Article Last reviewed September 13, 2025

Bridging the Elevator Technician Gap

Why data-driven maintenance is the only way to close the widening elevator technician gap before service quality and safety break down.

Chip Alvarez
By Chip Alvarez · Last reviewed · published August 13, 2025 · How we test & review

Two converging pressures are straining elevator service providers globally: a growing portfolio of aging assets requiring more frequent and complex maintenance, and a shrinking pool of skilled technicians available to service them.

The consequences are documented. In the United States alone, elevator and escalator incidents cause approximately 17,000 injuries and 30 deaths each year, with issues like door strikes and entrapments leading to increasingly strict regulations (O’Laughlin, 2020).

The situation in Latin America (LATAM) is more complex still.

A Compounded Challenge in Latin America

In LATAM, the technician shortage sits on top of a distinct set of structural problems. An aging elevator stock—some units decades old—operates under fragmented regulations, inconsistent training standards, and limited safety reporting. Rapid urban growth in major cities is placing sustained strain on this infrastructure, while parts scarcity and underregulated modernization compound the risk.

Documented accidents between 2014 and 2024 in countries including Brazil, Chile, and Mexico—from fatal shaft falls to equipment failures—illustrate the human cost of deferred maintenance.

Why Traditional Maintenance Models Are Under Pressure

Historically, the elevator industry relied on a “break-fix” or reactive maintenance model. Scheduled preventive maintenance was an improvement, but fixed schedules can still miss emerging faults between visits.

Other heavy-asset industries—HVAC and rotating equipment among them—have moved toward predictive and prescriptive maintenance using remote monitoring and data analytics. Elevator industry adoption has been slower, held back by several factors:

  • High Upfront Costs: Significant hardware and subscription fees created a high barrier to entry.
  • Proprietary Systems: “Walled garden” systems from major OEMs limited interoperability and data access for independent service providers.
  • Connectivity & Regulatory Hurdles: Challenges in ensuring reliable data transmission and navigating regulations about placing third-party equipment in the hoistway.
  • Flawed Business Models: Early remote monitoring solutions were often positioned as a way to replace technicians rather than augment them, creating workforce resistance.

Technology Addressing the Barriers

Advances in IoT, cloud computing, and AI are reducing these barriers. Remote monitoring platforms like CEDES Elevate use sensor fusion—drawing on data from sensors already embedded in the elevator’s door system—to capture a continuous stream of operational data.

Machine learning applied to that data converts raw readings into actionable signals. Monitored elevators have demonstrated a 15% reduction in safety-related incidents, improving passenger safety and reducing building owner liability.

The data, however, is only useful if it reaches the right person at the right time.

The Closed-Loop Ecosystem

Integrating the real-time asset health data from CEDES Elevate directly into a field service management (FSM) platform like FIELDBOSS creates a ”closed-loop” maintenance system—where sensor signals drive work orders, dispatch, and compliance documentation without manual handoffs.

FIELDBOSS, an ERP built specifically for the elevator industry, gives contractors the ability to:

  • Schedule and dispatch technicians efficiently.
  • Capture job data from the field in real-time.
  • Manage regulatory compliance and customer reporting.

Because FIELDBOSS is built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform, it incorporates Copilot AI to move from data reporting to prescriptive action. Copilot analyzes incoming sensor data from CEDES against the asset’s entire service history—past work orders, parts replaced, technician notes—to identify patterns, improve failure prediction, and surface prioritized recommendations.

When CEDES Elevate detects an anomaly, the system can generate:

  • Targeted interventions: dispatching a technician to address a specific known issue before it causes a failure or entrapment.
  • Smarter resource allocation: prioritizing work on at-risk units and optimizing technician routes.
  • Data-backed maintenance justification: performance data that supports service plan conversations with building owners.

Pilot Program: Bringing the Integrated Solution to LATAM

In 2025, CEDES and RM Partners—a company with established presence in the Latin American elevator market—formed a partnership to bring this integrated solution to the region.

The first pilot, launching in Uruguay and Argentina, will deploy the combined CEDES Elevate and FIELDBOSS solution. The project is designed to measure whether the closed-loop approach can address the region’s specific challenges:

  • Reducing technician travel time through remote diagnosis.
  • Proactively addressing door-related issues, the leading cause of entrapments.
  • Improving first-time fix rates by equipping technicians with detailed, AI-powered pre-arrival context.

Where This Leaves Service Providers

The technician shortage is not going away, and the aging asset base continues to grow. For service providers operating in that environment, the case for ecosystem integration—sensor data feeding directly into dispatch, compliance, and customer reporting—is grounded in documented outcomes: fewer incidents, more targeted interventions, better use of limited technician time.

The LATAM pilot will offer a more concrete dataset on what that integration produces in practice. The architecture described here is available now; the results are still being gathered.

References

  • O’Laughlin, J. (2020). Hazards Associated with Elevators and Escalators. Elevator World.

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