EFESME: General Assembly and Lift Forum

The last EFESME General Assembly and Board of Directors and the SBS Lift Forum on Digitalisation were held on the 18th of December 2018, at the SBS premises in Brussels.

During the meeting, the representatives of the National Organizations discussed the most recent updates on the 2018 SBS call and on past year activities within it and expressed their satisfaction with the considerable achievements reached in 2018.

Appreciation was also expressed for the SBS Lift Forum on Digitalisation organized in the morning of the same day, and which saw the participation of officers of the European Commission, as well as important representatives from Small Business Standard and SMEUnited, both important partners of EFESME, and from FEPYMA, one of the members.

Obtain the best possible results

The members took the opportunity to reiterate the importance of collaborating with the European Commission to obtain the best possible results to defend SMEs, and hope that these good relations will be maintained and strengthened during the incoming year. Such a relationship of trust with the Commission is a source of pride and satisfaction for EFESME, and proof of the considerable work done so far.

Moreover, considering the quality of the work done with SBS in 2018, the members hope that this collaboration will continue successfully in the 2019 call, so that the projects planned for the New Year repeat the successes achieved in 2018.

SBS Lift Forum on Digitalisation

The SBS Lift Forum on Digitalisation, moderated by 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 Christel Davidson, SBS Director, and Massimo Bezzi, EFESME President, the first of the two sessions of the day, more purely focused on the Digitalisation, began with the presentation of Luis Carlos Busquets, Programme Officer at the European Commission, DG CONNECT, Unit E3 (Cloud and Software). 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.

Digital transformation for SMEs

The first session continued with 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 these regards. Véronique Willems also made available to our guests a valuable SMEUnites position paper on digitization.

Following SMEUnited’s presentation, the forum went more into details with Vesa Katajisto, Policy Officer at the European Commission, DG GROW, Unit C3 (Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing Systems). 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.

Spanish national registration system

The second session, on the other hand, saw two presentation, one by José María Compagni and the other by Luciano Faletto. Our first speaker, 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.

Positive inputs for reflection

Finally, 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 firefighter’s equipment around the United States.

This example served 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.

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