Editorial standards.

Who writes the lessons.

Lift Academy is written by Durant Lifts, a family-run lift engineering company serving London, Kent and the South East. Lessons carry the byline Durant Lifts engineering team, because each one is the work of the company rather than of a single author.

Each lesson is researched from the primary sources it cites and drafted with the help of AI writing tools. Every factual statement is then checked against its source, and our engineering team reviews the lesson before it is published.

We are a lift company, so the lessons link to our services where they are relevant. They are written to explain, not to sell: the guidance is the same whoever maintains your lifts.

How we use sources.

Statements about the law link to the legislation itself on legislation.gov.uk, or to guidance from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and GOV.UK. Where a lesson relies on industry guidance, such as that published by the Lift and Escalator Industry Association (LEIA), it says so.

British and European standards, such as the EN 81 series, are copyright documents sold by their publishers. We describe what they cover, name them by number and point to the official publisher, never to unofficial copies.

Quotations are copied from the source and checked word for word. Each lesson lists its sources at the end, with the date we last checked them.

Where a lesson gives our own view or experience rather than a requirement, it says so, with words such as “in our view” or “in our experience”.

How we write.

• Plain English. We explain technical words when we first use them, and the lift glossary defines them all in one place.
• No invented figures. Numbers come from a cited source. Where a lesson uses an example to show how something works, it says that it is an example.
• The law as written. We say what the law requires and what guidance recommends, and keep the two apart. When a lesson gives the standard intervals for thorough examination under LOLER, it also says that a competent person’s examination scheme can set different ones.
• The right words. We use the words engineers and examiners use, such as “call-out” and “thorough examination”, and UK English throughout.

Safety.

The lessons explain how lifts work and what the law expects. They are not instructions for working on a lift. Only trained, competent people should work on lift equipment, go into a lift shaft or pit, or release trapped passengers.

Diagrams and photos.

Our diagrams are original illustrations drawn for Lift Academy. They are simplified to show one idea clearly, and they are not drawings of any particular lift or make of lift.

Photos are from our own jobs. We remove location data and anything that identifies a client, a building or a person, and we never present a generated image as a photo.

Every diagram has a written description for screen readers, and the interactive diagrams also work as plain numbered lists when JavaScript is turned off.

Dates, reviews and corrections.

Every page shows the date it was last updated. We review the lessons regularly, and sooner when the law, official guidance or a standard changes.

If you spot a mistake, or something has changed, please tell us through our contact page. We check every report against the sources, correct the lesson if it needs it and update its date.

What Lift Academy is not.

• Not accredited training. The lessons do not lead to a qualification or a certificate.
• Not a substitute for advice on your building. Decisions about a particular lift or building rest with the people responsible for it. Rely on your competent person, your lift contractor and, where needed, legal advice.
• Written for England. Workplace health and safety law such as LOLER applies across Great Britain, and Northern Ireland has its own versions. Building regulations and fire safety law are devolved, so they differ in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Your privacy.

You can read every lesson without an account. If you choose to mark lessons as complete, your browser saves that progress in its local storage, under the name durant_learn_progress_v1. It stays on your device and is never sent to us. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes it.

The tender checklist and the LOLER schedule planner run in your browser. We do not receive or save what you type or tick. Like the rest of our website, these pages load Google Tag Manager to measure how the site is used. For the tools, that records only which tool was used and how, such as the interval chosen in the planner, never the dates, names or items you enter. Our privacy policy explains how we handle the information you send us.