Registered lift contractors in Hong Kong must review specified landing-door work and submit a fire-performance declaration, with related schedules, to the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department by 15 November 2026. The department’s notice says knowingly making a false declaration or providing false information is illegal.
The department’s notice defines the review period as 17 October 2017 to 16 October 2026. It covers lifts for which an LE7 form was submitted for replacement or addition of a landing door during that period. Contractors must also check every lift they currently maintain, ensuring its landing doors and frames are structurally sound and safe to operate.
The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department said it introduced the enhanced review after serious defects were found in work by the contractor responsible for lift projects at several residential estates and buildings: fire-resistant landing-door frame components had not been installed to specification. Contractors must establish that the door structures and frame components covered by the review meet design and fire-resistance requirements.
Registered lift engineers must check landing doors and associated frames before a lift enters service, after major alteration work, and during periodic and load inspections. The department requires them to recheck fire-resistance certificates and look for missing frame components.
The fire-resistant material and its frame are hidden between the lift car’s inner door and the landing door, according to a former chair of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers’ Mechanical, Marine, Naval Architecture & Chemical Division. He said the frame holds the material in place as the doors open and close. If it shifts during a building fire, smoke and flames could enter the lift car. A missing frame poses no immediate mechanical danger but can create a longer-term fire hazard for passengers or firefighters inside.
The former division chair said contractors could fit the checks into monthly routine maintenance. A lift might need to be stopped for one to two hours while a technician inspects it, he estimated.