Condominium Lift Access Control: Restricting Floors by Card.
QUESTION ANSWEREDOwners want the lifts to stop carrying strangers to residential floors: what does the building actually have to pass, and who is allowed to touch the lift?
A condominium can restrict lift access to a resident’s own floor. The Strata Management Act 2013 lets a management body pass an additional by-law, by special resolution, for “safety and security measures” and restricted common property. The harder half is physical: the lift may only be worked on by a firm DOSH has approved, and every lift must still return to the designated floor on a fire alarm.
- 01Security measures and restricted common property are by-law mattersSECTIONS 32 + 70
- 02A special resolution: twenty-one days’ notice, three-quarters of votes castNOT A COMMITTEE VOTE
- 03On a fire alarm every lift returns to the designated floorBY-LAW 155
- 04Only 72 companies and 999 individuals are DOSH-registered for liftsNOT YOUR ELV FIRM
- 05A certificate of fitness lasts fifteen months; the owner is never absolved15 MONTHS
Can a condominium restrict lift access to residents’ own floors?
Yes, and the Strata Management Act 2013 nearly names it. Section 32(3) lets a joint management body, by special resolution, make additional by-laws regulating use of the common property, and the matters it lists begin “(a) safety and security measures; (b) details of any common property of which the use is restricted”. A floor restriction is both. Section 70(2) gives a management corporation the same power in the same words.
The authority is settled; what follows is not. The by-laws name the lifts on the management body’s own maintenance list, while the right to work on them sits with a third party — the argument for every layer, one contractor.
What has to be passed, and by what majority?
A special resolution, not a committee decision: one passed at a general meeting of which at least “twenty-one days’ notice specifying the proposed resolution has been given”, carried by not less than three-quarters of the valid votes cast. The wording must be final three weeks ahead. A joint management body then files a certified copy with the Commissioner within fourteen days; a management corporation has thirty days, under section 70(6).
Settle it before anyone prices anything: the spend also has to be put to the right meeting from the right account. And it is not the power committees reach for first — by-law 6(4) lets management deactivate a defaulter’s “electromagnetic access device such as a card, tag or transponder” without notice, but only after the fourteen days in by-law 6(1)(a). Cutting off one owner is a sanction; restricting every resident’s floors is a by-law.
What is physically being changed inside the lift?
Three things, and only the first is what people picture. A reader goes in the car or at the landing. The permission lives in the access head end holding the building’s cards. Between them sits an interface board whose relays stand between a card read and a floor button — wired into equipment the access contractor does not own.
Its scale is published, and never given to committees. One documented board carries “8 opto-isolated zone inputs and 8 relay outputs”, with up to thirty-two floors per expander using four boards; a second documented module takes twelve floors and daisy-chains ten deep. Forty floors wants five boards where one expander takes four, or four modules on the other design; multiply by the cars and riser space stops being an afterthought.
| Figure | As documented | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Per board | 8 relays, 8 button-sense inputs | One relay per floor button |
| Per expander | Up to 32 floors, four boards | Forty storeys needs more than one |
| Button voltage | 16 to 120 V DC, unregulated | The lift’s voltages, not the reader’s |
| Button feedback | “Only one button can be pressed per valid card read” | One tap, one floor |
Who is allowed to work on the lift itself?
Not whoever installed the access control. Malaysia had 83,174 registered lifts as at July 2026 and, the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) says, only 72 companies and 999 individuals registered to oversee them. Installation “must also be carried out by competent companies approved by DOSH”, and section 27D of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which DOSH enforces, requires a valid certificate of fitness before a lift may operate.
Without one, “a lift owner may face a fine of up to RM100,000, jail of up to a year, or both”. That certificate runs fifteen months, and a building cannot delegate the consequence. DOSH’s director-general, Hazlina Yon, says: “even when a lift is regularly maintained and inspected by a competent company, this does not absolve the owner”.
So the work splits: the access contractor supplies the reader, the board and the permissions, the lift’s competent firm the car, its wiring and the certificate — the grey list between what a contract includes and excludes.
