Navigating New York’s Elevator Consulting Landscape | Matthew Montesano
In this episode, I sat down with Matthew Montesano from DTM Elevator Consulting. A family-owned business with a rich history dating back to 1982. We discussed the unique challenges and opportunities of New York’s elevator consulting market and the importance of being physically present to provide client support. We also addressed the evolution of elevator regulations in New York, the role technology plays in the industry, and how to navigate the influx of new tech while also relying on the expertise of trusted consultants.
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Transcript:
Matt Allred (00:00)
What’s a trip. Well, is that every time it comes back to ground level? Is that one trip, even though it went between, you know, five or six different floors before coming back to ground? Or is every movement a trip?
Matthew Montesano (00:11)
And also you have to realize, you know, when you’re pulling data through software, it’s
how many sensors do you have on your device? You know, is there only one spot on the controller that is pulling the trips? Are there multiple spots on your device that are pulling different counts? Are they all adding together? Are they being divided? Does door closed door open mean anything? It’s, there’s a lot of factors that go into it. I think early on when we were able to get these KPIs,
It was new, it was great, it was really fun to look at. Nowadays, we really need to hone in as an industry and understand what does the KPIs really mean? What are the
to them? So that way we can then build a better report and hand that off to our clients.
Matt Allred (00:58)
Hello and welcome to the Elevator Careers Podcast brought to you by the Allred Group. I’m your host, Matt Allred. When talent is mission critical, call the Allred Group. With industry expertise, top talent, and exceptional customer service, you need the Allred Group on your side. Your priority is our priority. Call now, 404-890-0445. In this episode, I sat down with Matthew Montesano from DTM Elevator Consulting.
a family-owned business with a rich history dating back to 1982. We discussed the unique challenges and opportunities of New York’s elevator consulting market and the importance of being physically present to provide client support. We also addressed the evolution of elevator regulations in New York, the role technology plays in the industry, and how to navigate the influx of new tech while also relying on the expertise of trusted consultants.
Matt Allred (01:52)
Matthew, welcome to the show.
Matthew Montesano (01:54)
Thank you very much for having me.
Matt Allred (01:55)
Yeah, thank you. It’s always a pleasure. I enjoyed talking with you in September at the NAEC show and yeah, glad that you’re here with me today. I wanted to just kind of start at the beginning of this episode, tell me a little bit about DTM Elevator Consulting.
Matthew Montesano (02:13)
Sure, so we’re a family-owned and operated professional consulting service
based out of New York City. It started all the way back with my grandfather in 1982, so we’ve been in business for 43 years. And it kind of went from there. My father joined just a few years later, coming straight out of the field as a mechanic. And we’ve truly grabbed every family member you could think of to help, you know, jumpstart this business.
And ⁓ looking today, we’re very fortunate. have over 30 employees here at the company. We have transitioned to 120 Broadway, which is downtown right next to Wall Street and a beautiful office space that you can see behind me. And we’re very fortunate for all that it is to own a business, be part of a family, see each
every day. And it’s ⁓ very unique and special.
occasion for us.
Matt Allred (03:07)
That’s really cool. mean, it’s certainly elevator is, you know, known for families, but it’s nice to, you know, have your family be able to be there and work together. I know I have known of some people that say, well, yeah, I had to fire my brother, you know, twice. I’m sure there’s some of that that goes on, right?
Matthew Montesano (03:27)
Yeah, we have stories here of family members having to fire other family members and you know, it goes on. Working with family is never easy, but it’s always rewarding.
Matt Allred (03:37)
I love it, I love it. So one of the interesting things from my perspective, the DTM has been around a long time, but really kind of stays focused in New York, although you have reach outside of New York, but not really chasing expansion. my question is why is New York first still the right model? And why do you feel like clients go for that?
Matthew Montesano (04:01)
Listen, it’s a great question. think for us, you know, my grandfather’s philosophy has always been
your clients are here in New York. They pay you to really have full oversight of their buildings, their devices. They want your attention when needed. Being here in the city, having an office space, we are able to go to any of our job sites. Really, as soon as a phone call hits us, we can send someone out there right away, which makes it very unique.
And you know, it’s the heart and soul of our company. It started here. It actually started in Whitestone in Queens, and it has since expanded a little bit. Now we’re downtown in Manhattan. So it really is a unique marketplace. It’s something we hold close and dear to our hearts, and it’s been very rewarding for us.
