Chesapeake, VA Building Safety: Elevator Maintenance (2026)

The director of development and permits, or a designee such as the code compliance manager, must ensure every elevator, dumbwaiter, escalator, moving walk, and other special hoisting or conveying equipment in the city is installed, maintained, altered, operated, inspected and tested to Virginia Uniform Statewide Building Code standards. Required inspections and tests are performed by the code compliance manager's office or by an outside agency the director approves. When an approved outside agency handles the inspection or test, the director can require it to submit a detailed report, and that report is due no more than 30 days after the inspection or test is completed.

This duty sits in Article IV, Division 1 of Chapter 14, the same division that covers dangerous buildings and building-address numbering, first enacted by Ord. No. 94-O-189 in 1994 and last amended by Ord. No. 09-O-097 in 2009. The article's general enforcement provision, Sec. 14-86, backs this division with a class 1 misdemeanor for code violations or, in lieu of prosecution, a civil penalty of $100 for a first offense and $150 for each later offense, issued by the department and triable in Chesapeake General District Court.