OTIS

Each year, Elevator World, the leading international media outlet for vertical, horizontal and inclined transportation systems, recognises the most innovative projects in the industry. Otis strives to submit projects from all regions and in all categories for these prestigious awards.

Two EMEA projects have been submitted for this 25th edition.

22 Bishopsgate, London - Winner in the New Build Lift category. For more information, click here.
Société Générale Towers, Paris - Nominated in the Elevator - Modernisation category.
About Société Générale Towers

The Société Générale Towers in La Défense, France, were built in 1995 in response to the need of one of France's largest banks to consolidate its 5,400 employees, who at the time were scattered over some 50 different sites, onto a single site.

The organisation of work has undergone many changes since then. When Société Générale chose Otis to modernise its entire lift fleet (already Otis units installed by Otis!), it set itself the goal of 'rethinking mobility in its buildings for the future'.

The campus consists of two skyscrapers named Chassagne and Alicante, with 36 and 37 floors respectively. It is served by 55 lifts: 32 units (16 in each tower) for transporting passengers to the office and meeting spaces, and another 23 (including 8 lifts) serving the car parks, kitchens and warehouses.

The bank now employs 7,100 staff working in its towers. Its aim was to adopt flex office principles to make better and more efficient use of its office space. The upgrade therefore aimed to improve the long-term performance of the lifts and optimise the flow of passengers to reduce waiting times at peak times while coping with an increasing number of building occupants.

Otis faced many challenges in carrying out this major modernisation project. The most important of these was to carry out the lift upgrade with minimal disruption to occupants, as the towers remained occupied throughout the work. This meant running the original and upgraded lifts simultaneously, technologies that were more than 20 years apart. Otis teams also assembled the motors inside the machine rooms, a unique and distinctive feature of this project.

The upgrade, which began in 2018 and was completed in January 2022, involved all 55 lifts. They were upgraded with Otis SkyRise®, Gen2® and CompassPlus™ technologies.

Otis conducted passenger flow studies to understand the traffic in the towers and in the lobby that serves both towers. These studies helped to plan the upgrade with minimal disruption to passengers and to determine the locations for the CompassPlus touch screens.

A particular feature of this project was that the SkyRise lift machines could not be delivered fully assembled to the machine rooms due to their size and weight. Designed for new construction projects, these machines are usually delivered to the machine room by crane. For this modernisation, the 24 machines, each weighing four tonnes, were transported in parts and assembled in the narrow machine room.

Safety was a major concern when carrying out this modernisation in a busy environment. The approach of retrofitting one lift at a time in each battery was made possible by the use of a safety walkway. This Otis-patented technology was first used in France in 2010 and allows passengers, in the event of an emergency, to move safely from one cabin to another via a safety walkway.

This solution is used in high-rise office buildings with "express zones", i.e. floors without landing doors on some shafts, because the cars do not stop there in order to ensure fast and efficient travel to the highest floors. Here's how it works: For a group of three lifts (A, B and C), while car B is being upgraded, cars A and C can continue to operate safely thanks to the safety bridge, which allows passengers to move from car A to car C if car A encounters a problem and stops during its run. Once in car C, passengers can safely move to another floor. Although it was put in place for safety reasons, there were no incidents that required the use of the gangway during the modernisation works.

For all these reasons, this modernisation project is a flagship project for the company.