Skip to content
WSP WSP
WSP WSP
  • Who we are
    We are the home of ambitious, passionate, and innovative engineering experts, scientists and advisors.

    Who we are
    • Our story
    • Future Ready
    • Corporate responsibility
    • Local Leadership
    • Our impact
    Corporate responsibility
    • Communities
    • Corporate governance
    • Diversity and Inclusion
    • Ethics and Integrity
    • Health and Safety
    • Sustainability
    Featured content
    Thn-Web-Our-Impact
    Unlocking potential everywhere

    As Visioneers we see the potential everywhere, harnessing it to embrace the complex…

  • What we do
    We work together with clients to plan, design, create and deliver innovative projects that shape the world.


    View All

    • Sectors
    • Services
    • Projects
    What we do
    • Property & Buildings
    • Transportation & Infrastructure
    • Environment & Sustainability
    • Energy & Resources
    Featured content
    thn-net-zero
    How to Net Zero

    How WSP can help you decarbonize with confidence

  • Insights
    Our global experts offer compelling insights that provide new perspectives.

    Read inspiring articles that challenge the status quo by reframing current issues, sparking fresh conversations and finding new solutions.

    View all
    Insights
    • Climate
    • Mobility
    • Places
    • Resources
    • Society
    • Technology
    Featured content
    thn-Digital Project Delivery
    Pursuing Sustainability and Productivity Gains with Digital…

    WSP's Digital Project Delivery white paper explores how to enable projects to be…

  • Careers
    What if you could do the kind of work the world needs?

    With us, you can. Make your best impact with WSP, where the culture and people also make it the best work of your life.

    Find out more
    Careers
    • Job opportunities
    • Early career
    • Experienced professionals
    • Why join us?
    • Bursary
    Featured content
    Thn-Web-Careers-Why-Join-WSP
    Why join us?

    At WSP, you will find the space you need to think bigger and build a career…

  • Who we are
    • Our story
    • Future Ready
    • Corporate responsibility
      • Who we are
      • Accountable for Tomorrow
        • Communities
        • Corporate governance
        • Diversity and Inclusion
        • Ethics and Integrity
        • Health and Safety
        • Sustainability
    • Local Leadership
    • Our impact
  • What we do
    • Property & Buildings
    • Transportation & Infrastructure
    • Environment & Sustainability
    • Energy & Resources
  • Insights
    • Climate
    • Mobility
    • Places
    • Resources
    • Society
    • Technology
  • Careers
    • Job opportunities
    • Early career
    • Experienced professionals
    • Why join us?
    • Bursary
Select your language and location

We are locally dedicated with international scale.

International
  • Global
    English — Français
Americas
  • Brazil
    Português
  • Canada
    English — Français
  • Chile
    Español
  • Colombia
    Español
  • Mexico
    Español
  • Panama
    Español
  • Peru
    Español
  • United States
    English
Africa
  • South Africa
    English
Asia
  • China
    中文(简体) — English
  • Hong Kong
    English
  • India
    English
  • Indonesia
    English
  • Malaysia
    English
  • Philippines
    English
  • Singapore
    English
  • South Korea
    한국어(대한민국) — English
  • Thailand
    English
Europe
  • Denmark
    Dansk
  • Finland
    Suomi
  • France
    Français
  • Germany
    Deutsch
  • Hungary
    English
  • Italy
    Italiano
  • Netherlands
    Nederlands
  • Norway
    Norsk
  • Poland
    Polski
  • Romania
    English
  • Spain
    Español
  • Sweden
    Svenska
  • Switzerland
    Deutsch — Français
  • Turkey
    Turkish
  • United Kingdom
    English
Middle East
  • Kuwait
    English
  • Oman
    English
  • Qatar
    English
  • Saudi Arabia
    English
  • United Arab Emirates
    English
Oceania
  • Australia
    English
  • New Zealand
    English
Worldwide offices
    • Investors
      Discover our diverse business, financial results and strategic ambitions.

      We are committed to delivering sustainable value to our shareholders and exceptional professional services to our clients.

      Find out more
      Investors
      • Corporate governance
      • Press releases
      • Reports and filings
      • Stock information
      • Shareholder information
      • Presentations and events
      Corporate governance
      • Audit committee
      • Board of directors
      • Business Conduct Hotline
      • Constating documents
      • Governance documents
      • Governance ethics and compensation committee
      • Mandates
      Reports and filings
      • AIF
      • Annual
      • Information circular
      • Quarterly
      • SEDAR+ filings
      • Sustainability
      Stock information
      • Analyst coverage
      Shareholder information
      • Acquisitions
      • Dividends
      • FAQ
      Featured content
      Thn-Web-IR-2025-Q1-Results
      WSP's Q1 2025 Results

      We released our 2025 first quarter results on May 7, 2025 after market close.

