Runways and lift shafts
Ben Dobbs, Head of Global Standards and Legislation at LEEA, looks at runways and points to guidance offering clarity on the verification of lift shaft lifting beams.
Runways are widely used in industries such as manufacturing, construction, warehousing, and logistics to provide a single track upon which a lifting appliance is fitted. This will allow loads to be raised, lowered and travelled along the path of the runway. Some of the areas where this configuration can typically be found include loading bays, adjacent to work benches, in foundries and on production lines. They can provide a lifting facility in yards and for loading and unloading from multi-storey buildings by internal runways and external cantilever jibs.
Runways may be manufactured from standard rolled steel sections or from special track section systems and may be supported from building structures, dedicated free standing structures or a combination of both. They can also be built into machines or the bodywork of service vehicles.
Generally available in capacities up to 10 tonnes, runways offer a cost effective alternative to overhead travelling cranes for lifting and moving loads along a determined path. Their designs range from the basic dedicated runway to lift out a piece of plant to complex production units capable of serving large areas. The most sophisticated systems may include switches, turntables, bends, etc, which allow loads to be moved along alternative routes.
It should be remembered that a runway only becomes an effective lifting appliance when fitted with a trolley and hoist, or similar lifting appliance, which may be either manually or power operated. In the case of power operation on long systems, electric hoists are usually fitted due to the difficulties of providing compressed air over large distances. For specific guidance on the selection and safe use of runways see section 11 of LEEA’s Code of Practice for the Safe Use of Lifting Equipment (COPSULE), which is freely available at leeaint.com.
Lift shaft lifting beam
A variation of the runway is the lift shaft lifting beam, which is a structural element used in lift installations, maintenance or construction to support lifting operations inside the lift shaft. They are commonly used for both goods lifting and people carrying. Occasionally, they are used for fall arrest applications.
These supporting structures are generally formed with steel beams spanning the top of the lift shaft, with lifting equipment attachment points often known as lifting eyes along the span. They can also be a precast concrete slab or site cast slab using decking, with several options for lifting equipment attachment points.
The beam will aid with the installation of the lift assembly itself by lifting heavy components such as an elevator car, counterweights, motors or other associated equipment and the installers themselves. Although such beams are usually intended for use with a fixed point lifting arrangement, their design and testing requirements have the same criteria as runway beams.
However, the use of this equipment, together with the varying legislative and standards applicable to each mode of use has, historically, generated some confusion regarding how this equipment should be verified following installation and then periodically while in service.
This led to the development of ‘LEEA 076 Guidance to the verification of lift shaft support structures’, which provides a means of setting a benchmark and standard approach to their verification. It has been produced to support the designer, manufacturer, installer, tester and examiner in terms of the correct method of verifying lift shaft lifting equipment support structures.
The guidance applies to goods lifting, people carrying and fall arrest using a lift shaft beam assembly and draws on LEEA’s experience of, and requirements for, other similar forms of lifting equipment support structures, such as crane gantries, hoists, runways and jibs. This further reinforces the advantage to end users in all sectors of using LEEA members when procuring lifting equipment services. The guidance, which is a technical requirement for full LEEA.
