Escalator Field Guide
Elevator Field Guide
iOSYour MCP and your CAT tests — what the code requires, and what your regulator decides
Every elevator and escalator is supposed to have one, on both sides of the border. It sets out what gets checked, how often, and how anyone proves it happened. The part that catches people out is the second one: how often is decided by your regulator, not by the code book.
The short version
A Maintenance Control Program, almost always just called an MCP, is a written program that keeps one unit compliant with section 8.6 of the code. It sets out the examinations, tests, cleaning, lubrication and adjustments that unit needs, and how often each one happens.
Three things surprise people:
- It is per unit, not per building and not per contract. Two elevators in the same lobby get two MCPs.
- It is not a generic checklist. The intervals have to be justified for that specific machine.
- The code does not tell you how often to do the big tests. Your regulator does. That is the single fact that explains most of the confusion in this area, and the rest of this guide builds on it.
What makes one real
The requirement itself is one clause, 8.6.1.2.1. Around it sit a handful of rules that decide whether an MCP is a working document or just a binder on a shelf:
- Who writes it. The person or firm maintaining the equipment provides it, one for each unit.
- Where it lives. It has to be viewable on site by at all times, from the onward.
- If it is stored in the cloud (which is now normal), instructions for finding and viewing it on site must be posted at the controller, permanently legible, with characters at least 3 mm high.
- It has to keep up. If section 8.6 changes, the MCP must be updated. It is a living document, not a one-time deliverable.
What it has to contain
The MCP has to list the code-required maintenance tasks, procedures, examinations and tests — and list each one against the clause it comes from, drawn from 8.6.4 through 8.6.11. It also has to point at two other things kept on site: the equipment documentation and the maintenance records.
That on-site documentation (clause 8.6.1.2.2) is its own list, kept in hard copy for each unit in the machine room, machinery space, control room or control space. It includes up-to-date wiring diagrams, procedures for any inspection or test not described in ASME A17.2, the checkout procedures the code specifically calls for, and written procedures for things like evacuation and cleaning the car.
The paperwork that proves it
An MCP without records is unprovable, so the code is specific about what gets written down. MCP records must be viewable on site, in hard copy or in an electronic format the regulator accepts, and must include at least:
- the site name and address
- the service provider’s name
- the unit’s identification and type
- the date of the record
- a description of the task, its interval, and the section 8.6 requirement behind it
- an indication that the task was actually completed
Repairs and replacements are recorded separately: what was done, when, and by whom. Those are kept by the owner, and they are a permanent record for the installation. Callbacks get their own record too: what was reported, dates and times, and what was done about it. Most records run on a five-year retention.
Then there are the tags, which are the part a stranger can check in thirty seconds:
- A periodic test record on a tag at the controller, carrying the code requirement, the date, and the name of the person or firm who did the test.
- After a Category 5 governor test, a dated tag on the governor itself with the tester’s name, permanently attached.
- If an alternative test method was used instead of the standard one, the tag has to say so.
Category 1, 3 and 5 testing
“CAT 1” and “CAT 5” are not a separate subject from the MCP. They are the part of it with dates attached. The categories are defined by clause, and what sits in each one is fixed by the code.
Each category applies to different equipment, and that is the part worth reading carefully: a traction elevator, a hydraulic elevator and an escalator do not get the same set.
The only category every kind of equipment gets. It is the “does everything still work” round, done mostly with no load.
Traction. Safeties and governors examined and function-tested, oil buffers, terminal stopping devices, firefighters’ emergency operation, standby power, power door operation, emergency communications, door reopening devices, earthquake operation where fitted, and newer electronic items such as functional safety of SIL rated devices.
Hydraulic. All of the above that applies, plus the relief-valve setting and system pressure test, a cylinder and piping leakage test of at least fifteen minutes, and flexible hose assemblies held at relief-valve pressure for thirty seconds.
Escalators and moving walks. The drive machine and brake including brake torque, the speed governor tripped by hand, the reversal stop switch, broken drive-chain and broken step-chain devices, step upthrust, missing step, step level, the handrail safety systems, and the steps, chains and trusses examined for structural defects and combustible build-up. Step chains are measured for stretch, and the clearance between successive steps must not exceed 6 mm. The step/skirt performance index is a measured friction test whose instructions tell you why it exists: the skirt must not be cleaned, lubricated or otherwise modified in preparation for it.
Neither a traction elevator nor an escalator ever gets one. 8.6.5.15 is the only clause in the whole of Section 8.6 that defines a Category 3, and it sits inside the hydraulic elevator rules.