    • Investors
      • Corporate governance
        • Investors
        • Corporate Governance
          • Audit committee
          • Board of directors
          • Business Conduct Hotline
          • Constating documents
          • Governance documents
          • Governance ethics and compensation committee
          • Mandates
      • Press releases
      • Reports and filings
        • Investors
        • REPORTS & FILINGS
          • AIF
          • Annual
          • Information circular
          • Quarterly
          • SEDAR+ filings
          • Sustainability
      • Stock information
        • Investors
        • Stock Information
          • Analyst coverage
      • Shareholder information
        • Investors
        • Shareholder Information
          • Acquisitions
          • Dividends
          • Drip
          • FAQ
      • Presentations and events
    • News
      Progress happens quickly.

      Stay up to date with our latest global news, events, awards and more.

      News
      • Latest news
      • Events and webinars
      Featured content
      thn-climate-change-2025
      Climate Change Webinars

      Discover case studies addressing climate change adaptation and mitigation projects.…

    • Contact us
      We are dedicated to our local communities and driven by global talent.

      Contact us to find out how our diversified offering, world-class expertise and geographical reach can assist you in achieving your vision.

      Contact Us

      Follow us

      Contact us
      • Request a proposal
      • Send a message
      • Find an expert
      • Offices
      Featured content
      Our Offices

      With offices throughout the world, you can connect with one close to you.

    • Investors
      Discover our diverse business, financial results and strategic ambitions.

      We are committed to delivering sustainable value to our shareholders and exceptional professional services to our clients.

      Find out more
      Investors
      • Corporate governance
      • Press releases
      • Reports and filings
      • Stock information
      • Shareholder information
      • Presentations and events
      Corporate governance
      • Audit committee
      • Board of directors
      • Business Conduct Hotline
      • Constating documents
      • Governance documents
      • Governance ethics and compensation committee
      • Mandates
      Reports and filings
      • AIF
      • Annual
      • Information circular
      • Quarterly
      • SEDAR+ filings
      • Sustainability
      Stock information
      • Analyst coverage
      Shareholder information
      • Acquisitions
      • Dividends
      • FAQ
      Featured content
      Thn-Web-IR-2025-Q1-Results
      WSP's Q1 2025 Results

      We released our 2025 first quarter results on May 7, 2025 after market close.

    • Investors
      • Corporate governance
        • Investors
        • Corporate Governance
          • Audit committee
          • Board of directors
          • Business Conduct Hotline
          • Constating documents
          • Governance documents
          • Governance ethics and compensation committee
          • Mandates
      • Press releases
      • Reports and filings
        • Investors
        • REPORTS & FILINGS
          • AIF
          • Annual
          • Information circular
          • Quarterly
          • SEDAR+ filings
          • Sustainability
      • Stock information
        • Investors
        • Stock Information
          • Analyst coverage
      • Shareholder information
        • Investors
        • Shareholder Information
          • Acquisitions
          • Dividends
          • Drip
          • FAQ
      • Presentations and events
    • News
      • Latest news
      • Events and webinars
    • Contact us
      • Request a proposal
      • Send a message
      • Find an expert
      • Offices
  1. We are WSP
  2. Insights
  3. What About The Elevators?

The Post-Pandemic Office: What About The Elevators?

Vertical transportation is what makes multi-storey buildings possible. So what happens when enclosed spaces, push buttons and efficiency become the problem rather than the solution? 
By Steven Truss, director – head of vertical transportation, and Michael Seddon, associate director, WSP

Monday, 18 May 2020
Reading Time : 7 minutes

COVID-19 has challenged vertical transportation strategies in tall buildings, probably more than in any other building type.

As real-estate prices surged in downtown areas, elevators have come at a premium both in higher operational costs and reduced rentable areas. As a result, vertical transportation design focused on optimizing services by increasing speed, sizing components efficiently and installing smarter control systems, to reduce the number of elevators required and therefore the size of the building core. Office buildings have a high density of population, ranging from 1 person per 6m2 to 1 person per 12m2. As they reopen in the aftermath of the pandemic, there will be concerns about physical distancing and about touching surfaces. Both of these are particularly relevant in the case of elevators: by definition, people are required to be in close proximity inside elevator cars, and systems are normally operated by pressing buttons. This presents immediate issues for tall buildings, as well as longer-term strategy issues.

