Because the maintenance agreement bundles the maintenance control program into a monthly price, and almost nobody verifies it was delivered. ASME A17.1/CSA B44 Section 8.6 requires a maintenance control program for every conveyance, and the responsibility for having one rests with the building owner. The owner pays for it as part of the service contract, assumes it is being maintained, and typically discovers otherwise at a failed inspection, during a lawsuit, or when an audit opens the machine room and finds the documentation thin or absent.
How does the gap open?
Not usually through bad faith. Through ordinary operational pressure that nobody is measuring.
A route mechanic covers more units than the route was scaled for. A building gets skipped when a callback runs long. The written MCP is generic rather than specific to the actual equipment installed. Tasks get signed off at the end of a route rather than at the time of performance. Nobody on the owner’s side reads the log, so nothing corrects.
Each of those is small. Compounded across twelve months and a portfolio of buildings, they add up to an owner paying full contract price for a maintenance program that exists on the invoice and not in the machine room.
What are the signs your MCP is not real?
• The written program is generic. Section 8.6 requires a program specific to the equipment. A binder that could describe any elevator in any building is not compliant.
• The log is incomplete or backfilled. Gaps, identical handwriting across months, or entries clustered suspiciously close to inspection dates.
• Nobody can locate it. If it takes three phone calls to find the MCP documentation, it is not being used.
• Testing records do not reconcile. Category 1, 3 and 5 test dates that do not line up with the maintenance record.
• You failed an inspection on documentation. This is the most common way owners discover the problem, and by then there is an open finding on file.
• You cannot answer what was done last month. If the owner has no way to state what maintenance was performed on a given unit, the program is not functioning regardless of what the binder says.
Why does this cost more than the compliance exposure?
Because a missing MCP is a symptom, and the underlying condition is more expensive than the paperwork.
If the documented program is not being followed, the maintenance behind it is generally not being performed either. That deferred work does not disappear. It accumulates in worn components, drifting adjustments and equipment that ages faster than it should, and it surfaces as callbacks, downtime and a modernization that arrives years earlier than it needed to.
In TEC audits, the minimum deferred maintenance we identify is roughly $8,000 and the range runs into the millions. A substantial share of that traces back to maintenance that was contracted, invoiced and never performed.
There is also a liability dimension. ASME A17.1/CSA B44 places the compliance obligation on the owner. In an incident, the maintenance record is among the first documents requested, and “our service company handles that” has never been a defense.
How do you verify what you are getting?
Read the agreement against the code requirement. Confirm the contract scope actually covers what Section 8.6 requires for your specific equipment, not a generic maintenance description.
Inspect the documentation yourself, on a schedule. Quarterly, unannounced, at the machine room. This alone changes behavior.
Reconcile the record against callbacks. Recurring callbacks on a unit whose maintenance log shows everything complete is a contradiction worth resolving.
Hold the record where you control it. Whether that is ElevatorApp, another platform or a disciplined internal process, the owner should be able to produce the current MCP status for any unit without asking the service provider.
Audit periodically. An independent audit compares contracted scope against delivered scope and quantifies the gap. That quantification is what makes the conversation with a service provider productive.
For the full explanation of what Section 8.6 requires and what belongs in a compliant program, see A Maintenance Control Program: ASME A17.1/CSA B44 Section 8.6.
Frequently asked questions
Is the MCP the owner’s responsibility or the service company’s?
The code places the obligation on the building owner. The service company is typically contracted to develop and maintain the program, but the responsibility for it existing and being current does not transfer with the contract.
Which edition of the code applies to my building?
The current edition is ASME A17.1-2025/CSA B44:25, but enforcement is by the Authority Having Jurisdiction, and adopted editions vary by state and by city. Confirm what your AHJ enforces before assuming.
We just failed an inspection on MCP documentation. What now?
Close the finding first, then find out why it opened. A documentation failure is almost always a maintenance delivery failure wearing a paperwork costume, and fixing only the binder leaves the real problem in place.