Vicente and Paul receive a lift after sharing industry award

Innovative Ideas to improve the energy efficiency and safety of lifts have led to two University of Northampton students sharing an industry award.

Vicente Pacheco and Paul Clements are joint winners of the inaugural Alex MacDonald Award, which is awarded to the Lift Engineering Master’s student who submits the most innovative research dissertation.

Paul, pictured right, examined the use of Internet of Things technology to enable earlier identification and monitoring of faults on lifts. His research concluded that readily available sensors can be purchased and retrofitted to lift systems to assist with condition monitoring and earlier fault detection without the need for heavy investment.

Vincente, meanwhile, examined how to increase energy efficiency of lifts by applying machine learning concepts to the selection of the journey profile and the sequence for allocating the calls. He developed and presented a novel technical solution to achieve this.

Created in memory of outstanding young engineer and UON Engineering graduate, Alex MacDonald, the award is sponsored by LECS (UK).

Professor Stefan Kaczmarczyk, Postgraduate Programme Leader for Lift Engineering at the University, said: “Congratulations to Paul and Vincente on their well-deserved award. We are thrilled to have this annual award for lift engineering established that will inspire and motivate our students to achieve their academic and professional goals.”

LECS (UK) managing director, Dave Cooper, said: “We are delighted to present the inaugural Alex MacDonald award jointly to Vincente and Paull – both were very worthy recipients who have researched interesting facets of the lift industry and produced some innovate solutions to real ongoing issues.

“As an independent engineering consultant working in this area for 35+ years, I am a keen supporter of ongoing education, learning and bringing new blood into the industry.

Congratulations to both Vincente and Paul and I hope this award will encourage all MSc students to push the boundaries in thought and research developments as well as create a legacy for Alex who was an exceptional engineer.”

LECS UK is a leading independent lift and vertical transportation engineering consultancy. It has delivered some of the world’s most exciting projects to include London’s only public transport cable car, the large-scale US$40 million renovation of the Armenian Marriott Hotel, Yerevan as well as the development of Queensway Quay, Gibraltar