Lift Compliance Checklist for Facility Managers (Australia)

A facility manager's lift compliance duties at a glance

Compliance for a commercial or shared-building lift is not one obligation but several, running on different clocks. The checklist below groups them into five areas — registration and standards, inspection and servicing, records, emergency communications, and access and duties — so a facility manager can see the whole picture and spot what has lapsed.

The duties sit across the three layers of Australian lift obligation: building compliance (the National Construction Code and the AS 1735 series), disability access (the Premises Standards and AS 1735.12), and workplace safety (WHS or, in Victoria, OHS plant duties). Our overview of Australian lift standards sets out how those layers fit together. Get the five checklist areas current and you are meeting the recurring core of all three.

Plant registration: is your lift registrable plant?

Yes — in almost every case. Under Schedule 5 of the model WHS Regulations, lifts, escalators, and moving walkways are listed as registrable plant. That means two separate registrations exist: design registration for the lift type, and item (or plant) registration for the specific installed unit. Both should be held, and the registration numbers should sit in your lift file where an auditor can find them.

Registration is handled by the state regulator, and the process varies by jurisdiction. Our guide to lift plant registration breaks down what each state requires and links to the regulator portals. Victoria is again the exception — design and item registration are administered by WorkSafe Victoria under the OHS framework rather than the model WHS laws.

Inspection and servicing frequency

A commercial lift should be serviced on a regular preventive schedule by a competent person — commonly monthly to quarterly for a passenger lift in a busy building, set by the manufacturer's requirements and your maintenance contract. On top of routine servicing, a statutory or periodic inspection by an independent competent person confirms the safety systems still perform to standard.

Servicing frequency is a contract term, not a legal fixed number, so the interval must be defined in your lift maintenance agreement and matched to how hard the lift works. Keep a written service report after every visit — an undocumented service does not exist as far as an auditor is concerned. If a lift fails an inspection it should be taken out of service until the defect is rectified; our lift repair guide covers how fault and rectification records should be captured.

Records and the lift log book

The lift log book is your primary evidence of compliance. It must hold a dated entry for every service visit (date, technician and licence, work done, faults rectified, parts replaced, next service due), plus the commissioning and registration certificates, the full inspection history, and any incident, breakdown, or entrapment records.

Keep the records for the service life of the lift — 25 to 30 years is normal — and remember the record belongs to the building, not the contractor. When you change maintenance providers the historical log stays with you. A secure digital log is acceptable provided it is complete, tamper-resistant, and you can produce it on request.

Emergency phone and communications

Every lift must have an emergency phone that auto-dials a 24/7 monitoring service and supports two-way voice, and it must keep working during a power failure. Since the PSTN copper network and 3G were decommissioned, all lift emergency phones in Australia run on 4G VoLTE or a landline SIP service. This is now an ongoing compliance-maintenance item, not a one-off migration.

Verify that the monitoring arrangement is active and the connection is functioning as part of routine maintenance. Our guide to lift emergency phone compliance covers testing cadence and what a compliant monitoring setup looks like. A lift with a dead phone line is non-compliant even if everything else works.

Access duties and who is the responsible person

For buildings open to the public or to employees, the lift must meet the disability access provisions that applied when it was installed or last upgraded — principally the Disability (Access to Premises — Buildings) Standards 2010 and AS 1735.12:2020 for accessible lifts. Our guide to DDA lift compliance explains car dimensions, controls, and the new-versus-existing-building distinction.

Finally, name the responsible person. Under WHS law the PCBU — the building owner or the manager acting on their behalf — carries the duty for the lift as plant on the premises. In Victoria that duty sits under the OHS Act with WorkSafe Victoria as the regulator. Whoever holds the role should be identifiable in your records, because when something goes wrong the first question is always who was responsible.

LiftQuotes does not provide legal or compliance advice — verify current requirements with your state regulator or a qualified lift or access consultant. If you are reviewing maintenance arrangements or need a provider with stronger reporting and compliance support, get free quotes from qualified Australian lift companies and compare on response time, inclusions, and record-keeping.