From Tuesday, August 8, 2023, to now, there were at least thirty-two breakdowns of MC Rockville elevators. The information below I collected from the number of times the Disability Support Services center sent emails about when the elevators broke down:
- Thirteen of them have been at the Long Nguyen and Kimmy Duong Student Services (SV)
- Eight of them have been at the Macklin Tower (MT)
- Two of them have been at the North Garage Center (NG)
- Two of them have been at the Mannakee building (MK)
- Two of them have been at the South Campus Building (SB)
- Two of them have been at the Science Center (SC)
- One of them has been at the Science Center West (SCW)
- One of them has been at the Science Center (SC)
- One of them has been at the Music Building (MU)
The MC Rockville elevators were consistently breaking down over a prolonged period. There were concerns and inquiries about what was causing these elevators to break down so often. Especially, since all the elevator breakdowns were occurring in buildings that are supposed to be newer on campus.
Well, earlier this semester I sat down with Marcus Rosano, the director of media and public relations and spokesperson of MC. I had words from the Campus Director of Rockville Facilities, James Gillis, to get as much information about the situation as possible.
Before my interview, I was given information by Mr. Gillis, the contractors, and the current elevator predicament. This was sent to me by email from Mr. Gillis: “Currently, MC uses Oracle Elevator for its elevator maintenance and service. The company has been instrumental and responsive to the timely repair of all elevators on campus. This past fall, the Rockville Campus experienced higher-than-usual elevator troubles, particularly in the Student Services Building. For safety reasons, the elevators are programmed to shut down automatically in the event of a malfunction. When this happens, error codes are stored in memory for the responding technician to gather information and make the necessary corrections. Oracle Elevator technicians are required to respond within one hour to service any failed elevator. This key component contributes to why the elevators are typically back in service within a few hours of any outage. We understand the inconvenience the outages have caused students and faculty, but we must prioritize safety, first and foremost.”
In a later chain of emails, Gillis had this to say: “May 2013.” That is how long Oracle has been contracted with MC. “Oracle is the name of the company that is contracted by MC to respond for service.” He added that there are “25” elevators on campus.
To expand on the technicality side of the issue as addressed by Gillis, when an elevator breaks down, there is a panel that stores the stores’ information for what went wrong and an error code gets sent to Oracle, who are wholly responsible for the operation of the elevator. According to Gillis, Oracle is also responsible for these other duties in their contract.
To give context to what Mr. Gillis is speaking about, according to my research from the “Elevated” website, the actual company for which Oracle works, Oracle is part of a tri-regional elevator company responsible for providing maintenance, repair, and refurbishment of elevators, called Elevated, based out of Tampa Bay, Florida. Oracle, EMR, and Premier Elevator comprise the US’s three largest regional elevator services.
Mr. Rosano sat down with me to answer various concerns about the elevator. When asked if the buildings where the errors occur are in newer buildings: “Yes, they occur in the newer buildings but we do not know the reason exactly why. Our facilities office is constantly working with the contractors on this predicament.
Recently we reconnected to see the elevators’ current status. Rosano had this to say in an email “Granted, elevators and other types of continued use machinery are unpredictable in nature, there has been a slight downtick in elevator issues this spring. We hope this trend continues as the experts from Oracle are working consistently to deliver excellent service in both general maintenance and response.”
The conclusion is that the elevators have been operating better this semester, and while elevators are in their design predictable, fewer breakdowns have occurred this spring semester, and that can be attributed to the service of Oracle. So there you have it: every one of the elevators this semester has been operating relatively smoothly with some breakdowns.
Compared to the last semester, there were 18 elevator breakdowns compared to the 14 elevator breakdowns this semester. The last malfunction occurred on May 1, 2024. This information was made possible by all emails the Disability Support Services Center sent emails. There were
Conditions of the elevator situation have improved, and are in superior working condition. So, overall, thanks to the dedication and persistence of MC and Oracle, fewer elevator breakdowns happened this semester.
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