How to reduce the costs of a lift portfolio over the long term
Reducing the costs of a portfolio does not mean paying less, but paying the right price for the service the installations actually need.
Across a portfolio of several dozen installations, maintenance costs rarely increase by decision. They increase by accumulation: an annual indexation never questioned, an extra that has become routine, a part billed at list price, a contract renewed while the market has moved on.
Reducing these costs does not mean buying less maintenance. A degraded service is paid for later, in breakdowns and heavy works. The goal is to align price with the actual need.
Lever 1: Make the costs visible
The first step is not a negotiation but a calculation: what does each installation really cost over three years, contract included and extras included? Almost no management office has this figure, yet it alone makes comparison possible.
Lever 2: Treat repetitive breakdowns at the root
An installation generating four interventions a year on the same component does not have an intervention problem; it has an undiagnosed problem. Correcting the cause generally makes several invoice lines disappear at once.
Lever 3: Run a real competitive tender
Tendering has an effect even when it leads to no change of provider: the mere existence of comparable offers changes the negotiating position. It does, however, require a written scope, otherwise the offers received are not comparable.
Lever 4: Bundle the portfolio
A portfolio negotiated as a whole does not obtain the same conditions as a sum of individual contracts. Bundling also gives access to homogeneous performance indicators, and therefore to real management of service quality.
Lever 5: Plan the investments
Suffered expenses are always more expensive than planned ones. A multi-year modernisation plan makes it possible to spread investments, avoid emergency replacements and negotiate with time in hand.
What this gives in practice
On the portfolios we support, the average reduction in operating costs reaches 20%. It does not come from a single decision but from the combination of these levers, applied methodically and tracked over time.
Monitoring is the most neglected part: without indicators, the gains obtained shrink within two or three years under the effect of indexations and changes of use. Measuring is part of optimisation.
Go further
Would you like a reading of your own situation (contract, quote, installation or an entire portfolio)? A first conversation is usually enough to identify what is really at stake.