It is short, and obviously hydraulic: the unexposed portion of the piston is exposed, cleaned and examined for wear and corrosion, and replaced if any diameter has worn below the root diameter of the threads. Pressure vessels are cleaned, examined internally, and hydrostatically tested at 150% of working pressure for one minute.
This is why a jurisdiction phasing the categories in can bring Category 3 in on its own date, separate from the other two. Alberta did exactly that.
Elevators only: escalators and moving walks never get one. This is the heavy one, and the one that costs money, because it is done loaded and at speed. Car safeties tested at and ; counterweight safeties; oil buffers tested by running the car onto them at rated load and rated speed; the braking system, traction and traction limits, including a dynamic stopping test with passenger elevators carrying 125% of rated load; and the emergency brake tested in the down direction with 125% of rated load.
Governors get their tripping speed and overspeed switch checked, pull-through and pull-out forces measured, the adjustment sealed, and a dated tag attached.
The code tells you what is in each category. It never tells you how often to run one. Every category clause above ends the same way: for how often, see 8.11.1.3. Follow that pointer and 8.11.1.3 hands the decision straight to the authority having jurisdiction, which is your regulator.
Suggested intervals do exist, in a — and nonmandatory means exactly what it says.
So “Category 5 is every five years” is true where you work because your regulator decided it. The numbers line up with years in ordinary use, but that alignment is the regulator’s doing, not the code book’s.
Alternative test methods are permitted for several Category 5 items (car safeties, braking and traction, and emergency brakes), provided the method genuinely demonstrates the equipment still performs to the code. Where one is used, the test tag has to record that fact.
Periodic tests are witnessed by an inspector employed by, or authorized by, the . This is not a test the maintaining company signs off alone.
Maintenance that changes with the equipment
Everything above is testing. This is the other half of the MCP: the ongoing maintenance, which the code also splits by machine type. The requirement itself does not change: written, one per unit, viewable on site, with records and justified intervals, whatever the machine is. What changes is the task list, and each type carries a few rules with hard numbers rather than judgement.
A short list that applies whatever the machine is, and the first two are the ones inspectors actually look for.
Jumpers come out during maintenance, repairs and testing, and the unit is tested before it goes back into service. They are also not stored in machine rooms, control rooms, hoistways, pits or wellways. A jumper found lying in a machine room is a finding on its own.
No safety device is left inoperative. Anything disabled for a test is restored before the unit returns to service.
Lubricants match the manufacturer’s type and grade, unless a substitute genuinely achieves the same effect. A Class ABC extinguisher belongs in the machine room, and damaged or missing signs and data plates get replaced.
Ropes, rails and housekeeping. Suspension members count as equally tensioned only when the lowest measured tension is within 10% of the highest. Suspension ropes are lightly lubricated, following the rope data tag, with care not to lose traction.
Governor ropes are the trap: they are not lubricated after installation, and if someone has lubricated them the ropes must be replaced and the governor and safety re-tested. Guiding surfaces get no rust-preventive coatings unless the manufacturer says so. On winding-drum machines, hoisting ropes are refastened or resocketed at least every year where the machine sits over the hoistway, every two years where it sits below or beside it. Pits and car tops are not storage, and nothing with a flash point under 44°C belongs in the machine room.
Most of it is about oil and pressure. Pressure tanks are cleaned internally at least every three years and kept at about two-thirds capacity. Oil collected from a cylinder head seal or packing gland must not exceed 19 L before it is removed, and the container must not overflow.
Flexible hose and fitting assemblies that have no overspeed valve are replaced no more than six years after their installation date. Any assembly that does not carry an installation or replacement date has to be replaced. Where a cylinder packing or seal is renewed, the whole system is verified by running at relief-valve pressure for at least fifteen seconds.
Handrails, steps, combplates, rollers, tracks, chains, brakes, signs, guards and landing plates. Where a handrail speed-monitoring device is fitted it cuts power to the driving-machine motor and brake if either handrail drifts 15% or more from step speed for two to six seconds continuously. If two adjacent combplate teeth are missing, the unit comes out of operation — not scheduled, out. An examination to decide whether cleaning is needed is required at least once a year.
Step-to-skirt clearance is the trap: there is no single number. Units installed under CSA B44-00 Update 1 or ASME A17.1d-2000 and later are measured as a loaded gap: not more than 5 mm under a 110 N sideways force. Earlier installations have their own figures, listed edition by edition in 8.6.8.2. Measure to the edition the unit went in under, not the newest number you have heard.
