The building owner. ASME A17.1/CSA B44 places the obligation for compliance, including the maintenance control program required by Section 8.6, on the owner of the equipment. A property management agreement can delegate the day to day administration of that obligation, and a maintenance contract can delegate the physical work, but neither transfers the underlying responsibility. When an Authority Having Jurisdiction issues a finding, or an incident leads to litigation, the owner is the party the code identifies.
Where does the confusion come from?
From a sentence almost every elevator consultant has heard: “My property manager handles my elevators.”
It is a reasonable thing for an owner to believe. They hired a professional management company precisely so they would not have to think about building systems. The management company hired a qualified elevator service contractor. Everyone in the chain is competent and acting in good faith.
The problem is that each party in that chain reasonably assumes a different party is closing the loop.
The owner assumes the property manager is managing compliance. The property manager is managing an enormous operational scope and reasonably assumes the elevator contractor, as the technical expert under contract, is handling the technical requirements. The elevator contractor is performing the scope in their agreement, which may or may not include everything the code requires, and is not contractually responsible for the owner’s compliance posture.
Nobody is doing anything wrong. And the maintenance control program is out of date, the Category 5 test is overdue, and there is an open violation nobody has escalated.
What does a management agreement actually transfer?
Administration, not obligation. In practice a management agreement typically transfers:
• Day to day coordination with the service provider
• Invoice processing and approval
• Responding to callbacks and tenant complaints
• Scheduling access for inspections and testing
What it typically does not transfer, and what owners frequently assume it does:
• Verifying the maintenance control program is current and equipment specific
• Confirming Category 1, 3 and 5 testing is performed on schedule and documented
• Tracking and closing AHJ findings
• Confirming the contracted maintenance scope is actually being delivered
• Understanding which code edition the local AHJ enforces
• Maintaining the compliance record in a form that survives a change of manager or contractor
That second list is where compliance failures live, and it belongs to the owner unless it has been assigned to someone explicitly and in writing.
What should an owner actually do?
Establish who does what, in writing. Not implied by the management agreement, stated in it. Each item on the second list above should have a named responsible party and a reporting frequency.
Require compliance reporting, not just invoices. An owner should receive, on a set schedule: MCP status per unit, testing status and upcoming dates, open findings with target close dates, and callback and downtime trend. If the only elevator document reaching the owner is an invoice, there is no oversight.
Confirm the adopted code edition. The current edition is ASME A17.1-2025/CSA B44:25. What is enforced in a given building is whichever edition that jurisdiction has adopted, and it varies. A portfolio across several states is subject to several different enforced editions.
Keep the record portable. Managers change and contractors change. The compliance record should belong to the owner and survive both.
Verify independently, periodically. An audit against the code requirement and the contracted scope is the only way to know whether the arrangement is working or merely appears to be.
For background on what the code covers and why it matters, see Why Building Owners Need to Know About ASME A17.1 Safety Code.
Frequently asked questions
Can an owner contractually transfer code responsibility to a property manager?
Parties can allocate duties and indemnities between themselves by contract, and how that holds up is a legal question for counsel. What the code does is identify the owner as the responsible party, which is the position an AHJ and a plaintiff will start from regardless of the private agreement.
Does the elevator service contract cover compliance?
It covers the scope written into it. Many maintenance agreements cover less than the code requires, and the difference is exactly the space in which compliance gaps form. Reading the agreement against the code requirement is a worthwhile exercise and is rarely done.
We own the building but do not operate it. Does that change anything?
Not under the code. The obligation follows ownership of the equipment. It does make the written division of responsibility with the operator more important, not less.