For building professionals who encounter vertical transportation design as one element of a broader project responsibility rather than as a core specialisation, the landscape of elevator software can seem opaque. The tools used by specialist lift consultants — traffic simulation platforms, expert system optimisers, BIM integration tools — are not part of the standard architectural or structural engineering software stack, and the terminology of lift traffic analysis is specific enough that even experienced building professionals may not be fully familiar with what these tools do and why they matter.
This overview is written for architects, developers, project managers, and building engineers who want to understand what professional elevator software provides, why it is used, and how its outputs should inform the building design process. The goal is not to turn building generalists into lift specialists but to give them the context they need to commission, evaluate, and make good use of professional lift traffic analysis.
Why Vertical Transportation Deserves Specialist Attention
Vertical transportation is one of the building elements where design decisions made early in the process have consequences that persist for the entire operational life of the building and are effectively irreversible once construction is complete. The number and arrangement of lift shafts, their dimensions, and their relationship to the building’s structural grid are determined in the schematic design phase. By the time construction begins, the fundamental capacity of the building’s vertical transportation system is fixed.
If that capacity is inadequate for the building’s actual demand — if the analysis that informed the design underestimated the peak traffic load or overestimated the system’s handling capacity — the consequences are permanent. Queues at lift lobbies, excessive waiting times during peak periods, and occupant frustration become chronic features of the building’s operation. Remediation is expensive, disruptive, and typically incomplete, because adding lift shafts to an existing building is a structural and logistical challenge of the highest order.
The case for rigorous, simulation-based traffic analysis at the design stage is fundamentally a case for preventing these outcomes. The cost of professional analysis is small relative to the capital cost of the building and entirely negligible relative to the cost of remedying an inadequate lift system after construction.
What Elevator Software Actually Does
Elevator software, in its most capable contemporary form, performs several functions that together constitute the professional workflow of lift traffic analysis and design.
Traffic simulation models the movement of passengers through the building’s lift system under specified demand conditions. The simulation traces individual passenger journeys — arrivals at the lobby, waiting for a lift, riding to the destination floor — through a statistical representation of the building population and demand pattern. The result is a set of performance statistics: average waiting time, handling capacity, average journey time, and the distribution of these metrics across the passenger population. These statistics are evaluated against performance criteria appropriate for the building type to determine whether the proposed configuration is adequate.
Expert system optimisation takes the analysis further by automatically evaluating a range of potential lift configurations against the building’s parameters and identifying the optimal solution. Rather than testing one configuration at a time, the expert system tests many simultaneously and ranks them by performance, space efficiency, and cost, presenting the designer with a clear recommendation and the trade-offs between alternatives.
The CIBSE Lifts Special Interest Group provides the professional community for vertical transportation engineers in the UK, bringing together the expertise that informs both the standards that professional lift analysis should meet and the software tools that are used to conduct it. The group’s guidance, and the CIBSE Guide D series that it has produced, provides the reference framework within which professional lift traffic analysis operates.
How to Work Effectively with a Lift Analyst
For building professionals who are commissioning rather than conducting lift traffic analysis, understanding how to work effectively with a lift analyst — or with specialist software — is a practical priority. The following points consistently improve the quality of the analysis and its usefulness to the design process:
- Engage the analysis early: traffic analysis is most valuable when it can influence the fundamental design decisions about lift core size and configuration. Analysis commissioned after the core has been designed confirms or challenges what has already been decided; analysis commissioned during schematic design shapes those decisions
- Provide complete and accurate building data: the quality of a traffic analysis depends directly on the quality of its inputs. Accurate floor populations, a realistic assessment of the building’s occupancy profile, and a clear description of any non-standard features — multiple entry floors, mixed uses, sky lobbies — all improve the reliability of the results
- Understand the performance criteria being applied: ask the analyst what performance criteria they are using and ensure they are appropriate for the building type and specification level. Different criteria lead to different configuration recommendations, and understanding the basis for the design target helps the client make informed decisions about whether the proposed standard is appropriate
- Request visualisation alongside numerical outputs: the 3D traffic visualisation that modern software provides communicates the system’s performance in a way that tables of numbers cannot. Requesting this output ensures that the design team can observe how the system actually behaves under simulated peak conditions rather than relying solely on abstract statistics
What the Outputs Should Tell You
The primary output of a professional lift traffic analysis should clearly indicate whether the proposed configuration meets the performance criteria for the building type, and if not, what changes to the configuration would bring it into compliance. A good analysis report presents the building parameters used, the performance criteria applied, the configuration or configurations evaluated, and the predicted performance against each criterion — together with clear recommendations for the design decision the analysis is informing.
The analysis should also address sensitivity: how does the system’s performance change if the building population is 10% higher than estimated, or if the peak traffic period is more concentrated than the model assumes? Sensitivity analysis helps the design team understand how much confidence they should place in the analysis and whether there is sufficient performance margin to accommodate reasonable uncertainty in the input parameters.
Final Thoughts
Elevator software and lift traffic analysis are tools in service of a simple goal: ensuring that a building’s vertical transportation system works effectively for its occupants throughout its operational life. Understanding what these tools do, how their outputs should inform design decisions, and how to engage with them productively — whether as a specialist or as a building professional commissioning specialist input — is knowledge that pays dividends on any project where vertical transportation is a significant design consideration. For professionals ready to explore the capabilities of modern lift analysis platforms, adsimulo.com provides full documentation, tutorials, and a trial option for those who want to experience professional-grade simulation firsthand.