Matt Allred (04:53)
Very cool. Yeah. ⁓ And so it sounds like the reach you have outside of New York is actually with your New York based clients. Is that correct?
Matthew Montesano (05:01)
Correct. So
we do operate in other states as well and actually other countries as well.
Really because of the bonds and the relationship that we have built with our clients here in New York, as they have grown and expanded in the market to other states and countries, they have actually brought us along with them. And that made the relationship very special to us with those clients.
that we are able
expand with them and showcase our capabilities outside of just five boroughs here in New York.
Matt Allred (05:32)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. you know, in previous conversations that, you you’ve mentioned that, some consultants maybe check boxes or follow the contractor. Where’s the line that you would say between collaboration and a true owner advocacy?
Matthew Montesano (05:49)
So collaboration is important as a consultant. You have to work with all parties involved from the ownerships
to the contractors to the vendors, everyone that’s involved in a project, a day to day basis. You know, it’s very important to stay true to what you believe and what you believe is right. Obviously safety comes first in every aspect there is. And when it comes to situations or instances that occur,
it’s important to have the client’s best interest, but understand the reality of things as well. For example, here, if a deflector shiv starts to break
and the client wants it replaced tomorrow, you gotta tell them, listen, it’s just not possible. I mean, the contractors can’t get that right away. Vendors need to ship it.
Matt Allred (06:34)
Sure.
Matthew Montesano (06:40)
There’s a whole logistics behind things. Some very good property managers and owners
understand it off the bat, the complexities that come with our industry. Others that are new to property management or not as informed maybe don’t see the reality when it comes to timelines, projections, budget costs, stuff of that nature, which is why we
in here to help guide them through it because it is a very complex industry that we work in.
Matt Allred (07:09)
No, absolutely, absolutely. Well, and it seems to me, and I know I’ve mentioned something similar on other interviews with consultants, that you do write a very fine line kind of between representing the building owner and being fair with the contractor and whatever other interests are in there. But also in some ways, maybe you’re the peace broker. Maybe you’re the one that gets to…
to step in there and help everybody kind of see it from the other person’s perspective.
Matthew Montesano (07:40)
Yeah, that happens on a daily basis. Every job, there’s always going to be a situation. ⁓ And depending on who you deal with, you’re always dealing with different
Whether it comes from the ownership side, whether it come from the contractor side, you really need to understand everyone’s perspective and be mindful of that because you are dealing with things that 90 % of the time are out of their control off the bat.
And so you need to be the
between the two parties or if there’s multiple people and companies involved in that.
Matt Allred (08:16)
Right, right. Well, there’s always a lot on the line, right? There’s a lot of cost, there’s a lot of convenience or inconvenience or so-and-so can’t get up to their office because, you know, this has been down for a while. So it’s, there’s a lot of, probably a lot of emotion tied up in lot of that as well.
Matthew Montesano (08:34)
Yeah, I think some things that get overlooked here and we see a lot on the consulting end
the bigger picture. And that is where do building owners and property managers report to? Right. They report to their bosses that could report to their bosses. At the end of the day, everyone is reporting to banks, asset management, anyone providing funding, because that’s where you’re getting all of this money from in the first place. And this is how projects kick off.
So everyone has to report to someone else and it always goes up the ladder. Some people don’t see how far it goes, which is why we try and come in here to paint the picture to everyone, to understand that it’s not a simple A to B movement. It does take a lot of steps to get approval, especially on the ownership end of things. And anytime you talk about money, especially these days now, it’s always a sensitive subject.
It is hard to find that funding. We hope it gets easier because then we could get more projects here in the city. But, you know, it’s always someone’s reporting up to someone else.
Matt Allred (09:39)
That’s true.
For sure, for sure. Yeah. And one thing that always strikes me about just New York in general, it seems to be a little bit of its own world, right? With the DOB process and some of that from talking to people, it seems like it’s uniquely difficult. I mean, I’ve talked to people that, know, it seems like it takes a long time at times or, you know, there’s obviously compliance risk if you have violations. What, and I guess, you know, one of the questions, you know, what to do about
out of state owners and maybe they underestimate when they buy and operate in New York. But how do you guys handle that? I mean, obviously it’s part of just the culture you live in.
