The Real Cost of Lift Downtime, Argued Properly
By Nutan Mandal, ElevatorPlus · Published 27 August 2026 · Last updated 27 August 2026 · ~7 min read
In short: The commonly quoted figures for the cost of lift downtime do not have sources behind them, so we are not going to repeat them. Build the number for your own building instead. And notice what actually damages the relationship: not the hours, but the hours nobody explained. An informed client behaves completely differently from an uninformed one.
Key takeaways
- The industry's favourite downtime statistics are unsourced. If you cannot trace a figure to a primary source, do not put it in a proposal.
- Downtime cost is specific to the building, so the useful output is a model the reader fills in, not an average.
- Accessibility failure is a different category of cost, not a larger version of inconvenience, when the lift is the only step-free route.
- Repeated short outages damage a relationship more than one long one, because each recurrence resets the client's confidence.
- Unexplained downtime is the real damage. A client who knows what is wrong and when it will be fixed behaves like a partner. One who does not starts looking for your replacement.
What this guide covers: why the usual figures are unusable · a five-part cost model you can fill in · accessibility as its own category · your own cost of emergency versus planned attendance · why repeated short outages hurt more · the communication gap that does the actual damage
Why won't we quote you a figure?
Because we cannot find one that holds up.
Search for the cost of lift downtime and you will find the same handful of numbers repeated across supplier blogs, sales decks and trade articles. Follow them back and the trail goes cold. The article cites another article, which cites a whitepaper that no longer exists, which cited an unnamed study. Nobody at the origin published a method, a sample or a definition.
That does not make the numbers wrong. It means nobody can tell whether they are right, which for a figure you are about to put in front of a client is the same problem.
If you have used one in a proposal, you are in good company. We have seen them in tender responses, in modernisation business cases, and in our own industry's marketing. The trouble arrives when a facilities director asks where the number came from, because at that point either you have a source or your case looks invented.
So build the cost for the actual building instead, from components the client can verify themselves. It survives scrutiny, which the benchmark does not.
What are the five components of the cost?
One. Tenant and occupant impact. In a residential block this is lost time, complaints, and the small daily indignities of a broken lift: shopping carried up eight flights, a pram left in the lobby. In a commercial building the client already knows what their staff cost per hour and roughly how many are affected. Do not calculate it for them. Ask them to.
Two. Accessibility failure. Treated separately below, because it does not belong on the same scale as the rest.
Three. Reputational cost with the managing agent. The one contractors underestimate, because it appears on no invoice. An agent's reputation with the landlord depends partly on whether the lifts work. When yours does not, you have created a problem inside somebody else's relationship, and they will remember it at renewal even if the outage was not your fault.
Four. Your own cost of attending. An emergency callout costs more than a planned visit, and most contractors have never quantified the gap: unplanned travel, displaced planned work, possible overtime, a part sourced at short notice at whatever price is available, and the admin of reporting an incident nobody expected.
Five. The compounding cost of repetition. Two hours out, five times in a quarter, is not the same as ten hours out once. Also treated separately, because the difference is behavioural rather than arithmetic.
| Component | Who bears it | How to put a number on it |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant and occupant impact | Building owner and occupiers | Ask the client for their own hourly staff cost and headcount affected |
| Accessibility failure | The affected resident or visitor, then the owner | Not a per-hour figure. Assess whether the route exists at all |
| Reputational cost | The managing agent, then you | Count escalations to the landlord, and note who raised them |
| Emergency versus planned attendance | You, the contractor | Compare a real callout invoice against a real planned visit cost |
| Repetition | Everyone, unevenly | Count separate incidents, not total hours |
Fill that in with the client, in front of them, using their numbers. The result belongs to them, which is what makes it persuasive.
Why does accessibility sit in its own category?
Because when the lift is the only step-free route, the lift is not a convenience. It is the route.
For a wheelchair user on the fourth floor, a stopped lift does not mean a slower journey. It means no journey. The same is true for a resident with a heart condition, or a parent with a pushchair and a toddler. There is no degraded version of that service. There is service or there is confinement to a floor.
Which is why measuring it in lost hours misses the point. An hour is an hour to somebody who can take the stairs. To somebody who cannot, the question is not how long but whether anyone told them, whether there is a second lift, and whether the building has any plan for the period it is down.
If you maintain buildings where a single lift is the only accessible route, know which ones they are and hold that list separately. Those are the sites where your escalation should not wait for the client to chase. And if one of them is on a low-cost contract with a slow response band because that is what the client asked for, have the conversation now rather than after the event.
👉 Know which of your sites have no step-free alternative, before the day you need to know.
