A Retrofit Solution for Remote Lift Monitoring

A trial has been undertaken on the lifts at Covent Garden station to extract data from the controllers and explore its value for maintenance and asset management. The programmable logic controllers (PLCs) monitor a large amount of information, from discrete signals such as the status of relays, buttons and switches to analogue data for lift car speed and position. A retrofit monitoring system was designed and installed to facilitate extraction of all available data from the PLCs in real time using a modern lightweight messaging protocol. An original approach to the visual representation of the historical data was developed to enable insights to be gained. The findings demonstrated that there is value in extracting PLC data for fault diagnosis, improved fault response time and a better understanding of asset operation and condition. This will support a more proactive approach to maintenance and inform whole life asset management.