What must still happen when the fire alarm sounds?
The lift stops being a lift. Under by-law 155 of the Uniform Building By-Laws 1984, on a signal from the fire alarm panel and with mains power available, “all lifts shall return in sequence directly to the designated floor, commencing with the fire lifts, without answering any car or landing calls, overriding the emergency stop button inside the car, but not any other emergency or safety devices, and park with doors open”.
The designated floor is the one the fire brigade reaches the fire lifts from, normally the floor closest to fire appliance access level. By-law 243 requires fire lifts wherever the top occupied floor is over 18.5 metres above that level.
By-law 18(2) of the strata by-laws binds every proprietor not to do anything likely to “affect the operation of any safety installation, equipment or devices, or reduce the level of fire safety”, and an additional by-law may itself only be made “not inconsistent with the by-laws prescribed by regulations made under section 150”. A restriction is designed around those constraints, not through them, and only the lift’s competent firm and the building’s fire-safety professional can confirm it does — as when access control goes on an escape door.
What has to be established before anyone can price this?
Facts about equipment somebody else maintains, which an as-found survey establishes and a documented scope of works records: the car count and served floors, and which of those floors are open facilities; the reader position and cable route; who holds the lift maintenance agreement and when its certificate of fitness expires; the access head end’s spare capacity; and the fire alarm interface and who signs off fire mode.
The number follows the relay count — one per floor button, times served floors, times cars — then riser and enclosure space, the lift firm’s attendance to make the connection, and the fire-mode sign-off.
Everyone the restriction was not designed for — a guest at eleven at night, a delivery rider — needs a written route. At the lobby itself the power is by-law 17(1): management “may require any person on the common property to identify himself for security purposes”. What may be collected is answered in what a guardhouse may require, and the same reasoning governs the car park barrier. And a card that opens the lobby but refuses the lift is a floor permission, not a fault to diagnose.
Why is a lift restriction a three-party job?
Because the card, the button and the alarm panel sit under three contracts, and a restriction fails in the gaps — what goes wrong when a building’s ELV systems are split. The by-law is the management body’s, the car is the lift firm’s, and fire mode is a third signature.
Occhio Tec is an Extra Low Voltage contractor established in 2010 that designs, installs and maintains CCTV, access control, video intercom and structured networking for condominiums in Mont Kiara, Bangsar and KLCC. MicroEngine appointed it an Authorised System Installer in 2014; Panasonic Malaysia made it an Authorised Strategic Partner for ELV works in 2015. What a tower’s lifts accept is not readable off a drawing: request a site survey, or message +60 11-6494 4931.
Questions about condominium lift access control
Q-01Our committee agreed it at a committee meeting. Is that enough?
Not for an additional by-law. The Strata Management Act 2013 requires a special resolution: at least twenty-one days’ notice specifying the proposed resolution, and three-quarters of the valid votes cast. A joint management body then files a certified copy with the Commissioner in fourteen days; a management corporation has thirty days.
Q-02Can our access-control contractor do the lift wiring?
Treat the lift as somebody else’s equipment. Only 72 companies and 999 individuals are DOSH-registered to oversee lift installation and maintenance, and installation must be by companies DOSH approved. Agree in writing who connects into the car, who tests it, and who carries the certificate of fitness afterwards.
Q-04Our management deactivated a defaulter’s card — is that the same thing?
No, that is a sanction. By-law 6(4) lets management deactivate “any electromagnetic access device such as a card, tag or transponder” once the fourteen days in by-law 6(1)(a) have expired, and the reported outcomes turn on whether that notice was given: one court held a deactivation “not in accordance with SMA2012 and as such is unlawful”. Restricting every resident’s floors is a by-law, not a sanction.
Q-03If the lift only reaches your own floor, what happens in a fire?
By-law 155 answers it: on a signal from the fire alarm panel all lifts return in sequence to the designated floor, without answering car or landing calls, and park with doors open. Only the lift’s competent firm can confirm a restriction leaves that sequence untouched.