Otis Rail Infrastructure Projects in London, Singapore Win Industry Awards

Elevator World magazine has selected two Otis Worldwide Corporation projects as winners in its annual Project of the Year awards – with Otis sweeping the escalator categories for major rail infrastructure projects.

The new Elizabeth line rail in London, England won in the Escalators, New Construction category, and the North-South and East-West lines of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system in Singapore won in the Escalators, Modernization category.

The projects will be featured among other winners in Elevator World’s January 2024 edition.

Elizabeth line, London

Otis supplied 64 new Heavy-Duty Metro escalators for the 10 new stations for the Elizabeth line, which opened in May 2022.

The escalators, built at Otis’ Breclav, Czech Republic factory, are designed to be safe, reliable and robust, operating up to 20 hours per day and meeting demanding specifications for uptime and other key performance indicators.

Otis crews coordinated with the sometimes hundreds of other workers on site during the line’s 13-year construction. Installation often was required to be done outside normal working hours, including at night, with deliveries of material being made according to a tight schedule, ensuring just-in-time staging.

As always, safety was paramount, with large escalator sections being lowered into spaces with very tight tolerances, with other building trade employees on site, as well as adjacent utilities systems and other infrastructure. Otis’ work on the project was delivered with an excellent safety record where not a single lost-time incident was reported.

In addition to the escalators, Otis was awarded an ongoing 30-year Service contract to maintain and service the Elizabeth line escalator fleet, as well as another 56 escalators and travelators across the London Underground system.

Singapore MRT

Otis provided the original escalators for Singapore’s North-South and East-West Line, the oldest and busiest metro system in Southeast Asia, more than 30 years ago. In 2022, Otis completed the six-year project to upgrade, refurbish and modernize its 231 escalators.

After a thorough evaluation involving environmental factors, downtime disruption to commuting passengers and cost effectiveness, Otis modernized and refurbished the existing escalators with a customized solution in which all static parts, including trusses and balustrades would be retained, while components subject to fatigue or wear would be replaced.

Each escalator was upgraded with additional safety features, higher efficiency machines and new energy-saving controllers, aiming to provide best-in-class service for up to 20 hours a day at a 99.9 percent availability level.

Minimizing inconvenience to passengers in the operating stations was critical. Otis crews coordinated just-in-time deliveries of parts and maintained small staging areas by delivering or removing material from the site in batches. For most stations, only one escalator was shut down at a time, and Otis worked with the operator, SMRT Trains, to construct temporary barriers that allowed work to be done within the hoardings without disturbing traffic flow, while providing information to the public about the ongoing work.

Learn more about Otis major projects and modernizations at the Global Projects page.

About Otis

Otis is the world’s leading elevator and escalator manufacturing, installation and service company. We move 2 billion people a day and maintain approximately 2.2 million customer units worldwide, the industry’s largest Service portfolio. Headquartered in Connecticut, USA, Otis is 69,000 people strong, including 41,000 field professionals, all committed to meeting the diverse needs of our customers and passengers in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. To learn more, visit www.otis.com, LinkedIn , Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @OtisElevatorCo.