Province by province
The provinces are on different editions of the code, so they are on different versions of clause 8.6. On top of that, each one has treated the maintenance section as a separate thing with its own start date — repeatedly. That is the real reason the same elevator, maintained by the same company, can be on a different calendar depending on which side of a line it sits.
Ontario proves the point twice over. CSA B44.2 was the separate maintenance-intervals book; Ontario adopted it in 2008 and no longer carries it. The intervals book is gone, the interval decision sits with the regulator, and the maintenance requirements live in section 8.6 of the core code.
Section 8.6, and the separate maintenance book B44.2-07, took effect 1 January 2008. That is when the MCP arrived in Ontario.
Then the unusual part. On 1 May 2013 Ontario adopted section 8.6 of B44-13: the maintenance part, and nothing else. Construction stayed on B44-10. For nine years the province built elevators to one edition and maintained them to a newer one.
It happened again on the way in to the current code: section 8.6 began 1 January 2023, eleven months after the first parts of the same adoption. One edition, three start dates, spread across almost a year.
Ontario code timeline →BC runs an edition neither Ontario nor Alberta has ever adopted, so its clause 8.6 is its own.
The maintenance-intervals book, B44.2, retired into section 8.6. It left the regulation’s schedule the same day B44-16 arrived. It was still listed on 22 July 2019 and gone by 30 April 2020.
BC’s 2019 transition order made contractors set out how they would comply with 8.6, effectively showing their MCP plan. And because B44-16’s own maintenance rules apply to every unit in service regardless of age, 8.6 is doing work in BC that other places hand to a separate retro code.
BC code timeline →AR 192/2015 brought B44-13 in on 1 March 2016, and the MCP with it. But Alberta did not switch it on all at once, which makes it the clearest worked example in the country.
Existing equipment could delay a formal written MCP until 1 September 2017. The categorised tests then phased in separately: Category 1 from 1 September 2018 (annual), Category 3 from 1 September 2020 (three-yearly) and Category 5 from 1 September 2022 (five-yearly).
Those year values are Alberta’s choice, made under the same clause that leaves the interval to the regulator. The same regulation started Alberta’s single-bottom hydraulic cylinder replacement requirement.
Alberta code timeline →Quebec adopted the 2019 edition (with its own amendments) on 13 July 2024, under Chapter IV of its Construction and Safety Codes. In Quebec the MCP goes by its French name: the PCE, programme de contrôle d’entretien.
Owners were given 36 months from that date to put a PCE in place for each unit, established to clause 8.6, so by mid-July 2027 every elevator and escalator in the province needs one. That is the newest MCP deadline in the country, and the clock is already running.
Same clause, same principle: the program is the owner’s to have, and the regulator’s to check.
Quebec in Find your code →Saskatchewan has been on the 2013 edition since 2018 and New Brunswick is on 2016, so their clause 8.6 is older wording. Nova Scotia moved to the 2019 edition at the end of 2021; Manitoba’s move to 2019 takes force 1 September 2026. Nunavut’s adopted edition is still B44-94.
Different editions mean different versions of the maintenance clause, but in every one of them the test calendar is the regulator’s call, not the book’s.
Every jurisdiction, one page →Same book, different machinery for adopting it. There is no national adoption in the USA: each state adopts an edition of A17.1 on its own schedule, and in places such as New York and Illinois the largest city runs a different code from the rest of the state.
Because clause 8.6 hands the test interval to the authority having jurisdiction, the same category of test can be on a different clock one state line away, for the same reason it varies between provinces.
Find your code — 23 jurisdictions →What this means for you
If you maintain the equipment. The MCP is the document that says what you are supposed to do and how often; the records are what proves you did it. Both have to be reachable on site — not back at the office, and not only in an app nobody on site can open.
If you own or manage the building. The repair and replacement records are yours, not the contractor’s. They are kept five years, and are a permanent record for the installation. Two practical consequences. When you change service providers, the MCP belongs to the unit, so make sure it and the records go with it rather than leaving with the outgoing company. And if you want a quick read on whether the programme is real, ask to see the MCP and look at the test tags at the controller: they carry the requirement, the date, and who did the work.
Where this fits
The MCP sits inside a bigger picture. Which edition binds your unit is the question underneath everything here. See Find your code for all 23 jurisdictions. The A17 family tree explains how the code books relate to one another, including the ones people confuse for each other. Ontario vs BC vs Alberta takes the comparison above and runs it across the whole code rather than just clause 8.6. And any term used here that you would rather see defined plainly is in the glossary.