We travel to Manila and throughout the Philippines for condominium corporations, building owners, hotel groups and developers. We do not keep a permanent office there and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. We do not sell, install or maintain lifts, and we take no commission from anyone who does.
We travel to PhilippinesWe travel to Manila and throughout the Philippines for client work. We will always tell you who is attending and from where before you engage us.
What we do for Philippines 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 Philippine buildings
Power quality is the issue nobody budgets for
Voltage fluctuation, brownouts and generator changeover are ordinary facts of building operation across much of the country, and lift drives and control electronics are unusually sensitive to all three. The damage is cumulative rather than dramatic: drives degrade, boards fail early, and the maintenance contractor replaces components without anybody asking why the failure rate is what it is. Establishing whether supply quality is the underlying cause is frequently the single most valuable thing an owner can do.
Very high residential density
Metro Manila holds one of the largest concentrations of residential towers in South East Asia, and condominium corporations there make the same capital decisions a strata committee makes in Sydney — usually at greater scale, often with only the incumbent contractor’s account of the equipment to work from.
Seismic and typhoon exposure
The Philippines is seismically active and sits in the typhoon belt. Both affect how equipment is installed and restrained, and both make post-event assessment a real category of work. What determines how that assessment goes is whether anybody documented the condition of the equipment beforehand.
Heat, humidity and machine room cooling
Sustained tropical conditions push control equipment against the top of its rated ambient range continuously. Inadequate machine room cooling shows up as intermittent, hard-to-reproduce faults long before it becomes an outright failure.
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 institutional 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
Do you have an office in the Philippines?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. It is part of our regional work and we travel there. We will tell you who is attending and from where before you engage us.
Our lifts keep failing electronically. Could that be the power supply?
It is one of the first things we would examine. Voltage fluctuation and generator changeover are hard on drives and control boards, and a high component failure rate with no obvious mechanical cause frequently points there.
We are a condominium corporation. Can you advise us directly?
Yes. Advising the owner rather than the supplier is the whole basis on which we work, and condominium corporations are exactly the client we are set up for.
Does Australian advice transfer to a Philippine building?
The commercial questions do — what is covered, what it costs, how long you are committed, who carries the risk. The technical and compliance detail does not, and it needs treating separately.
What should we do after an earthquake or typhoon?
Do not return the equipment to service until it has been assessed, and document its condition before anything is reinstated.
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 · Auckland
We also travel toBrisbane, Sunshine Coast, Newcastle, Adelaide, Hobart, Darwin, Singapore, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Pacific Islands — and elsewhere on request. See where we work.