Power resilience: the real weakness The challenge of power resilience is already visible across the UK’s lift portfolio. A recent D2E International audit of 2,600 lifts across 20 UK property portfolios found that one in five lifts had a safety or compliance issue at any given time. Of those, 84% were directly linked to emergency battery failures, affecting autodiallers, car-lighting and passenger-release systems. Alarmingly, 10% of lifts had autodiallers that became non-functional during a mains power loss, leaving passengers without a working alarm.
This wider risk is echoed in energy network data. Ofgem figures show that in 2020–21, over 40% of customers experienced an ‘interruption of power’, and the average duration of those interruptions was more than 30 minutes.
These findings confirm what many facilities managers are now experiencing: as analogue lines are replaced with digital, every weakness in local power support becomes a potential life-safety hazard.
A real-world example In October 2024, a London residential estate changed its telecoms billing account, triggering a working line takeover that automatically migrated 45 lift lines from analogue to digital. The migration created digital-to- analogue compatibility issues – every autodialler failed during testing, cutting communication with the Rescue Service. Emergency engineers were deployed at short notice to retrofit gateways and restore service, an operation that proved costly and disruptive. Management couldn’t evaluate longer-term, future-proof connectivity solutions that would better meet their operational needs and reduce the likelihood of similar failures.
Practical roadmap for facilities teams • Audit all lift lines Catalogue every lift and its connection type, including supplier, modem model and battery arrangement.
• Coordinate across departments Align Facilities, IT and Telecoms so that any contract or billing change is reviewed for lift impact.
• Define resilience standards
• Continuous voice path under all conditions • Ability to carry or translate analogue signalling where required
• Battery or UPS backup for power failure • Remote fault alerting and monitoring • Fallback route or redundancy where possible
• Pilot and plan procurement Run site trials and schedule projects early – lead times can exceed six months due to resource constraints.
• Maintain and monitor Update maintenance procedures to include battery tests and three-day autodial checks. Test logs should be available from your lift contractor
Managed services such as SENTINEL by AVIRE can simplify oversight by providing continuous monitoring and
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fault reporting, ensuring failures are detected before they become critical.
Looking ahead Later is now. With little more than a year before the PSTN shutdown, facilities teams must move from planning to action. Every lift line left unverified is a potential risk to safety and compliance.
Alongside testing and procurement, deployment and device management must be planned carefully to ensure continuity once the migration is complete. Begin the audit, engage stakeholders and plan for resilient digital connectivity today – before the analogue network goes quiet.
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