Escalator Field Guide
Elevator Field Guide
Vertical Transportation Field Guide
Get the appThe A17 Family Tree
A17.1 isn't the whole elevator code. It's just the trunk. Here's how A17.2 through A17.8 and the CSA B44 books branch off it, plus the one code people often mistake for a sibling.
Everything that branches off A17.1
"The elevator code" is really a family of documents. A17.1 ( with Canada's CSA B44) is the core rulebook. The rest are either specialized guides that support it, or separate documents jurisdictions can adopt on their own.
The core rulebook: design, construction, installation, testing, maintenance. This is the one every province and state actually adopts into law, and the one every other book below relates back to.
How inspectors actually test what A17.1 requires: methods, sequence, and what to flag.
Retrofit rules for equipment installed under an older code that was never required to meet current A17.1.
How rescue crews safely evacuate passengers from a stuck car.
The detailed electrical and controller rulebook A17.1 points to.
Wire-rope and governor material, testing, and replacement criteria. Ontario adopts the 2017 edition as a requirement, alongside A17.1/B44.
A route for genuinely new equipment that doesn't fit A17.1's prescriptive rules: prove it's safe, not just compliant.
Elevators inside a wind turbine tower, carrying technicians and their tools. They live with extreme temperatures and a structure that moves, so full compliance with A17.1 Part 2 isn't practical. This book covers them instead. Ontario adopts it.
What to service and how often, for use when the manufacturer's own schedule isn't available or too little is known about the equipment's age and condition. A Canadian book with no A17 twin, and not the Canadian version of A17.2, despite the number.
Why only some books have a CSA number
Four of these are written jointly and published as one binational document, so they carry both numbers: A17.1/B44, A17.5/B44.1, A17.7/B44.7 and A17.8/B44.8. The rest (A17.2, A17.3, A17.4 and A17.6) are ASME documents with no CSA twin at all. They are still used in Canada; they simply are not reissued under a B44 number. A17.2 handles this by carrying its Canadian references and exceptions inside the book itself.
The trap in the numbering: B44.2 is not the Canadian A17.2. A17.2 is the inspection guide: how an inspector tests what the code requires. B44.2 is about maintenance intervals: what gets serviced and how often. Same digit, different subjects, and no relationship between them.
Checked against Ontario’s current Code Adoption Document, which adopts ASME A17.6-2017 with no CSA number beside it and is where A17.8 / B44.8 is adopted. Alberta’s list of codes in force is shorter: A17.1-2019/B44-19, B311-24, B355:24 and Z185:23, with no A17.6 and no B44.2. Which books are in force is set province by province: find your code.
Two things you will meet that are not A17 family
Both turn up in adoption regulations next to the core code. Neither is written by the A17 committee, so neither is on the trunk above.
Provinces adopt these Canadian books next to the core code, each covering equipment B44 doesn't. You will see them listed in an adoption regulation and wonder where they fit. This is where.
- CSA B355: platform lifts and stair lifts for barrier-free access
- CSA B613: private residence lifts. Folded into B355 as of the 2019 edition, so newer adoptions cover it through B355 rather than naming it separately. You will still see it cited in older regulations.
- CSA B311: manlifts
- CSA Z185: personnel hoists (construction hoists)
- CSA Z98: passenger ropeways
Each one carries an edition year, exactly like B44 does. Provinces sit much further apart on these than they do on the core code. British Columbia still names B355-09; Alberta moved to B355:24 on 1 December 2025. That is the same book, fifteen years apart, so “CSA B355” on its own does not tell you what the rules are. The edition your province names does.
You will see the year written two ways, a hyphen (B311-24) and a colon (B355:24). They mean the same thing; CSA changed its house style partway through, and some government pages use both in one list. A trailing is a reaffirmation, not a new edition.
Which of these are in force where you work, and at which edition, depends on your province: find your code.
Governs wheelchair platform lifts and stairway chairlifts. It sounds like an A17 sibling and covers adjacent equipment, but it's written by an entirely separate ASME committee (A18, not A17). This equipment used to live inside A17.1 itself (Parts 20 & 21) until it split off into its own standard in 1999. Worth knowing so you're not hunting for it inside A17.1.
The harmonization timeline
The US and Canada didn't always share a codebook. Every edition of A17.1 and CSA B44 since 1921, and the three steps that turned two codes into (almost) one document.
B44 2nd
B44 4th
B44 7th
Scroll the rail sideways: 1921 on the left, today on the right.
Before 1978 the gap between US editions ran anywhere from four years to eighteen. Since then it has held at three, and the joint book keeps that rhythm.
Lettered codes are addenda, not editions. Between editions ASME issued supplements named with a letter after the number and dated by the year they came out. A17.1a-1991 and A17.1b-1992 are the first and second supplements to the 1990 edition, and the next full edition is 1993; the 1996 edition ran to four, A17.1a-1997 through A17.1d-2000, all folded into the 2000 book. That is why a maintenance rule or an old adoption regulation can cite a year that is not on the rail. The current code uses these supplements as cutoffs for which units a rule applies to: comb-step impact devices are adjusted to the current forces on escalators installed under A17.1b-1992 and later (8.6.8.4.3); the loaded step/skirt gap, 5 mm under a 110 N sideways push, applies to units installed under A17.1d-2000 and later; and the 0.25 step/skirt performance index with a skirt deflector fitted applies from A17.1a-2002 / B44-00 Update 1. One trap: the 1942 wartime supplement was numbered A17.3-1942. It is not today's A17.3, which is a different book.
The 1981 edition is where the title shrank to Safety Code for Elevators and Escalators, the name it still carries; wheelchair lifts and stairway chairlifts came in with the 1984 edition and left again for A18.1 in 1999.
Edition list and dates from ASME's own table in the A17.1 foreword; Canadian editions from the B44 preface, which names every earlier edition it replaces.
Worth knowing
The book name matters less than the edition
"CSA B44" alone doesn't tell you what's enforceable: B44-2013 and B44-19 are meaningfully different rulebooks. What matters on the job is which edition your province or state has actually adopted.
A17.3 quietly does the most work on old buildings
Most equipment in service was installed under an earlier edition of A17.1. A17.3, not A17.1, is usually what determines what an existing, older elevator actually has to be upgraded to meet.
Need the exact edition in force where you work? Our code finder covers every Canadian province & territory plus 26 U.S. states.
Find your province or state →That's the code family. Who actually manufactures the equipment? The OEM Family Tree covers Otis, KONE, Schindler, TK Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric, and Fujitec.
See the OEM family tree →Want to know who's who among the associations and unions that work on this code? The Industry Associations reference covers NEII, IUEC, NAESA, and the rest.
See industry associations →Working to the escalator code on the job?
Escalator Field Command is a maintenance app for escalator mechanics: routes, CAT1 testing, documents and the Escalator Field Guide, on your phone. The other code books on this page aren’t in it.
