Conveying equipment bids the fixture end cleanly — capacity, speed, stops and cab finishes are all sitting right there in the elevator or crane spec, waiting to be quoted. Where a conveying bid actually goes wrong is at the boundary between the equipment and the building around it: the hoistway, the pit, the machine room, and the runway beams that someone else builds to a tolerance the equipment spec sets but doesn't own. Get the equipment right and miss the interface, and the dispute shows up as a delay claim months after the number was submitted.
This is a working list of where conveying scope actually gets decided, built from what shows up across real Canadian ICI tenders — institutional, healthcare and industrial work with elevators, cranes or both. Not a code reference. A list of the specific interface points worth confirming before the number leaves the office.
What's reliably yours
- Elevators, complete — supply, installation, cab finishes, controls and commissioning per the elevator spec: capacity, speed, number of stops, door sizes and the finish schedule. This is the part of the bid with the clearest documentation, and correspondingly the part least likely to be the source of a dispute.
- Cranes and hoists — bridge cranes, monorails and hoists per the equipment schedule, with their capacities, spans, duty classifications, controls and end stops. Duty classification in particular is worth reading carefully, since the same span at a higher class is effectively a different piece of equipment.
- Regulatory inspections and licensing — TSSA or equivalent AHJ design submissions, inspections and licensing. Every named regulatory obligation is real cost and real schedule, not paperwork that happens automatically alongside the install.
- Maintenance period — the warranty or maintenance term the documents demand, plus response-time commitments. Extract the actual months and terms rather than assuming a standard warranty applies; conveying equipment maintenance terms vary more than most trades' warranty language.
Where the fight actually happens
Freight and specialty lifts
Freight elevators, vertical platform lifts and dumbwaiters are conveying scope with the same rigour as a passenger elevator, but they're easy to under-read because they're often specified in a shorter section, or as a single line referencing a capacity, with none of the finish-schedule detail a passenger cab gets. Extract each one with its capacity and its own commissioning and inspection requirements rather than assuming it rides along with the main elevator's documentation.
Temporary use for construction
A construction-use agreement letting the contractor run the permanent elevator during the build, instead of installing a separate temporary hoist, is common enough to expect on almost any multi-storey job — and it's also where real cost hides. Hour metering, cab protection requirements, and the condition the elevator has to be returned to before final turnover are all things the agreement typically demands, and none of them are free. Extract the actual conditions rather than treating "temporary use permitted" as a one-line exclusion from further pricing.
Hoistway tolerances and who verifies them
The elevator spec sets plumbness and dimensional tolerances for the hoistway, but the hoistway itself is built by another trade entirely — and the survey confirming the shaft actually meets those tolerances before equipment installation begins doesn't have an automatic owner. This is the classic delay claim on an elevator job: installation crews arrive on schedule, the shaft is out of tolerance, and nobody agreed in advance whose survey was supposed to catch it first. Confirm who verifies, and when, before the equipment order is placed against a fixed install date.
The other half: what isn't yours, even when it looks close
- Hoistway and machine-room construction — the shaft, pit, machine room and their finishes belong to other trades. What is yours is the tolerance and dimensional requirements the equipment spec imposes on those trades — worth extracting explicitly so the interface is visible to everyone pricing the building around the shaft, not just to the elevator supplier.
- Pit ladders, divider beams and sill angles — typically misc metals' supply, built to the equipment supplier's layout. The nuance worth flagging is the layout dependency itself: misc metals can't finalize these without your shop drawings, which makes the sequencing a coordination item even though the material isn't yours.
- Power feeds and disconnects — electrical's, up to the machine room or disconnect, including pit lighting and GFI receptacles. The elevator spec usually contains an explicit provision list demanding specific items of Division 26 — extract that list, since it's effectively a scope requirement you're imposing on someone else's bid.
- Runway beams — crane runway beams and their alignment belong to structural steel, with rails and end stops supplied per the crane vendor's requirements. The alignment tolerance is the item worth extracting carefully, since a runway built slightly out of alignment is a crane that doesn't track correctly once it's installed.
Four things that hide outside Division 14 entirely
- Pit conditions. Waterproofing, sump pumps and pit ladder requirements are things the elevator spec imposes on other trades rather than performs itself — but a wet pit discovered after equipment installation is a warranty argument nobody wants to have.
- Load testing and commissioning evidence. Test weights, witnessed testing, and the documentation package the AHJ or owner expects at handover are deliverables worth confirming up front — a commissioning requirement discovered at turnover is a schedule problem, not just a paperwork one.
- Crane duty classification. Worth repeating from above, because it's easy to skim past on an equipment schedule: CMAA duty class and cycle rate change the actual crane being priced, even when the span and capacity numbers look identical to a lighter-duty unit.
- Regulatory notification lead times. TSSA or equivalent design-submission and inspection lead times can run long enough to set the critical path on a fast-tracked job, and they're rarely where the project schedule assumes they are.
Who you're actually sharing the shaft with
| Trade | What to reconcile before you price |
|---|---|
| Electrical | Feeders, disconnects, pit services, alarm and phone lines against the provision list the elevator spec demands. |
| Structural steel | Runway beams, hoistway steel and divider beam locations — confirm alignment tolerance, not just presence. |
| General contractor | Hoistway turnover condition, equipment storage before install, and the terms of any temporary-use agreement. |
| Misc metals | Pit ladders and sill angles built to your layouts — confirm the sequence so their fabrication isn't waiting on shop drawings you haven't issued. |
The pass that catches most of this
Read the elevator or crane spec specifically for what it demands of other trades — hoistway tolerance, electrical provisions, runway alignment — because that list is effectively your scope even though none of it is work you perform yourself. Then confirm who surveys the hoistway before your install date is fixed, and what a temporary-use agreement actually costs in hours and protection. The equipment schedule is the easy half of the bid; the boundary items above are what keep a correctly quoted elevator from turning into a delay claim once it meets the building around it.