You are a city centre company. Your office is located in the heart of a heavily built up area where buildings are constructed to be more vertically assembled than outwards so, as your corporate empire continues to expand and so does your workforce, the best option for this expansion is to move upwards. Before you know it, your corporate empire occupies anything above 5 floors of your city centre building and life is good.

That is, life is good if you are prepared to trek anything above 5 flights of stairs to get to the floor you need to be on. This can be a general annoyance for anyone who is at a fit and healthy standard. It can be a real problem for those whose health and fitness is not at a standard that should be running up and down stairs several times a day.

A lift can alleviate this problem. Generally these days, lifts are installed in any building which is 2 floors or above. This can be several reasons, whether that be for convenience or legalities. Providing access for individuals who normally struggle with a standard staircase is a must for some companies. This is particularly relevant for in the retail industry who stand to lose footfall through the front door should it be inaccessible for some customers. Office environments differ slightly as they generally do not always encourage visitors but internal pressures can also be an issue for these types of companies. If employees cannot access certain parts of the building then it is obviously a nightmare logistically, but the employees will also be within their rights to raise complaints about this which can ascend to union level issues.

Solutions such as platform lifts can resolve these issues. Platform lifts can be installed as free-standing structures or implemented into any already-existing structures. This is obviously a space-saving solution, particularly handy in environments where every inch of the area is valuable space.

Platform lifts can be customised as well to suit both the brand of the company installing it and the situation. Many lifts nowadays contain glass panels to allow users to see what is outside of the lift. This is not always a desirable feature of lifts so platform lifts can also be fitted with solid panels which are as customisable as needed.

For companies where a multi-levelled presence is important, solutions such as platform lifts are a very feasible way of working around a potential nightmare of a problem.

This guest post was written by chief engineer for platform lift systems in large buildings, Gary Seddon.