Matthew Montesano (10:26)
So yeah, so we like to provide a lot of documentation upfront to the owners, kind of high level
on what is required here by code. In New York City, there are two tests that are annually inspected per year. That’s DOB mandated. It’s your category inspections, which I’m sure everyone across the country knows the category ones, category fives, but then also here in New York, what makes us special is we do have the periodic inspections as well.
which is required. In addition, ⁓ there’s a three month interval between the two that have to be done. And the visual inspection has to be witnessed by a third party. It does not require the elevator contractor at that time. So it is a specific inspection and everything comes with a cost. The filings on the DOB, every filing has a fee associated with that. So you need to be aware.
and you need to be aware of the timelines. As I mentioned, the three-month rule, the yearly inspections, cat five due dates, those are all important for owners to be aware of because it depends on where they allocate their budgets. If they have to do inspections on overtime, it could cost a lot of money depending on the amount of devices you have and then complexities of every building. If you have certain tenants that cannot allow the elevators to be taken out during the day.
How do you go around that and schedule those inspections? So it is important for owners to be informed upfront by their consultants on what is required, especially the new codes that come out. there’s a lot that goes into it. So if they’re not familiar with the New York market
a consultant, it’s important to bring them up to speed as fast as possible on their devices that they have in the buildings.
Matt Allred (12:13)
Right, right. Well, it probably makes a lot of sense, you know, working with a firm like yours that, hey, you guys, you know, what’s going on, you know, what’s changed and just kind of how to operate, which brings up, you know, one of these questions, you know, that the DOB is allowing third parties to do acceptance testing. The question is, what is actually changing and what should owners, contractors know to avoid any surprises?
Matthew Montesano (12:39)
Sure, so it started last year. The Department of Buildings has issued a statement allowing
third-party agencies to perform acceptance tests. So this is something that is new. It used to be in the past the Department of Buildings would send their inspectors out to do acceptance tests. However, due to a shortage in their inspectors, they realized that with long lead times, owners have been complaining.
that their devices are not getting put back in service in a quick enough time frame. And so they’re allowing other people to come in who they trust and can verify the right tests are done and the devices are safe and compliant to be put back in service. So it is something new we are going on year two, which is very exciting for us. And what’s important to know is that there’s a lot of rules that come into just acceptance tests.
You have to provide a 10-day notice to the Department of Buildings and that’s provided by your elevator contractor. And just because you are hiring a third-party witnessing agency to oversee the acceptance test doesn’t mean that DOB can’t just show up anyway and review it and be there on site. So there are things that owners need to be aware of. Obviously there’s an associated cost by all parties involved with this. To get it in, filing the forms is very important.
You know, just because you
the forms, everything passed, the DOB still needs to review before that car is allowed to be put back in service. Certificates still need to be issued. So you can’t just say, hey, it passed, it’s good, we’re back in service. No, you have to wait for the DOB to really give the stamp of approval. So it does speed up the timeline, but there is still a little bit of bottlenecking involved in that process.
Matt Allred (14:11)
Gotcha.
Right,
right. No, thank you and speaking of bottlenecks, this is something we talked about before is just that there’s a lot of, I guess, practical workarounds without cutting corners. what’s something you could say about that practical workarounds within the rules? You know, sometimes it sounds like it’s cheating or that it’s,
violating some kind of but it sounds like there’s ways to be smart about it.
Matthew Montesano (14:52)
Sure, it all comes down to timing. And I think you’ve got to understand the timelines that it
to get certain inspections done. You know, what availability the contractors have, what the third party witnessing agencies have. It really comes out to the more in advance you can plan, the easier it is. You know, a lot of owners wait until the last second and they get themselves into a little bit of a pickle.
And that brings on a bigger challenge when it comes to coordinating an inspection between consultants
contractors. And that’s where you see a lot of push and pull.
Matt Allred (15:34)
Interesting. I appreciate you bringing that up. I mean, it sounds like these are tests, and none of these are surprise, right? They already know. It might be that, we don’t want to spend the money yet, right? But we still know that this has to be done. It’s almost, you know, like, Going to the dentist, right? it has to be done.
Matthew Montesano (15:51)
Right, yeah, the DOB makes a point to give out notices years in advance.
Some of the codes that were coming up, single plunger code here in New York City, it’s no longer allowed to have a single plunger brake on a traction device. You need to have a dual brake or an undetected motion device secondary to it. So that’s something that’s been issued for a few years now. And it’s due the end of the year, December 31st.
