Anyone running a lift contract base knows that a service visit and a thorough examination are different jobs. The harder part is keeping both visible in the same place, for hundreds of lifts, with different customers, different cycles, and an engineer who needs the right information before knocking on the door. That is where field service management (FSM) software earns its keep. This guide sets out LOLER thorough examination vs servicing, then looks at how an FSM platform keeps both on track.
A lift service keeps the lift running. A LOLER thorough examination checks whether it is safe to keep using.
The Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER) require lifting equipment to be examined by a competent person. HSE describes a thorough examination as a systematic and detailed check of the equipment and its safety-critical parts, carried out at set intervals and ending in a written report. Servicing is maintenance, which HSE notes is a requirement of PUWER (the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998). How often it happens is a matter for the maintenance contract, as there is no legal minimum frequency for maintenance visits.
Under regulation 9 of LOLER, equipment used to lift people must be thoroughly examined at least every six months, and other lifting equipment at least every 12 months, unless a competent person draws up an examination scheme that sets different intervals. For most contract bases, that means passenger lifts sit on the six-month cycle and goods-only lifts on the 12-month one. Escalators sit outside LOLER, with HSE placing them under the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations, so they need their own entries in the diary.
HSE expects the examiner to be sufficiently independent and impartial, and says the person who routinely maintains the equipment should not be the one who examines it. Most lift service firms therefore work alongside an independent inspection body, and the Operations Engineer describes the arrangement as a three-way collaboration between examiner, maintainer, and dutyholder, with reports shared in both directions.
Examinations and servicing run on separate cycles and produce separate reports, often through different organisations, which makes this a coordination problem more than a knowledge problem. The examination date typically sits in the inspection body's system or a customer's inbox, while the service schedule sits in your own. When the two drift apart, engineers arrive at a lift with an overdue examination they know nothing about, or a contract manager finds out at renewal time that a report never made it back.
An FSM platform fixes this by treating each lift as an asset with its own history. Service visits, examination dates, reports, and defects all hang off the same record, so whoever opens it sees the full picture.
The practical gains show up in four places:
No two lift contracts split responsibilities in quite the same way. On some, the service firm books the examiner and chases reports. On others, the duty to ensure examinations take place rests entirely with the customer, and the service firm simply wants sight of the dates. Lift LOLER inspection management therefore needs to follow your contract terms, covering who books what, which reports get shared, and what the customer sees. A platform with no-code configuration lets you build those rules and forms yourself, then change them when a contract or process changes, without waiting for a developer.
Add contract-level reporting on top, and managers can see at a glance which sites have an examination coming up, which have defects awaiting approval, and which contracts carry the most risk.
Want to see how this works in practice? Book a demo of Solarvista's unique 2-in-1 field service management system and no-code application platform.