Back to the Beginning

Knowsley Lifts shares its origins and history.

Elevator World Magazine May 2022.

As Knowsley Lift Services (KLS) Ltd. celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, the company sat down to look back on the many changes, many happy customers and what they have learned over the years.

Tommy Murphy and Steve Fitzgerald, co-directors and co-founders of KLS, first met in June 1989 when both started working at the Liverpool Branch of the Express Lift Company during the same week. Murphy was 23, and Fitzgerald was still an apprentice at age 17.

Tommy’s route into the lift industry came via his starting on a training scheme with the Engineering Industry Training Board (EITB), at that time provided by the Merseyside Training Council. (This is now known as the North West Training Council, and KLS still works closely with them for the training of all apprentices and improvers.) Tommy consequently successfully served a very varied mechanical apprenticeship via then O&K Escalators and arrived at Express Lifts.

Steve managed to secure an apprenticeship directly from school with the Express Lift Company and began his apprenticeship by being “posted” to the Express Lifts headquarters (HQ) and factory in Northampton at the age of 16. He had to do a lot of growing up fast being down there on his own and having to be self-sufficient, literally a couple of weeks from leaving school to working and living 200 miles away. During his year in Northampton, he obtained great experience across all engineering disciplines as well as through his college studies.

Although Tommy was a Higher National Certificate (HNC) qualified engineer, being new to the lift industry meant he had to successfully complete the lift training modules to ensure his safety and proficiency before working alone in the industry. Steve, also now a fully HNC-qualified engineer, successfully completed the modules as part of his apprenticeship, so they both “learnt the ropes” very much in parallel.

Tommy recalls:

“The characters in the branch (and throughout the industry) were akin to something from a drama/comedy with rich stories behind them, all that could easily fill a book. There was an influx of approximately half a dozen young engineers/apprentices at the same time, working and learning alongside the ‘old fellas.’ We now realise and, indeed concede, that the ‘old fella’ roles are the positions we now both fill here at KLS! Sadly, time has meant that the majority of the old characters are no longer with us, although we are still in regular contact with some of the relatively young men at that time who are now in their late 60s and 70s.”

Once qualified, Steve and Tommy found themselves working together in the daytime and also on a night call rota. They were both very proficient engineers, and although they were both young, they were wholly trusted by management. They became close friends (despite Steve being a Red and Tommy a Blue) and shared a similar upbringing and early life living just over a mile apart — Tommy in Anfield and Steve in Kensington — and with them both doing well in school but choosing to go into engineering rather than take the university path that was not seen as the natural route it is these days.

While working together, they discussed going it alone, despite there being relatively few examples of independent lift companies making a success of it at the time and the stark realisation that the U.K. market was dominated by the large multinationals as well as the remaining U.K. lift manufacturers (Express being one of them).

The catalyst to their making the decision came in 1997 when Express was ultimately bought out by Otis with the subsequent Express-Evans Lifts merger a by-product of the takeover. They both quickly recognised changes to the company ethos and operations. Tommy also experienced a divorce and the loss of his father, which, along with the change at Express, prompted him to take time to evaluate which path to take.

Both Tommy and Steve had strategies, and firm discussions were had. They made the decision to hand in their notice in October 1997 and start KLS. In the early days, KLS worked as a sub-contracting team for Otis, Thyssen and KONE, often carrying out works all over the U.K. that they had not done on the “service” side of the industry for Express. All disciplines were tackled, from small repairs to major refurbishments to installations, and all the time, they were learning and gaining invaluable experience and developing new contacts.

In 2001, Steve’s father, Joe, joined the company, leaving his role in senior management at Otis. Following this, KLS rented their first offices in The Cotton Exchange in Liverpool City Centre (Room 101, believe it or not). Then, they began to pick up service contracts and work toward ISO accreditation, ensuring compliance to all standards where necessary, as their ambition was not simply to remain sub-contractors but to build up to a similar size to the old Express branch and provide the same great standards of customer service and professionalism.

Slowly, they transitioned from having four teams working for multinationals to having a team or more working for their own customers and others carrying out service duties, ultimately becoming self-sufficient.

Over the years, KLS has trained 20-plus engineers, the first of whom trained alongside Tommy and Steve. The company is very proud to acknowledge that, out of these, Jay Maloney progressed through the ranks to be service director, and Graham Welsh is now the chief commissioning engineer, each of which has 20-plus years of service.

KLS moved out of the City Centre to a more convenient — and the company’s current — location at Binns Road (which is actually the site of the old United Biscuits/Crawfords factory where Tommy’s dad, uncle and auntie worked for many years).

The location offers access to the main route in and out of Liverpool with plenty of storage and parking when compared to the old City Centre offices.

Due to the broad range of knowledge and the continuous exploration of new products and processes, KLS has always been keen to be early adapters of new products and technology to allow for the delivery of bespoke solutions to clients.

Particular strengths include refurbishment solutions and having the wherewithal to select the solution and the method of delivery to suit the many different customer environments. The reuse of existing equipment, where possible, provides a great savings in carbon footprint with this being increasingly considered as a solution, rather than the old ways of ripping out and starting anew (which can result in often fitting products that have shorter lifespans). KLS has also been a great proponent of offering solutions that are now 50% more energy efficient compared to the original technology.

Knowsley Lifts Services Today

Moving into its 25th year, KLS now has many happy, long-term customers, as well as a growing number of new customers who realise the quality of products and service delivered.

Tommy and Steve have moved on from being the youngsters in the work environment to being “more mature” individuals, but have lost none of the ambition to keep learning and deliver the very best service possible to all of their customers (and feed this ethos down to today’s younger generations).

KLS has always taken care to ensure expansion has never come at the detriment of existing customers and is now at the stage where the company is comfortable that it can provide the same great service to customers from farther afield.

Over the last 25 years, KLS has worked on some amazing projects, one of them being the ELEVATOR WORLD Project of the Year-nominated Royal Liver Building Goods lift (EW UK, Issue 108).

Other recent projects include the installation of two lifts on the RSS Sir David Attenborough (the famous arctic explorer), the Shakespeare North Theatre, The Everyman Theatre (which won the RIBA award), St Georges Hall (EW UK, Issue 110), Anfield (Home of Liverpool Football Club) and Mount Snowdon, which is home to the U.K.’s highest installed platform lift, amongst many others.

Credit - Lindsey Fletcher - Associate Editor Elevator World