Clients are in the rush now who haven’t already been in compliance or done some type of alteration to their devices to get it in
before the end of the year. Timelines are just expanding every day due to the high demand.
Matt Allred (16:36)
No, I can only imagine. I mean, I have heard a lot of buzz just in the industry of, know, unintended motion protection or, you brakes or things that people can add to. But obviously a lot of that being driven by the codes and the regulations they were given, I don’t know, what, a couple of years? How long has the…
Matthew Montesano (16:59)
Yeah, I want to say two years it’s been out. Two years ⁓ and some will even say they’ve known about it longer than that.
Matt Allred (17:01)
Okay.
Right, right. Now whether they did something about it is a different story.
Matthew Montesano (17:12)
Yes.
It’s a little bit more of a complex code requirement than it was with door lock monitoring. Back in 2019, door lock monitoring, you just had to add a additional feature to your controller if you were already in compliance with that technology. And this one’s a little bit more intuitive.
Matt Allred (17:26)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Montesano (17:34)
It involves a lot of lead times to get the equipment. I’m sure everyone has heard of
the rope gripper, the hydro brake you see them all over the conferences that we have in the industry. And it’s important to understand that as we get closer to that deadline, these are going to be in more high demand and therefore you’re not going to be able to
that product by the end of the year. And you’re going to find yourself in a tough situation, especially on the ownership side.
Matt Allred (18:04)
For sure. Do you see that a lot of the direction for the industry comes out of New York and then kind of, New York’s like maybe an early adopter. It’s like, we’re going to do this. And then it kind of flows out to the rest of the country.
Matthew Montesano (18:20)
Yes, I’d say we’re one of the top states that are part of that. Right now, at this time, ⁓ Florida’s going through the whole DLM program.
Matt Allred (18:23)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Montesano (18:31)
We’ve already done that a few years back, as I mentioned. The single plunger code here is coming up. I’m sure that’s going to spread across the country as well. New York takes safety to the extreme, and we want to make sure that all of our devices are as safe as possible for the riding public.
So adding a secondary brake adding a door lock monitoring feature, these are all ways that help protect everyone that’s using their devices every day.
Matt Allred (18:59)
For sure. Well, in New York, obviously you’ve got more riding public on elevators than probably any other state in the US, I’m assuming, right?
Matthew Montesano (19:08)
The last bit of research I saw was the Department of Building stated there was 84,000 devices in New York State. So that’s a significant number compared to some other states.
Matt Allred (19:23)
Yeah. And I’m chuckling because I grew up in Western Wyoming and there was one elevator that I’m aware of in my whole town, but it was under lock and key at the high school. And you could only ride it if you like broke your leg and you know, needed to.
Matthew Montesano (19:37)
Right, and when I went to college at West Virginia, I was in the dorm rooms and I think it was maybe 11 floors and they were actually the tallest buildings in the state.
Matt Allred (19:47)
Wow. Okay.
Matthew Montesano (19:49)
Yeah, so
every state is very unique in their own way, but here in New York we all know the skyline and how these buildings are getting taller and taller. The equipment is getting more complex. There’s a whole technology portion to it, so we really try and stay on top of all the new equipment that is coming out into the industry and how we can protect everyone that rides them every day.
Matt Allred (20:12)
Yeah, just the volume of the the riders has got to be enormous. So you mentioned in a previous conversation that the DOB is moving to a new electronic database or had moved rather and maybe you’re still feeling it. Just curious what broke, what improved, what’s still painful?
Matthew Montesano (20:33)
Yeah, so DOB moved to an online system a couple of years back.
You know, was a big change for everyone here in New York. Essentially, instead of collecting a whole stack of forms that you had for the week and going down to the Department of Buildings,
going through security, grabbing a help ticket, waiting in line for the window booth, kind of like your DMV,
Matt Allred (20:56)
Sure.
Matthew Montesano (20:57)
now all electronic. And that really changed
a lot of how we do business. It has helped tremendously in the amount of time it takes to get these forms
We can do an inspection in the morning, have them pretty much signed off by the afternoon.
So that’s a big improvement. But as any type of software and new database systems, there’s always bugs and challenges that slow down processes at times.
Matt Allred (21:26)
Sure.
