The Art of getting the right Lift

More often than not, it is pure coincidence or simply luck. The choice of lift to go up or down a certain number of floors often matters far less than the actual fellow travellers or the people waiting on other floors, in short the overall to and fro, back and forth at any given time of the day or night, in particular when the six existing lifts in a hotel, as in the current example, are not properly, if at all, co-ordinated, possibly for lack of appropriate software to deal with demanding use of lifts as a means of transport.

(Microsoft Media)

It was once nicely explained how the lifts, much more than six, mind you, in one of those breathtaking new skyscrapers in Dubai (if it wasn't even particularly about the Burj Khalifa, aka the Burj Dubai, at the time of this writing the tallest building on the planet) were co-ordinated to such an extent that people, going down from the upper floors to the ground floor, for instance, didn't have to travel for ages because of other people wanting to use a lift, any lift for that matter, to achieve the same for themselves.

It would be a nightmare wanting to go down, let's say, after work at, let's say even more precisely, five o'clock, and then end up on the ground floor at 6.30 just because the lift had to stop at almost each and every floor for someone wanting to get on board and, on top of that, finding the lift to be already full to capacity.

Apart from that, no lift can go the whole length of a building that size anyway, which means that on certain floors, and be that two or three over the whole length of the building, people will have to change lifts since the building is so tall that it is physically impossible to have any one lift go from top to bottom, for sheer security if not outright weight and material-strength restrictions.

But in smaller buildings - and compared to the Burj Dubai most buildings anywhere are relative small, say fifteen floors that by comparison add up to hardly more than a bungalow - lifts can easily and without any problems go from ground to top floor. Yet in a fifteen-storey hotel with six or eight hundred hotel patrons at any given time, co-ordination of the existing six lifts could make an enormous difference - at least for the hotel guests and their nerves.

(Microsoft Media)

If they and their understandable desire to move around the building are left to mere chance then things like the following can easily happen:

Scenario 1. The first available lift stops on level 7 because someone had pressed a button. Unfortunately, the eight travellers on board the lift had already been forced to see their lift stop at the previous three levels further up and are becoming somewhat irritable.

Three seconds later, another lift passes level 7 with only two passengers on board who had been coming down from level 11 without any further interruption. They are certainly happy travellers, though unbeknown to anyone; and do they know, themselves, how lucky they were? The situation would have been quite different only three seconds earlier.

Scenario 2: A lift with five hotel guests stops for the third time in a row, this time on level four, the dining and rest area, on the way down because another patron had pressed the up button. Preventing this from happening would have been much easier than under scenario 1 that needs a more sophisticated approach. It is conceivable, though, that the patron on level 4 pressed the wrong button, the down instead of the up one, by mistake. Foreseeing or preventing this is, unfortunately, well nigh impossible for even the most sophisticated management software.

Scenario 3: A lift with ten patrons and some luggage on board on the way down early in the morning, when most people can be assumed to go down for breakfast or to leave the hotel for whatever reason, stops on level six. Unfortunately, there is no space left for the hotel guest wanting to enter on level six. Tough for the guest on level six, annoying for the passengers already on board, the only one not minding is probably the luggage.

Surely, there would be ways of preventing all these things from happening. Naturally, safety comes first and there was never any doubt about this. All the six lifts were state-of-the-art elevators. The hotel's patrons could have all the peace of mind about nothing untoward easily happening, and this is the most important thing. But next, once everyone has their peace of mind, there comes the modern-age convenience for tourists and, apart from this, perhaps additional time constraints for business travellers: How much time will I have to expect having to spend commuting, they may wonder, not just from one underground or bus station to the next, but also from my hotel room to the main entry and back.

(Microsoft Media)

Certainly, in one of those huge towers in Dubai, the Burj merely being the tallest of them all, this question is a lot more crucial since there is a potential for people spending more time commuting inside the tall buildings than in a fifteen-level hotel in Singapore, a city that, after all, sports taller buildings than fifteen-floor ones. And yet, the intensity of movement in and out, up and down, in a hotel, can lead to bottle-neck situations and clutter, and some time spent on co-ordinating the movement of people and luggage throughout the building can mean happy or frustrated patrons, i.e. customers, willing to come back or change to another hotel. And not all hotel guests are of the relaxed kind.

Before this background, there was the story of the friendly room-service girl who couldn't enter the lift with her service trolley, full of linens, towels and things, for all the hotel guests in the lift. When I looked at her with an expression of sadness, she replied, all without uttering any words, with a gesture that clearly meant, oh, it's ok, I'll wait for the next lift.

When my lift, after a few interruptions along the way, arrived on level 12, still two storeys short of where I was headed, I saw her again, getting off one of the three opposite lifts, spotting me and waving her hand, being all smiles, making me see that she, too, had made it up to level 12, where he next jobs were obviously waiting for her. I was all smiles, too, after a few seconds of wondering what the waving was all about. At times, the simple things in life make your day. And would she and me have experienced this charming little scene had the lifts been synchronised, optimised and co-ordinated. Then again, she needs those lifts every day, and not all patrons are as compassionate as me. Bottom line: let's not overdo organising our lives, but let's be practical nevertheless.

How much did you say is a piece of software that can co-ordinate six lifts?