The Design and Arts Campus (DAC), made in 2007 by Ar. Ed Calma, is known for its modern and minimalist architecture. It features 14 floors, relying on its elevators to transport students, faculty, and visitors across multiple floors. However, recurring technical issues have caused frustrations among Benildeans.

Recently, frequent malfunctions have occurred in its main elevators—including long waiting time due to skipping floors, and pressed buttons suddenly restarting which causes the elevator to go back to the ground floor—raising concerns about safety, accessibility, and the College’s response to the issue.

Ongoing inconvenience

“When we press the elevator button, it immediately loses its light, causing it to skip the floor I am on,” Ma. Justina Luna, an ID124 Animation student, shared in an interview with The Benildean.

“The elevator suddenly changes its direction from up to down on the 9th floor. It affects me since it wastes the time needed for me to attend a class or do errands,” she added.

Another ID124 Animation student, who chose to remain anonymous, also shared her frustrating experience with the DAC elevators. 

“I use the elevators in the mornings once I enter the buildings. I can't deny that they're fast once you get on them but the wait time of trying to get on the elevators takes a while and is often frustrating because the elevators end up skipping my floor despite pressing the button so me and my friends use the stairs instead after our first class even if our next class is three to four floors above,” she added.

She continued that “There are also times when the elevators would cancel all the floors that have been selected and start moving back down to the ground floor.”

With DAC serving as the primary campus for various programs under the School of New Media and Arts (SNMA), the School of Culture, Arts, and Performance (SACP), and the School of Environment and Design (SED), a significant percentage of the student body attends classes at this campus which makes the malfunction with the elevators pose a major inconvenience.

Core of the issue

In an interview with The Benildean, Engr. Arnaldo Ocfemia, Director for the Center for Facilities Maintenance & Campus Development, disclosed that the main cause of all DAC elevator concerns is issues with the group control board—a central control unit that manages the operation of multiple elevators within a building as a single group—as it had not been changed ever since the campus was built.

“We've already gone through total shooting of elevators and based on our findings, the main cause of the issue is the corrupted programming of the group control board of the elevator,” he noted.

The problem with push buttons suddenly losing their lights is also tied to the main problem, Head Engineer Kevin Carl Serafines explained in an interview with The Benildean, “That's the manifestation nung nagloloko ‘yung group control board niya, parang nagre-reset siya. By default, our elevator will go down to the ground floor.”

To ensure maintenance of the elevators, Engr. Serafines shared that Benilde works with a third-party service contractor, ASIA PTS Elevator Inc., and conducts monthly preventive maintenance.

He added, “Since we already know the main corporation of what causes the problem in DAC, we have coordinated with our contractor, and they have proposed the elevator modernization project.”

Modernizing the lifts

As the main problem has already been identified, the Engineering Department plans to replace the electronic parts. A process that is expected to take five to six months as the majority of the parts are imported. 

“We are expecting that the modernization of the elevators will be completed by the end of A.Y. 24-25,” Engr. Serafines said.

Director, Engr. Ocfemia reassured, “When it is completed, ‘yung upgrading or modernization, our elevators would be almost as good as new. So, magiging maganda na ang takbo. We encounter less and less problems when this upgrading or modernization is completed.”

In the meantime, Engr. Serafines shared that a temporary solution is underway to alleviate shared concerns. “We will assign elevator operators to DAC, so our elevators will be manually operated just like in the malls, just to solve the problem na nagre-reset ‘yung elevator. Kasi in manual operation, hindi nagloloko eh. So, we’re currently cooperating with Arman Power Agency contractor, para makapag-provide ng manpower for that.”

The Office of the Vice President for Administration announced on Feb. 18 that the pilot run of the new manual operation started from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on the same day. 

With this, the elevators will be divided into three zones for efficient operation:

• High Zone: Elevators 1 & 2 – Servicing the Ground Floor and 8th to 14th floors
• Low Zone: Elevators 3 & 4 – Servicing the Ground Floor and 3rd to 8th floors
• All Floors: Elevator 5 – Servicing all floors

Meanwhile, Engr. Ocfemia offered words of reassurance to Benildeans, “We would like to assure ‘yung Benildean community that we have been trying our best to resolve the elevator issues to the best of our ability along with our elevator maintenance provider.” 

“But the random failure by elevator electronics is simply beyond anyone's control and no amount of current preventive or predictive maintenance technologies could have anticipated it to happen,” he explained.

“Now having said that, we already know the solution like we mentioned earlier, and we are now in the process of implementing that solution [...] We apologize for any inconvenience and we ask everyone to please bear with us a little more,” he added.