Walked into a hospital job in Cleveland and saw something that made me re-check every install

I was doing a final inspection on a new Otis install at St. Vincent's last month and noticed the door interlocks were wired backwards to the controller. Some guy from a sub had done it to save 15 minutes on the job. Now I double check every single interlock wire before I even power up the car. Has anyone else run into sketchy work from subcontractors on hospital jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

kai_butler831mo ago

and honestly that doesn't surprise me one bit, hospitals are the worst for that kind of corner cutting because subs think nobody will ever look twice. I saw an elevator at a VA hospital in Columbus where they'd swapped the phase wires on the motor just to get it spinning the right direction without fixing the actual wiring diagram, ended up blowing out a drive module three months later. The problem is these guys get paid by the job not the hour so every shortcut is money in their pocket, but on a hospital install you're talking about moving gurneys and crash carts, not office chairs. I've started taking photos of every single termination before I leave the site, just so I can prove it was right when I packed up and something goes sideways later.

dylan_bell1mo ago

Read a report once said 30% of hospital elevator failures trace back to botched wiring. Scary stuff when you think about crash carts and ICU patients.

juliag1018d ago

Not 30%, that was elevator fires. Different stat, lol.