Telecom Informer

    

by The Prophet

Hello, and greetings from the Central Office!

It seems that allergy season begins earlier and lasts longer every year.  I'm miserable, as is typical.  My new doctor wanted to play a game of "Have you tried?" and we went down the list of everything that I have tried.  Nothing seems to work, and let's just say that I am the reason why there is a sneeze guard at the buffet!

Today's adventure involves our ancient elevator in the Central Office.  It was originally built by a company that no longer exists.  And naturally, it broke down at the most inconvenient time possible.  Now, when elevator companies go out of business, another elevator company typically comes along to pick up the pieces.  After all, servicing elevators is a good and reliable business.  They're considered critical building equipment in most cases, and they break down often.  Repair work is expensive and high margin because it's a specialized skill.  So, the acquiring elevator company will buy the assets out of bankruptcy, take over the service contracts, and warehouse the leftover parts.  They will continue to provide service, of course, but when the spare parts are gone, they're gone.

The new company will, as you'd probably expect, publish an "End of Life" schedule, and will continue to provide service beyond End of Life on a Best Efforts basis only.

As you'd also probably expect, the End of Life schedule will be communicated well in advance with increasing urgency the closer you get to the End of Life date.  All of that happened exactly as it should have.  I have nothing bad to say about this particular elevator company.

The problem is that the End of Life schedule isn't what the original elevator company promised (this might be why they went out of business), and that End of Life schedule is what the tax department built its depreciation schedule around.  So, despite urgently arguing for a replacement elevator for the past five years, we have been blocked in planning and executing this project on an appropriate timeline.  "You can replace it when it's fully depreciated in 2036," said the tax department, and that was that.

I'm not sure whether a catastrophic elevator failure triggers special rules for accelerated depreciation.  That wasn't my department, but it was my department to figure out how we're going to deal with installing a new elevator.

Finance didn't want to allocate the budget, and I was almost blocked in moving forward before next year, but I remembered a project we did roughly a decade ago to make our elevators ADA compliant (the Company takes ADA compliance very seriously).

Amazingly, the project manager we worked with is still with the Company, and still works in ADA compliance.  I picked up the phone and gave her a call.  After exchanging pleasantries and catching up, I asked whether we could just decommission our elevator entirely with only fire stairs available, and still be ADA compliant.  "Absolutely not!" she said in a huff, and later that day I was on a conference call with her, her VP, a finance VP and some lawyer in Legal with an extremely pompous title (it was so long I forget it, something like Senior Federal Paperwork Compliance and Filing Counsel).  I have honestly never seen a budget approved so quickly, and was practically given a blank check.

Unfortunately, I was given the blank check.  Normally, this sort of thing is handled by Facilities.  Given their backlog and the slow response to our already open tickets, though, I estimated they could maybe come by to look at it in a month or three, and it'd possibly be done in a year or three.

The lawyer wasn't having it.  "We could be fined thousands of dollars a day we're not compliant!"  Eventually, after going around and around, the finance VP asked if I could just go ahead and get it done.  "Sure, no problem!" I said.  Normally, I wouldn't want to take on the extra work, but our Central Office is three stories high and, given the creaky state of my knees, I definitely didn't want to walk up that many stairs for the next three years.

I started speaking with elevator contractors to find out what would be involved.  There are three main elements of an elevator.  There is a shaft, through which the elevator cab travels.  These are built to standard dimensions, and, fortunately, building codes (and fire codes, which drive a lot of elevator design requirements) don't change very often.

Even though this particular Central Office was built in 1981, we wouldn't have to change our elevator shaft.  Elevators can be either traction (pulley) or hydraulic types.  In our area, sticking with the same type means that permitting is a lot simpler, and it was also the simplest option from a project perspective, so we chose to do that.

And then finally, there is an elevator cab.  This is the part you stand in while the traction or hydraulic system is doing its work.

Ten years ago, our ADA project involved some minor retrofits to the existing cab (there needed to be less of a gap so a wheelchair could comfortably pass).  I knew better than to try to decide this on my own, and got a list of currently manufactured ADA compliant elevator cabs from my friend over at the ADA project office.

"By the way," she said, "You're familiar with ASME A17.1, Section 2.27.1, right?  The requirements changed in 2019.  This has been a really big problem in some other Central Offices since states are updating their requirements.  Well, anyway good luck with your project!"

I knew I was going to need more than luck, so I started researching the requirements.

It turns out that ASME is the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and they are responsible for publishing elevator standards.  When updated, these standards are typically adopted by states in their building code.  A17.1, Section 2.27.1, as it turns out, relates to emergency communications systems.

Our old elevator has a simple POTS telephone located behind a spring-loaded door.  When it's taken off hook, the line is programmed to connect to the Company's security dispatch.  These days, elevator emergency communications systems are required to support two-way texting (to accommodate deaf people) along with voice, and also need to be equipped with a camera.  This means that Internet service is needed to run the whole thing.  Simple, right?

It turned out that this took me longer to deal with than any other part of the project.

We have an Internet connection in the Central Office, but it was installed decades ago and isn't fast enough to support video.  Additionally, even if we upgraded the speed, there wouldn't be a good way to get Internet access to the area of the Central Office where the elevator is located.  The easiest path forward was to order another Internet connection and have it installed.

However, this was a problem.

You see, Internet service is unregulated and technically provided by a separate corporation.  This means their non-union installers are, by our union contract, not allowed to work inside the Central Office.  However, they weren't about to let any of our union techs touch their precious Internet equipment.

I called up Finance.

"As you know, Internet service is provided by a separate corporation.  Do I have authorization to initiate a contract?"  I asked.  "Oh yeah, sure, no problem.  Just fill out a purchase order request and include the correct order code," they replied.

My next call was to the local cable company.  "Can you install Internet services in our Central Office?"  They thought I was joking, but when they realized that I was serious, they said "No problem."

So, I submitted a purchase order request with the cable company's name on it, using the magic order code I had been provided, and it went through!

Our new elevator is fully ASME A17.1, Section 2.27.1 compliant.  And with one gigabit per second of Internet service newly installed in the Central Office, there's plenty of bandwidth to upload my archives of "service monitoring" before I finally retire.

References

Two-Way Voice Communication in Passenger Elevators and Vertical Platform Lifts - Document detailing historical elevator telephone code requirements in the state of Wisconsin.

Video Messaging for Elevators to Meet New Code Standards Full Equipment Overview - Excellent video from Kings III, a security monitoring and dispatch company for elevators detailing the architecture and typical usage of an ASME A17.1, Section 2.27.1 compliant two-way communications system.