University of Northampton — Lift & Escalator Symposium

5 mins with… Stefan Kaczmarczyk - University of Northampton.

Tell us about your company and your business

The University of Northampton (UON) has been providing engineering education closely linked to the needs of the lift and escalator industry for over 40 years. The programme has been developed to integrate three key elements: practice, learning and research. It forms a complete provision for lifelong learning bridging the gap between those three elements. Currently, our courses range from the University Certificate level, through HND/ HNC to MSc (Masters) t and PhD (doctorate). This portfolio lifelong learning during a career in lift and escalator technology.

• How many times have you attended the Lift & Escalator Symposium now?

The Symposium on Lift and Escalator Technologies was started in 2011 and has been running as an annual event since then. So far there have been 14 events and, together with our Lift Engineering team (The photo is of our team at the last symposium in 2023.). I have attended them all.

• What has been your highlight of attending?

The symposium is an excellent opportunity for the University to engage with experienced industrial practitioners. We have been presenting papers at all events and feedback from delegates is of great value for our research and education programmes. We regularly review and update our learning materials to address the needs of the industry.

• What will you be presenting/demonstrating?

We will be presenting our programmes at the exhibition stand and I will give a paper on the design criteria for a lift guiding system. The guiding system is the most important interface between the lift installation and the building structure. Lift guides are subjected to variable loading conditions during the lift normal operation and stopping. Safety codes demand that under these conditions the guiding system must be designed with adequate strength and the paper will review practical models for pragmatic strength evaluation of a lift guiding system.

• Tell us what has changed for your business in the past 12 months, what have been the highlights?

Over the last year we have seen a steady growth of the student numbers enrolled on our Lift and Escalator Technology distance learning programme. Our taught Lift Engineering education provision is research informed and is underpinned by R&D activities. We have been busy with upgrading our laboratory spaces at Waterside campus and busy with a number of research projects.

Finally, we recently established a services side to the business to help support customers further, whether that be through drive upgrade supply and fit, UPS servicing, pre- and post- modernisation energy consumption measurement or pro-active power quality assessment prior to starting a modernisation project – it is better to identify and correct an issue before a modernisation program starts, rather than find it mid-works.

• What would you say to anyone who hasn’t attended before? Why should they attend?

• What would you say to anyone who hasn’t attended? Why should they attend?

The symposium is currently in its 15th edition and has grown to become a premium discussion forum which every year brings together over 100 - 130 industrial and academic experts from within the field of vertical transportation engineering. The symposium papers are published in the conference proceedings, which are indexed in Elsevier's Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed technical literature. The papers are also available on-line on the resources pages on the symposium website.

• What do you think are the trends for the next 12 months in the industry?

Over the last few years there have been rapid expansion of applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IOT) techniques across many industries. These developments have also been taking place within the lift and escalator industry and this trend will continue. The applications of smart sensors enable remote monitoring and fault data collected from lift and escalator installations collected in real time can be analysed by using AI techniques (such as artificial neural networks, ANN). This in turn inform the development of efficient maintenance strategies. Any damage is detected and identified very early before the fault is developed. The condition monitoring then predicts when maintenance should be performed.