The category where the contract decides your leverage
Most facilities categories can be re-competed whenever you choose. Elevator maintenance frequently cannot, for two structural reasons.
Proprietary controls. Modern control systems often require manufacturer-specific diagnostic tools, software and access credentials. Where those are not available to independent contractors, the field of bidders who can genuinely maintain the equipment is limited by the equipment itself, not by the market.
Five-year evergreen terms. Elevator agreements commonly run five years and renew automatically unless cancelled in a narrow window. A missed notice date means another five years.
Together these mean that the decisions which determine your cost position were made when the equipment was specified and when the last contract was signed. Not at the next negotiation.
Establish what you actually have first
Before any sourcing event, build the equipment inventory: unit by unit, with age, manufacturer, controller type and whether the controls are proprietary or open protocol.
That inventory determines whether you are running a competitive event or a negotiation with one credible party. Both are legitimate, but they need different strategies, and going to market without knowing which you are in wastes everyone’s time.
Where controls are proprietary, the realistic levers are coverage level, response commitments, term length and performance credits. Price competition is not one of them.
Coverage level is a risk decision
Full maintenance includes labor, parts and component replacement. The contractor carries repair risk and prices a margin for it. More expensive annually, far more predictable, and it aligns the contractor with keeping units running rather than billing repairs.
Oil and grease covers routine servicing only. Everything else is billed. It looks materially cheaper and frequently is not, because the repairs land anyway and now at time-and-materials rates with parts markup.
The honest comparison is full maintenance against oil and grease plus a realistic repair forecast built from your own callback and repair history. Most organizations have that history in invoices and have never assembled it.
Callback rate is the performance number
Callbacks per unit per year tells you more than any inspection report.
Watch specifically for repeat callbacks on the same unit for the same fault. That pattern means the unit is being reset rather than repaired, and it usually precedes a failure that costs considerably more than the repair avoided.
Entrapment response time is the one commitment worth contractual teeth. Define it, measure it, and attach a credit that is actually claimed.
What to put in the RFP
- Equipment inventory by unit, with age and controller type
- Coverage level and an explicit list of exclusions
- Response times, separated for entrapment and non-entrapment
- Callback rate targets, with reporting by unit
- Planned maintenance schedule and task list, not “per manufacturer recommendation”
- Parts availability commitments, especially for older controllers
- Testing and code compliance responsibilities, and who pays
- Labor rates for work outside scope, including after-hours
- Term and notice, explicitly overriding evergreen language
What good looks like afterward
Callbacks reported by unit and trending down, entrapment response measured against the commitment, planned maintenance actually performed and evidenced, notice dates diarized, and a modernization plan for units whose controller obsolescence is the real risk.
Elevators sit inside the broader facilities services category. For running the event, see RFP management.
- Equipment inventory
- Coverage level
- Response times
- Callback rate targets
- Planned maintenance schedule and task list
- Parts availability commitments
- Testing and code compliance
- Labor rates
- Term and notice
Issued in your structure, not the vendor's, so every bidder prices the same scope and the bids can be compared line for line.
How we help
- Spend Analysis: Spend analysis establishes where your organization stands and where value is trapped.
- Procurement Transformation: Transformation decides where procurement should go and what deserves resources first.
- Strategic Sourcing: Strategic sourcing turns strategy into implemented results.
- Value Tracking: Value tracking protects and extends value after implementation.
- Procurement Training: Training builds your team's capability so results last after the engagement ends.
- Fractional CPO: A fractional CPO gives you senior procurement leadership without a full-time hire: someone who owns the function, sets the commercial agenda and builds the team that eventually replaces them.
- Procurement Assessment: A structured diagnostic of how procurement actually operates across six dimensions, evidenced rather than asserted.
- Category Management: Category strategies that survive contact with the business.
- Supplier Negotiation: Negotiation outcomes are decided in the preparation.
- Cost Reduction: Cost reduction judged on what reaches the P&L.
- RFP Management: We run the whole sourcing event: scope, bidder list, document, evaluation and award.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a full maintenance and an oil and grease contract?
Full maintenance includes labor, parts and component replacement, so the contractor carries the repair risk and prices for it. Oil and grease, sometimes called basic or lubrication coverage, includes routine servicing only, with parts and repairs billed separately. Full maintenance costs more annually and is more predictable; oil and grease looks cheap and exposes you to every repair.
Are we locked into the original equipment manufacturer?
Often partially, and it depends on the controller. Modern proprietary control systems can require manufacturer-specific diagnostic tools and passwords that independent contractors cannot obtain, which limits who can genuinely maintain the equipment. Non-proprietary or open-protocol controls preserve competition. Establish which you have before going to market, because it determines whether you have a market.
What should an elevator maintenance contract include?
Equipment inventory by unit with age and controller type, coverage level and what is explicitly excluded, response times for entrapment and non-entrapment callbacks, callback rate targets, planned maintenance schedule and task list, parts availability commitments, testing and code compliance responsibilities, labor rates for work outside scope, contract term and notice provisions, and reporting requirements including callback history by unit.
How do we judge elevator service performance?
Callbacks per unit per year, entrapment response time, repeat callbacks on the same unit and fault, and downtime hours. Callback rate is the most revealing. A unit generating repeated callbacks for the same fault is not being repaired, it is being reset, and that pattern usually precedes a larger failure.
When does modernization make more sense than maintenance?
When repair frequency, parts obsolescence and energy cost together exceed the annualized cost of modernization, or when the controller is obsolete enough that parts availability is the real risk. Modernization is a capital decision and should be evaluated on its own terms, but it is also the moment competition returns, because new equipment resets the controller question.