Matthew Montesano (21:27)
One of the biggest challenges was when they moved to this online system, their old database did not integrate over. So when you’re looking at the Department of DOB Safety, which is their online database, you cannot see data prior to 2018 unless if you find the little ways around it, there are some hidden
Matt Allred (21:35)
Mmm.
Matthew Montesano (21:54)
websites that you can go to and areas to see the older stuff. But for the general public, ownership groups,
Matt Allred (21:55)
Interesting.
Matthew Montesano (22:01)
third parties, anyone that wants to see equipment information, the public portal is a great place to go. You can see the inspections, permits, violations of your devices in the building, previous history. But if you’re really trying to date back for
million different reasons that you would need to, it is a little challenging.
Matt Allred (22:21)
Yeah, I would imagine. mean, it sounds like it’s a huge improvement over the paper system. And so that’s awesome. Let’s talk just a little bit about violation tracking. And I think you had mentioned something about the old bar tab problem. You dealt with violations, dropping, what’d you say, five to seven years late. How did that happen? And what’s kind of the step-by-step process you used to figure out
responsibility and protect the current owner.
Matthew Montesano (22:52)
Yeah. So I think, you know, how it happened was it stemmed from the lack of resources that the Department of Buildings had, the shortage in staff, in order to push the paperwork through and to end, to say.
Matt Allred (23:01)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Montesano (23:06)
At one time they issued violations dating back five to seven years that caught everyone off guard. There was no notice that went out. So
our office received quite a number of calls with some concerned clients saying, my building has all these violations. What is going on here? So it really, it comes down to putting your detective hat on and investigating, you know, what each violation means, where did it come from?
You don’t want to point fingers right away at anyone and just blame the contractor, blame the owner for negligence. You really want to
Matt Allred (23:38)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Montesano (23:45)
dig
the timeline and see where did it fall with communication, scheduling, maybe someone forgot to add something on an email of a date or they forgot to provide the deadline to the owner and they weren’t made aware. So for me, I had a big
this past year. They had over 30 violations.
at one given time so that took a while, took a full year to get through and essentially I had to end up talking to the ownership team, previous consultants, previous contractors. I mean you gotta understand that owners don’t keep buildings as long as they used to ⁓ and it changes hands a lot. Contractors change hands all the time so you’re dealing with people that aren’t even in the building anymore
Matt Allred (24:14)
Wow.
Yeah.
Matthew Montesano (24:42)
but
you need to be able to work and collaborate with everyone to say, listen, I’m not pointing the finger. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this. What happens in this scenario? And you go down the list, you go down the years, and then eventually you’ll come to light and say, all right, this is what, well, this is why the violation occurred X, Y, and Z, right? And it’s up to ownership at that time. And it’s up to
the contractor to really sit down and figure out how are we going to move forward with getting these cleared. Violations is a big concern because they can hold
the cell of a building getting permits for other work inside the building.
Matt Allred (25:27)
almost like a lien
right? Like it’s pending and somebody’s gotta clear it out or it’s not going anywhere.
Matthew Montesano (25:33)
Exactly and especially when it comes to the two annual inspections we mentioned, know these violations range from $3,000 to $5,000 per violation. So it is a big expense here.
Matt Allred (25:44)
Do
they get more expensive over time? it? Oh, I was gonna say if there’s like interest being charged or, know, it’s like, wow.
Matthew Montesano (25:47)
They do not. No. ⁓
No, no, it’s a flat fee, but the DOB has made it clear that you’re going to get hit with it if you are in violation and you miss filings or you miss inspections. It can add up pretty quickly.
Matt Allred (26:05)
Okay. So
let me just give you the hypothetical. So, and part of this is just my ignorance of the process, the system, know, everything that’s going on. Let’s say that, yeah, five years ago, somebody missed an inspection, but we’ve hit every single one since then. Do we still owe the 5,000 for that one that got missed five years ago? Wow. Okay.
Matthew Montesano (26:26)
Yep, yep.
But the city’s gonna make money anyway they can. And you know, it is important, and the whole entire reason is safety, right? To make sure that you are in compliance. So yes, they will go back in their records and they will violate you if you are years back.
Matt Allred (26:35)
sure.
Which makes sense. You know, I was assuming violations could also be, well, you didn’t upgrade a certain thing in time, but then maybe in the last three years you did. And therefore, you know, is that violation still active? I guess it depends on when you actually upgraded it.
