In elevator maintenance, the entire business model comes down to a single figure: the number of units assigned to each technician. It is the KPI every elevator company director knows by heart, the one that separates profitable routes from routes that lose money. In France, the industry benchmark sits between 80 and 120 units per technician, with an average of around 100. Behind that average lie considerable variations, and optimisation levers that many companies have yet to exploit.
Nine visits per unit per year, no exceptions
France imposes one of the most demanding servicing regimes in Europe. Under decree no. 2004-964 and the order of 18 November 2004, every elevator must receive a service visit every six weeks, i.e. roughly nine preventive visits per unit per year. No exceptions, whatever the age or usage of the equipment.
The arithmetic for a route of 100 cars is straightforward: nine annual visits multiplied by 100 units equals 900 preventive visits a year. Spread over roughly 215 effective working days, the technician has to complete four to five preventive visits a day, each lasting 30 to 45 minutes on site, travel time excluded.
And that is only the planned part of the job. On top of it come:
- breakdown call-outs, with an average portfolio generating two to four failures per unit per year, i.e. 200 to 400 additional corrective jobs across the route;
- passenger entrapments, with their contractual one-hour response time;
- accompanied visits with inspection bodies for the five-yearly technical inspections;
- minor repair work.
A typical day for an elevator technician is therefore a constant trade-off between a preventive route dictated by law and an unpredictable flow of corrective work. It is precisely this conflict between the planned and the urgent that makes the job difficult, and expensive.
Why some technicians cover 150 units and others 60
The average of 100 hides very different realities. Four factors account for most of the variance.
Geographical density. In central Paris, where buildings are two minutes' walk apart, a technician can hold 120 to 150 units. In suburban or rural areas, travel time eats up the day and the ratio drops to 60-80. Mileage is the silent enemy of profitability.
The age and consistency of the portfolio. According to the Fédération des Ascenseurs, 40% of the French installed base is more than 25 years old and 25% more than 40 years old. A portfolio of old, multi-brand units mechanically generates more breakdowns, more parts sourcing and more diagnostic time than a recent, homogeneous one. Two routes of 100 units can represent workloads that differ by a factor of two.
The type of contract. A basic contract and a comprehensive contract including parts do not involve the same visit content, nor the same level of service commitment.
Company policy. The major groups have historically pushed routes towards 120-150 units to maximise margin, at the cost of visits that were sometimes rushed and high technician turnover. Conversely, many SMEs and independents have made short routes of 60 to 90 units their main selling point: a technician who knows his equipment, thorough visits, a customer who always sees the same face. Two opposing strategies, two economic equations.
Every unit gained converts almost entirely into margin
Here is why this ratio obsesses the sector's directors. The costs of a route are essentially fixed: the technician's salary, vehicle and tooling. Every additional unit absorbed by the same route therefore translates almost entirely into operating margin. Moving from 100 to 110 units per technician, at constant service quality, means roughly 10% more profitability on the maintenance business.
The point, obviously, is not to overload routes by degrading visits: neither the regulations nor customers forgive that. The point is to eliminate everything in the technician's day that is neither a visit nor a repair. Poorly optimised journeys, empty runs, second trips for want of a part or a piece of information, end-of-day paperwork.
Three sources of gain stand out. Route optimisation first: an intelligently sequenced route that groups jobs by area and slots corrective work into the right place in the schedule easily recovers 30 to 60 minutes a day. First-time fix rate next: every return trip caused by a missing part, history or technical document is a preventive visit lost. A technician who arrives on site knowing the unit's full history, its recurring faults and the parts already replaced resolves faster and comes back less often. Field data capture finally: a job report written on mobile, signed on site and automatically filed to the digital maintenance logbook removes one to two hours of admin a week.
Added together, these gains are worth the equivalent of 10 to 20 additional units per route, without cutting a single minute of visit time.
Proving the visit becomes as structural as the visit itself
The six-week cycle has a direct consequence: the obligation to prove it. An up-to-date maintenance logbook, proof of attendance, traceability of the operations carried out at each visit. In the event of an inspection or a dispute, documentation is what protects the company. Managing agents and social housing landlords, for their part, increasingly demand precise reporting and real-time access to the status of their portfolio.
The era of the paper logbook and the binder in the van is coming to an end. Digitalising elevator maintenance is no longer just one modernisation project among others: it is the condition for meeting the regulatory cadence, customer expectations and the economics of the route all at once.
The ratio is no longer won at the technician's expense
For twenty years, the only known way to increase the number of units per technician was to add lines to the route and shorten visits. That road is closed. The recruitment market for elevator technicians is tight, training a technician takes years, and a company that overloads its routes loses its people before it loses its contracts.
The ratio remains the primary driver of an elevator company's profitability. But it is now won elsewhere: in travel minutes saved, in return trips avoided, in office hours removed. In other words, in how routes are organised and equipped with software, not in how hard teams are pushed. This is exactly the kind of use a CMMS such as Yuman covers: scheduling, field mobility and the digital maintenance logbook in a single flow.