RFP Support for a Shopping Mall Elevator Maintenance Contract
ATIS helped a large real estate firm reduce elevator maintenance costs at a shopping mall by nearly $220,000 annually, while improving service quality. By replacing a decades-old, auto-renewing OEM contract with a competitively bid agreement, ATIS delivered over $2.2 million in projected savings over 10 years—a return of more than 15x on consulting fees.
Introduction
For property owners with large, multi-elevator complexes, legacy maintenance agreements can quietly escalate costs over time. A 30-year-old auto-renewing OEM contract at the mall had locked our client into ever-increasing expenses and inconsistent service. ATIS’s strategic bidding and contract oversight turned that around—unlocking significant savings and better maintenance vendor performance.
Challenge
The mall’s approximately 20 elevators relied on an OEM maintenance contract tied back to the building’s construction. The agreement had auto-renewed for years, with annual cost escalations of 2–3% that resulted in:
$209,000/year for basic maintenance (approximately $875/elevator/month)
$105,000/year in extra charges for callbacks and repairs
Solution
The client asked us to lead a competitive maintenance vendor RFP process, developing a custom maintenance specification that reflected its operational needs.
Our process included:
Detailed review of the legacy contract terms and cost escalations
Development of a competitive maintenance specification
Management of the RFP process to secure the best value provider
Support in contract negotiations to ensure service quality guarantees
Ongoing asset management services to monitor performance
Benefits Realized
By opening the work to competitive bids, we helped our client secure a new agreement that reduced basic maintenance cost to $87,000 per year—less than half of the previous spend. Additional charges for taxes and extras fell below $11,000 annually.
The result was a dramatically lower total cost of ownership, with improved service quality locked in through a 10-year contract.
Annual cost savings: Nearly $220,000 per year
10-year savings projection: $2.2 million
Consulting ROI: More than 15x
Service level: Significant improvement with fewer callbacks and extras