Matthew Montesano (26:59)
Yeah, and obviously here there’s always complexities that occur with it. If let’s just say your elevator is out and you have a permit for a modernization
or any type of alteration to the equipment and you miss an inspection, there are scenarios where the contractor can file
waiver and that would be under DOB review to see if the waiver is legit.
Matt Allred (27:24)
basically saying, it wasn’t
being used then anyway. know, was whatever. We gutted the shaft, we started over with a mod and there was, you couldn’t have done it if you wanted to.
Matthew Montesano (27:34)
Correct, and a lot of contractors know about this and are very familiar. So they know what paperwork is required to submit to the DOB. And we have seen numerous times where waivers are approved. There are also times when waivers do not get approved. And then you get yourself into that situation where you’re going to have to end up paying the bar tab.
Matt Allred (27:37)
Mm.
Yeah. You get left holding the bill for sure. ⁓ So let’s talk for just a minute about some the reports. You mentioned that DTM doesn’t just spit out generic reports. ⁓ What does custom actually look like in practice and why does it change outcomes for owners?
Matthew Montesano (28:15)
Sure, so yeah. So what makes us a little bit unique here being a small business
that all of our inspections that we do come with a formal report that goes with it. And that’s something that owners really love to see. What we do special is we take each buildings and each device’s KPIs and we accumulate it into our report based on whatever type of inspection we do, whether it be testing, water damage, new installations.
and we kind of put a full 360 picture together for the ownership group. We understand that these reports give them clarity into something that they’re not too familiar with. Not everyone knows elevators the way we know elevators. And so we kind of want to guide them into this is what’s existing, this is what we project, or this is what you need to do, this is what you have to budget for. And we really try and make sure that every report that comes out of our office
is at a first class standard to that client and that they are able to take it and run with it. We understand that our reports can be used as legal
documentation and once you put it out there to them, that report lives forever.
Matt Allred (29:30)
Yeah, you mentioned the KPIs and I’m assuming you’re meaning like trip counts. How do you track some of those, like population density or ride quality tools? Are those KPIs that live in the controller or do you have outside monitoring software or where do those come from? Because yeah, in my mind, I’m just like, how do you know? Does the elevator tell you?
Matthew Montesano (29:55)
Yeah, so there are a lot of different equipments these days, new technology
then third party integrations as well that now monitoring all these different KPIs like trip counts, quality of ride, stuff of that nature. Usually the contractor will give it to us for a formal review and we’ll put a report together based on the findings to see if what the readings are satisfactory.
to first class standards or maybe there needs to be improvements in some areas. In terms of trip counts, population density is something owners love to look at because they want to see their buildings full. They want to see how often the equipment’s being
On our end as consultants, we look at it as how much wear and tear is the equipment taking at that time. You know, there’s a big difference between a device that has a few thousand trips in a month to over a million trips in a month. And we see
Matt Allred (30:43)
for
Matthew Montesano (30:52)
the whole spectrum of that in our portfolio. So we really get to ensure that the information that we get is accurate, that it makes sense, and that we are able to paint the picture to the client saying these are the results and this is what we believe the next step should be.
Matt Allred (30:55)
Yeah.
Absolutely, yeah, I’ve been told by other consultants that trip counts is really the way, can count like miles on your vehicle, right? It’s a really a good test of just how much wear and tear, how much use, how much maintenance really needs to be done on this machine.
Matthew Montesano (31:26)
Right, and also you know what we’ve noticed in the past year is different contractors count trip counts differently, which is something a little unique there.
Matt Allred (31:37)
That is
unique. I’m like, I one, two. I don’t know how they how they would do that, but OK.
Matthew Montesano (31:40)
Mm-hmm.
So I would say right now in the industry, there probably is no standard as to what a trip count is. Us
at DTM, we believe it one way. Someone else could believe it a different way. The whole key there is to have consistency, right? And it is to make sure that what you believe is a trip stays consistent across the boards, across the months. That way you are having some real data. If you see too much inconsistency…
data really doesn’t mean much at all and you can’t provide that to ownership and give them some kind of
data because it doesn’t make sense in the first place.
Matt Allred (32:20)
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s a good point. And as I thought about that, I thought, you know, there is certainly some ambiguity in, you know, What’s a trip. Well, is that every time it comes back to ground level? Is that one trip, even though it went between, you know, five or six different floors before coming back to ground? Or is every movement a trip?