Reducing elevator occupancy will significantly impact building operations.

Under social distancing guidelines, the maximum occupancy of a large, 21-person elevator car might be just four people. For a 17-person car, it would be two and for smaller cars that would normally hold 13 people, one. That’s a huge reduction in capacity and will require a rethink of how we use space. What will be the new “acceptable personal space allowance” that vertical transportation design will have to accommodate, and what impact will this have on existing buildings?

As offices start to reopen, occupancy levels may need to be restricted because the elevator system cannot move the required population at peak times of the day, due to the need to observe social distancing.

There will have to be restrictions on the number of people entering a building, with staggered arrival times and enforced stair use on lower levels. Elevators will also have to be cleaned much more frequently, with hand sanitizer provided in the lobbies and inside the cars. People may try to avoid touching the controls with their hands by using other methods, which could cause further delays in the system and a higher rate of breakdowns. In a world where automation and optimization have become key, staff will be required to control the flow of passengers into elevator lobbies.

There are various ways in which we can modify elevators to limit the number of people travelling in them, depending on the age of the system.

The design life of an elevator is typically 15-25 years before it needs to be modernized or replaced, but many buildings have units that are older – there’s a huge back stock ranging back to the 1970s. There’s no way that we could bring the technology and control systems within all of those elevators up to modern standards quickly. It might be possible to limit the number of occupants by setting a lower weight limit for each car. Most elevators have a load weighing device, used to prevent it carrying a higher load than it was designed for. This is typically set at 80%, but could be reduced to 20% to restrict the number of people to a safe level.

More complex vertical transportation systems that use destination control or energy-saving technology based on complex algorithms might be more difficult to adjust.

In recent years, vertical transportation strategies have been designed to minimize energy use. For example, newer elevators are fitted with much more sophisticated electronic load weighing devices, which measure the strain on certain components in order to apply the minimum amount of torque to the motor to move the weight in the car. The other area of efficiency is in the management of passengers. With hall call allocation control, for example, you present your swipe card at the lobby entry speed gate or elevator control system. It knows where you need to go to, summons an elevator and tells you which one to board. The advantage is that this is completely touch-free, but the problem is that the efficiency works directly against social distancing. Hall call allocation clusters people who are going to the same floor or sequential floors, so that the car only makes a limited number of stops with a greater number of people inside. That has two effects: it makes the cars busier and it means that people cluster around a specific entrance in the lobby, both of which work counter to social distancing. WSP’s VT team is working with elevator suppliers’ R&D teams to explore options for reducing the sensitivity and efficiency of these control systems, to allow the elevators to be dispatched containing fewer passengers.

Can elevator manufacturers detune or desensitize the control systems or reset the load weighing devices?

At the moment, we don’t know how easy it is to do that. Offices that use these complex controls may need to introduce a temporary concierge stationed before the speed gate or turnstiles to restrict the flow of people into the elevator lobby, to help manage crowding during times of high demand. Each tenant in the building can control the lobby on their level, but it will still be crucial to address the underlying algorithm technology, to make sure that the elevator isn’t stopping and allowing more people into the car.

Post-pandemic, people may remain reluctant to interact with elevators.

 With advances in smart building and smartphone technology, there are already solutions that reduce the need to touch the controls. For example, sensors in residential buildings can enable the system to understand when a resident appears to be approaching and send an elevator to that level.

Technology coming on to the market could almost remove the need to touch anything at all.

 In smart buildings, building users might wear keyrings or fobs integrated to the security system that would enable their movements to be tracked. Sensors in lobbies would detect that you’ve turned left towards the elevators and start preparing a car for you. Many security systems now support virtual fobs, by interacting with your phone or smart device. They could potentially go one step further, allowing employers to schedule arrival time elevator access to spread out peak demand. This strategy may ultimately be the best for larger commercial tenants occupying multiple floors, who have greater control over the occupancy of elevator cabs. The bigger question is whether people really want their phone to be controlling their lives to that degree. Do you want to be mapped by your mobile phone signal and for your phone to exchange that information with the building? That’s a whole different debate.

Stairs may become a more prominent consideration in buildings.

They are more open by definition, and there is better visibility, which makes social distancing easier. Stairs also support wellbeing strategies by encouraging people to move more. But there are only so many flights we can expect people to walk up. Industry standards recognize that if people work on the first floor of a building, 90% of them will walk up. On the second floor, that drops to 50%, and the third 25%. Above that, it’s elevator-only traffic. For tenants taking multiple levels in commercial buildings, convenient access stairs should be encouraged within their individual domain. As with elevator buttons, handrails are likely to become high-traffic touch points so they will require enhanced cleaning, as well as hand sanitizer dispensers at entry and exit points. 

