Town councils’ lift performance: Ownself check (score) ownself?

By: Leong Sze Hian

After writing “Minister: 4 lift breakdowns per lift per year (score 2 out of 5) OK?” (Apr 10), I had a lingering naggy feeling that something wasn’t right.

All town councils’ lift performance “green”? 

You see – the latest Town Council Management Report (TCMR) FY2015 had all the town councils scoring “green” for “lift performance”.

So many breakdowns, increase lifts’ S & CC?

How can this be – when there have been so many reports of frequent lift breakdowns, people getting injured or killed, resulting in the imposition of an additional 14 per cent of the Service and Conservancy Charges (S & CC) to the sinking fund (increase in S & CC)?

Are the rest as bad as Bishan-Toa Payoh?

How can all the town councils have scored “green”, despite the above and the revelation now of the poor lift statistics for Bishan-Toa Payoh?

Something very wrong with the Town Council Management Report?

Do all these mean that there may be something very wrong with the TMCR and its scoring methodology?

Lift performance scoring methodology?

Well, let’s examine the lift performance scoring methodology.

Out of the total of 10 points – 4 is for the frequency of lift breakdowns, 5 for Average Lift ARD failure rate per month, and 1 point for the Percentage of lifts that break down frequently (equal to or more than 3 times a month).

The chances of equal to or more than 0.1% of the total number of lifts breaking down equal to or more than 3 times a month may be quite small, such that the 1 point allocated may be quite easy to attain.

As to the “Average Lift ARD failure rate per month” – I googled and found the following:

“the largest lift company in the market is satisfied with the failure rate during the blackout.

“The reliability of this device is very high and chances of failure are very small,” said Phuah Cheng Kok, Executive Vice-President, Fujitec.

“Because it is an electro-mechanical device that’s dependent on a battery, there is still a small chance that this device can fail because of age or equipment failure.”

He added: “So looking at the number of calls that were received during the blackout, out of the whole of Singapore, there were only 20 cases, which makes it one in every 1,000 chance of failure. So it’s a very good statistic”.

Easy to score points?

So, does it mean that the chances of scoring high for this sub-category may be arguably, quite easy?

Why so many points to the “easy scores” sub-categories?

If this is the case, why allocate so many points (5) to this “easy scoring” category, but only 4 points to lift breakdowns which arguably may be more important and significant but harder to score well?

Ownself Check (score) Ownself?

It does seem looking at the above – that the lift performance scoring methodology may arguably be – by design – intentional or otherwise – sure to score “green” one! (pardon my Singlish)