Most property owners and managers, building engineers, general contractors, developers and other people involved with maintaining buildings have only a basic understanding of how elevators work.
Unless you are an elevator industry veteran, understanding the industry-specific terminology in elevator service, repair and modernization contracts and what is included-or excluded-can be next to impossible.
Consultants can help you to navigate through any elevator questions or concerns you have and can help you to significantly reduce your elevator contracting costs while often at the same time receiving more/better service and performance from your elevator vendors.
Consultants can confirm that your contracts are being fulfilled, that your elevators are operating properly, safely and to code, evaluate invoices and proposals and help you to negotiate better contract terms.
Consultants can provide customized scopes of work specific to your facilities' needs for service contracts, repairs, obsolescence-related upgrades, aesthetic remodels and modernization and facilitate RFPs that can help you to achieve savings of 25% or more in many cases.
Ideally, your elevator consultant will serve as a valuable resource for all of your elevator needs and as an extension of your management team.
North Star Elevator Consulting is based in the Twin Cities and we are locally owned and operated.
Being locally owned and not part of a large national/international consulting conglomerate with investors and shareholders to answer to, we are able to achieve faster results for you with no corporate hurdles and processes to navigate and we are able offer more competitive pricing due to our streamlined and more lean operation.
We strive to show in everything that we do that we are incredibly hard-working, organized, reliable, resourceful, creative, that we are excellent communicators and that, most importantly, we are truly singularly focused on delivering exceptional service to our customers.
Our founder and Principal/Consultant, Steve Fedel, is a 20+ year Minnesota elevator industry veteran who previously held customer-focused key account management, service, repair and modernization sales and sales management roles with two leading international elevator companies and led two regional, independent elevator companies as General Manager and President of their Minnesota offices.
Steve’s breadth of experience gained in prior sales, operations and strategic business roles in both large international elevator corporations and regional/independent elevator operations provided unique insight into the pricing, decision drivers, operations and customer management strategies and motivations of elevator companies that we are able to leverage to achieve incredible results for our customers.
North Star can leverage our experience to help you to reduce your costs, negotiate favorable contract terms and, ultimately, get the most value from your elevator service, repair and modernization providers.
North Star is based in the Twin Cities and our primary focus is to serve our community in Minnesota and the surrounding areas but we are absolutely open to any opportunities where we can lend our expertise.
Our experience ranges from working with office parks, stadiums, shopping malls, hospital systems, government/public facilities and regional/national accounts to working with apartments, condominiums, industrial facilities, retail stores, churches and schools.
We have experience with elevators in just about all applications and are interested in nearly all opportunities-large or small.
Contrary to popular belief, the answer is generally YES! We can help you to assess this specific to your elevators and engage qualified vendors to help you achieve cost savings and-in many cases-better service.
Whether components in your elevator(s) truly can't be repaired or directly replaced is one factor to consider but how your service contract defines "obsolete" can also drive your vendor to claim it is obsolete. We can help you navigate this specific to your elevators and, in many cases, help you to have the component covered under your agreement, reduce the cost of the repairs/upgrades or identify other solutions to minimize the cost impact and maximize the long-term value of any work that is done.
Specific to the state of Minnesota, the local AHJ (authority having jurisdiction) is the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry Elevator Inspectors who aim to perform regular inspections of all elevators in Minnesota. If there are concerns upon inspection, they send formal inspection reports listing correction items for property owners to address.
For better or for worse, there is not enough time or manpower within their department to inspect all elevators regularly so not having received a recent inspection report does not necessarily mean that your elevators are code compliant.
The best way to determine definitively if your elevators are code compliant is to engage an elevator consultant to perform a thorough survey of your elevators. With that information, you can proactively plan to bring your elevators to compliance in the most practical and cost-effective manner on your timeline rather than potentially needing to make a hurried decision and having less options upon being inspected.
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