Matthew Montesano (32:37)
And also you have to realize, you know, when you’re pulling data through software, it’s
how many sensors do you have on your device? You know, is there only one spot on the controller that is pulling the trips? Are there multiple spots on your device that are pulling different counts? Are they all adding together? Are they being divided? Does door closed door open mean anything? there’s a lot of factors that go into it. I think early on when we were able to get these KPIs,
It was new, it was great, it was really fun to look at. Nowadays, we really need to hone in as an industry and understand what does the KPIs really mean? What are the
to them? So that way we can then build a better report and hand that off to our clients.
Matt Allred (33:23)
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you’re right, they’re cool and they look great in a report, right? But if you’re not using them to actually improve your experience or your costs or your maintenance, then they don’t mean anything.
Matthew Montesano (33:37)
Exactly. And the KPIs have a lot of benefits to them.
It definitely helps the tenant experience because you’re able to hone in on certain aspects that are lacking. You’re able to improve maintenance efficiency. Maybe you realize the doors are giving you more trouble than any other part of device. So you got to work on doors a little bit more. It helps with callbacks. Maybe we’re to get less callbacks now that you’re performing better maintenance on the device.
You can see your numbers start to rise in a good
saying, oh, wow, we haven’t had a call in so many months now. And your KPIs represent that.
Matt Allred (34:16)
Sure, sure. as they’re used wisely, right, there’s a lot of benefit. So, yeah, good point. You know, as an industry, as a company, as you watch those and can actually improve upon them, then yeah, you’re going to get better numbers.
Matthew Montesano (34:31)
Yeah, I think it’s definitely something that’s going to hang around.
There’s definitely going to be new KPIs that come out as technology advances. So I’m going to be excited to see what other things we can start tracking in the industry.
it’s all going to be beneficial at the end of the day because we’re going to be able to provide the best service to our clients.
Matt Allred (34:50)
Absolutely, very cool. Well, Matthew, just one final question for you as we wrap up. And I’m just curious as a multi-generational consultant, what are you seeing in the next wave of industry tech pace, AI hype versus reality? what should owners start to do now to stay smart without just chasing tiny objects or chasing the…
something that looks important, but maybe isn’t.
Matthew Montesano (35:17)
Yeah, sure. So technology is huge these
AI, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about AI, especially now in our industry, it’s getting brought up a lot. Companies are starting to peek into it and start playing with it. The key with all of that is that you need to trust your instincts. You need to rely on previous knowledge. You got to grab information from your peers.
AI is great, it’s smart, it can help me write an email, but it cannot tell me that a deflector shiv on a high-rise car can only last so many years. And, you know, the traveling cable is short a few strands, or maybe you have a broken cable on the 37th floor, and, you know, it needs to be replaced with this type of rope. It’s not…
there. You really need to rely on your industry professionals here. Even as it advances, I think our industry is so unique, so specialized, so intuitive that we still have plenty of time to go before
we start relying on AI to help us make educational decisions to our clients.
Matt Allred (36:39)
No, absolutely. And I can see that as cool as those tools are, right, if you have a good consulting firm or somebody who sees this and can really help guide you, then it’s, you don’t need to get too excited about the next thing as much as make sure you’ve got some good advisors and don’t waste your money on something that’s just not gonna help.
Matthew Montesano (37:02)
Right, and also do your research too. In our industry, a lot of tech companies are coming out. It is great to see,
but you got to see what are they providing and they can provide some really good stuff. But does that integrate well with your business, your reporting, what your clients are looking for? Right? You’re only going to see more more tech companies come out as the years go on. Our industry is going to be heavily integrated with new equipment that comes out.
new technology, new KPIs. So it’s important to really ensure that you understand the full picture before you just jump to conclusions, stick with one, and just run with it. Really make sure that you understand where the information is coming from, how can you utilize it in your day-to-day aspect,
how confident are you with using it to provide something of a service to your clients.
Matt Allred (37:56)
Absolutely. Well, Matthew, it’s been a lot of fun. Thank you for your time. Appreciate you being on the show with me today.
Matthew Montesano (38:02)
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.
Matt Allred (38:04)
Thank you for listening to the Elevator Careers Podcast sponsored by the Allred Group, a leader in elevator industry recruiting. Please visit our YouTube channel @ElevatorCareers or check us out online at elevatorcareers.net. Please like and subscribe and until next time, stay safe.