Download the pdf version here On December 18th, EFESME organised the SBS Lift Forum on Digitalisation, in the framework of the 2018 SBS sectoral approach. Its’ also the second forum of this kind, after the successful first edition last year, when the agenda was focused on standardisation itself. This year event, moderated by Mr Eugenio Quinteri from EBC - European Builders Confederation, gathered experts, both from the European Commission and from the lift sector, national stakeholders and members of different organization. After the welcoming address by Mrs Christel Davidson, SBS Director, and Mr Massimo Bezzi, EFESME President, the first of the two sessions of the day, more purely focused on the Digitalisation, began with the presentation of Mr Luis Carlos Busquets, Programme Officer at the European Commission, DG CONNECT, Unit E3 (Cloud and Software). Mr Busquets presented the Cloud Policies of the European Union, underlining the importance and potential of the free flow of data and of the Cloud system in research programmes.
The first session continued with Mrs Véronique Willems, SMEUnited Secretary General, who spoke about the digital transformation for SMEs, the challenges that this process poses to small and medium-sized European companies, and which might be the best approaches in this regards. Mrs Willems also made available to our guests an valuable SMEUnites position paper on digitization.
Following SMEUnited’s presentation, the forum went more into details with Mr Vesa Katajisto, Policy Officer at the European Commission, DG GROW, Unit C3 (Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing Systems). Mr Katajisto, who is the EC contact point for SMEs for what concerns the Lift Directive and the Lift sector, explained the Commission Standardisation Request M/549 to CEN, its content and its Annex.
The second session, on the other hand, saw two presentation, one by Mr José María Compagni and the other by Mr Luciano Faletto. Our first speaker, Mr Compagni, is Academic Director at Docensas, associate professor at IE University, as well as Coordinator of FEPYMA, the Spanish federation of SMEs of elevators, has a long and valuable experience in the lift sector. He decided to focus his presentation on the Spanish national registration system, introducing our guests to the two Spanish lift registers: the Public register of elevator companies and the elevator equipment registration. The data concerning lifts available in these registers are submitted by electronic means, hence underlining again the growing importance and potential of Digitalisation for the lift sector.
Finally, Mr Luciano Faletto, EFESME Secretary General and ISO expert, showed the importance of shared and available instruction for use, presenting as a poignant example of the lack of shared standards the disastrous consequences of the 1904 Baltimore fire, which led to a nation-wide standardisation of firefighters equipment around the United States. This example served Mr Faletto to introduce the topic, and to underline the need of instruction for use and how to improve their availability.
After the end of the presentations, the Q&A session offered positive inputs for reflection, which were used by the speakers to go more in detail on certain topics. EFESME and SBS thank all speakers and participants and invite all interested people to the 2019 edition of the SBS Lift Forum. Presentations in chronological order:
2a - SMEUnited Position Paper on Digital trasformation
