift installations directly — how equipment is restrained, how counterweights are secured, and what is expected to happen when the building moves. It also affects what an upgrade has to achieve, which is frequently more than a like-for-like replacement of what is already there.
Unit titles and body corporate decisions
Auckland has a large and growing volume of unit-titled apartment buildings, and the same pattern we see across the Tasman: committees turning over, equipment history held by the incumbent contractor, and capital decisions made with only one party’s view of the situation available.
Cross-Tasman portfolios
A good deal of Auckland commercial and residential property is owned or managed from Australia. Those portfolios need advice that understands both regimes rather than applying one to the other, which is a large part of why we hold an office here.
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 Auckland owners and managers
Do you work throughout New Zealand or only Auckland?
We are based in Auckland and work across New Zealand. Tell us where the building is and we will be straight with you about attendance and timing.
Does Australian advice apply to a New Zealand building?
Not directly. The compliance regimes are separate and the seismic requirements are materially different. The commercial questions — what is covered, what it costs, how long you are committed — carry across; the technical and compliance detail does not.
We own buildings on both sides of the Tasman. Can you handle both?
Yes, and that is a large part of why we hold an Auckland office. What matters is that the differences between the two regimes are handled deliberately rather than assumed away.
Our body corporate has been given a modernisation proposal. Can you review it?
Yes. Reviewing scope and pricing, and obtaining comparison pricing where it helps, is core work — and in New Zealand it also means checking what the upgrade is required to achieve rather than only what has been offered.
Do seismic requirements affect an upgrade?
They can, significantly. An upgrade is not always a like-for-like replacement of what is already installed, and establishing what is actually required before anyone quotes avoids an expensive surprise part way through.
Are you connected to any lift company?
No. We do not sell, install or maintain lifts, we hold no supplier arrangement, and we take no commission from anyone who does.
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 · Sydney · Melbourne · Canberra · Perth
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.