In the longer term, it’s unlikely we will be designing buildings to allow 20m2 per person to accommodate social distancing.

For a building to make commercial sense, the rental stream has to support the business case, so it has to have a reasonable population. To make a large building practical, the total area of elevator cores has to be as small as possible and it’s always a fine balance between space-take and elevator performance. In very large buildings, we already use double-deck elevators to increase capacity without taking up extra space, as well as algorithm-based controls to manage it efficiently. The shape and size of buildings may change, but the population will still have to be fairly high in order for them to make financial sense. The crucial consideration will be the amount of space that has to be allocated to a person within the building and how much space will be acceptable for a person travelling in an elevator car. This might mean that future buildings are designed to accommodate fewer people in the same size footprint, with larger elevator cars to provide increased personal space.

 

Subscribe to receive our latest updates

More on this subject

Low Carbon

June 2025 | 6 minutes

Low-carbon strategies to Improve neighbourhood safety

Global
svg-icon Feature
Decarbonization , Places
thn-Canary Wharf Station

May 2025

Removing Barriers to Develop Integrated Public Transport

Global
svg-icon Feature
Mobility , Places , Technology
TOD-2-WP-Thumbnail

March 2025

Transit-Oriented Communities Advance Sustainable Cities

Global
svg-icon White Paper
Decarbonization , Energy Transition , Mobility , Places , Resilience , Society , Technology
Img-Planning-Paradox-Thumb

March 2025

Navigating the Built Environment Planning Paradox

Global
svg-icon Feature
Climate , Decarbonization , Energy Transition , Mobility , Places , Resilience , Resources , Society , Technology
kit of parts thumbnail

January 2025 | 3 mins

The Future of Construction Podcast

Global
svg-icon Podcast
Places , Technology
Thn-Craig-Blankers

December 2024 | 5 minutes

Expanding mission critical Centers of Excellence across the globe

Global
svg-icon Feature
Data Centres , Working at WSP , Places
thnPBFung

October 2024 | 5 minutes

Engineering buildings to power the progress of technology: An interview with Bryan Bun-Yin Fung

Global
svg-icon Feature
Data Centres , Places , Working at WSP
CS2023_2586_infrastructure pipe article thumbnail

July 2024

Reinvigorating asset maintenance and renewal in an age of ‘build new now’

New Zealand
svg-icon Feature
Climate , Places , Society
thn-UAE-retrofit

June 2024 | 8 minutes

Retrofitting…Dubai-style

Global
svg-icon Feature
Places , Decarbonization
THB - city deals

March 2024

Can City Deals improve Aotearoa New Zealand’s transport and spatial planning outcomes?

New Zealand
svg-icon Feature
Places
glass building with trees

February 2024 | 4 minutes

Modelling provides pathway to decarbonization for real estate portfolios

Global
svg-icon Feature
Places
thn-seven-principles-for-delivering-equitable-transit-oriented-developments

January 2024

Seven principles for delivering equitable Transit Oriented Developments

Australia
Mobility , Places

Author

Steven Truss 2022
Steven Truss
United Kingdom

Share this page

  • Share on Facebook - Warning, this link will open a new tab.
  • Share on Linkedin - Warning, this link will open a new tab.
  • Share on Twitter - Warning, this link will open a new tab.
  • Share on Skype - Warning, this link will open your Skype application.

Related themes and tags

  • Places (142)


  • Workplace (21)
  • Better Normal (18)
  •   Page will open in a new tab
  •   Page will open in a new tab
  •   Page will open in a new tab
  •   Page will open in a new tab
  •   Page will open in a new tab
  • Who We Are
  • Our story
  • Future Ready
  • Local Leadership
  • Our offices
  • What We Do
  • Sectors
  • Services
  • Projects
  • Insights
  • Climate
  • Mobility
  • Places
  • Society
  • Resources
  • Technology
  • Careers
  • Join our team
  • Bursary
  • Early career
  • Experienced professionals
  • Why join us?
  • Corporate
  • Sustainability
  • Health and safety
  • Investors
  • Business Conduct Hotline
  • News
  • Corporate governance
  • Ethics and integrity
    ©2025 WSP
    • The WSP Logo
    • PAIA Manual
    • Privacy Policy
    • Anti-Spam Commitment
    • Cookie Notice
    • Terms of Use
    ©2025 WSP
    Exiting our Website

    You are about to leave WSP.com and are being redirected to a job opportunity at Louis Berger, which has been recently acquired by WSP in the US.