What does an emergency callout actually cost you?
More than you think, and you can work it out this afternoon.
Take one real emergency callout from last month and one real planned visit to a comparable site. Add up everything the emergency one consumed: travel outside a route, the planned job that got displaced and rebooked, any overtime, the part bought at short notice from whoever had it, the call handling, the incident report, the follow-up call.
Now the planned visit, where travel was on a route, the part was on the van, and nobody wrote a report.
The gap between those numbers is the honest business case for planned maintenance, from your own accounts, with no benchmark required. In what we see across ElevatorPlus implementations, most companies have never made this comparison, which means they are selling planned maintenance on principle rather than on arithmetic.
Why do repeated short outages hurt more than one long one?
Because a single long outage is an event, and a series of short ones is a verdict.
Think about how a managing agent experiences each. Ten hours down once, handled well, with clear updates and a proper explanation afterwards, is a bad day that ends. The agent tells the landlord what happened and the story has a beginning and an end.
Now the other pattern. Two hours down, five times, across a quarter. Each time the agent takes calls. Each time they explain to the landlord that it has happened again. Each time, the confidence rebuilt since the last one resets to zero. By the fifth incident nobody is asking what went wrong. They are asking whether you are the right contractor.
The total hours are lower. The damage is far higher, because what the client tracks is not availability. It is predictability.
So reporting monthly availability as a percentage flatters the repetitive pattern and understates exactly the failure mode that loses you the contract. Report incident counts alongside it, and repeat incidents on the same equipment separately, because that is the number the client is feeling.
What actually damages the relationship?
Silence.
Here is the thing you can test yourself against your own memory of angry client calls. Almost none of them are about the fault. They are about not knowing. "Nobody told us." "We had no idea when it would be back." "I had to chase three times."
A client who knows what is wrong, what has been ordered, and when it is expected behaves like a partner. They manage the building around the outage, put a notice in the lobby, warn the residents who need warning, and explain it upwards themselves. You have given them something to say, so they say it.
A client who does not know behaves completely differently. They chase, they escalate, they tell the landlord the contractor is unresponsive, and somewhere in week two somebody suggests getting another quote. The lift may be back by then. The damage is done, and the fault did not do it.
So the conclusion is not really about downtime. It is that notification is part of the service, not a courtesy attached to it. Two updates on a long outage, one at diagnosis and one when the part has a date, will do more for retention than shaving forty minutes off your attendance time.
That is also the cheapest improvement available to most contractors, which is a slightly uncomfortable thing to notice.
Frequently asked questions
1. Why not just use an industry average for downtime cost?
Because you will be asked for the source, and there is not one. A number built from the client's own figures cannot be argued with in the same way.
2. Is there any citable data on lift downtime cost?
Not that we have been able to verify to a primary source. If you find one with a published method and sample, cite it properly and tell the rest of us.
3. How do you price accessibility impact?
You do not, and trying to looks callous. Assess whether a step-free route exists during the outage. That is the question that matters.
4. What should a downtime report to a client contain?
Incidents, not just hours. Repeat incidents on the same equipment. Cause where known. And what changed as a result.
5. How often should we update a client during an outage?
At diagnosis, and again when the part has a date. More if either of those slips. Fewer than two updates is where complaints come from.
6. Does availability percentage have any use?
For trend tracking across a portfolio, yes. For a single lift with recurring short faults, it hides the thing the client cares about.
7. Should we tell a client the outage was their fault?
If it was, yes, with evidence and without triumph. Vandalism and water ingress are worth documenting at the time rather than arguing about later.
8. What is the single cheapest improvement here?
A second update during a long outage. It costs one phone call and it changes how the client describes you to the landlord.
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There is no credible average cost of lift downtime, so stop quoting one. Sit with the client, build the number from their own tenant impact, their own accessibility exposure, their own agent relationship, and your own emergency attendance cost, and the case makes itself.
Then look at the pattern rather than the total. Five short outages will lose you a contract that one long one would not.
And keep the client informed, because the hours are not what they remember. What they remember is whether they knew what was happening.
See how ElevatorPlus tracks incidents, repeat faults and client updates in one place →
Related reading
- Elevator operational metrics 2026
- Lift maintenance checklist 2026
- Why elevator software fails in month four
- Technician software adoption in elevator companies
About the author · Nutan Mandal is part of the ElevatorPlus team, which builds the Elevator Business Operating System used by 200+ elevator companies across 20+ countries.
Sources: ElevatorPlus client onboarding observations, 2026. No external downtime cost statistics are cited in this article, because we were unable to trace the figures commonly quoted in this space to a primary source with a published method.
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