North Dakota condo elevators hit their first inspection deadline this August
North Dakota condo elevators hit their first inspection deadline this August
2026-09-15 · North Dakota · Compliance
If your North Dakota association owns a building with an elevator, a chairlift, a platform lift or a dumbwaiter, it now owes the State Electrical Board a registration and an annually renewed certificate of operation — and the first witnessed-test deadline has already passed. Senate Bill 2336 created N.D.C.C. §§ 43-09-27 through 43-09-34 and amended §§ 43-09-01 and 43-09-02. It passed the Senate 46-1 and the House 77-15, and was signed on April 3, 2025.1
The definition is much wider than “elevator”
The statute regulates “conveyances,” and the list is long:
“'Conveyance' means an elevator, escalator, stairway chairlift, platform lift, stage lift, orchestra lift, hoist, dumbwaiter, moving walk, automated people mover, automated-type parking structure, wind turbine elevator, or other device used for moving individuals, materials, equipment, or other objects from one landing or location to another.”
A stairway chairlift installed for one owner's accessibility, a platform lift at a clubhouse entrance and a dumbwaiter in a common corridor are all conveyances.
The exemption does not cover a condominium building
This is the provision most likely to be misread:
“The rules adopted by the board may not apply to an elevator located in a single-family private residence, a facility used for the purpose of energy generation, an industrial conveyance the primary purpose of which is not the movement of individuals, or a conveyance used in an agricultural facility.”
A multi-unit condominium or townhome building is not a single-family private residence. A lift in the common elements of an association-owned building falls inside the statute, not outside it. See our North Dakota condo safety inspections page for how this sits alongside the state's other building-safety duties.
What the owner has to do
Section 43-09-28 puts the duty on the owner of the conveyance — which, for common-element equipment, is the association:
“Within six months from the effective date of this Act, the owner of a conveyance shall register the conveyance with the board.” A new conveyance “must register the conveyance with the board within thirty days after the conveyance has been inspected and approved.” Registration requires the type, rated load, number of landings, speed, manufacturer, location and purpose, plus whatever else the Board requires.
Section 43-09-31 adds the recurring obligation and the penalty:
“Before a conveyance is placed in operation, the owner of the conveyance shall obtain a certificate of operation from the board. The board may impose a penalty of not less than fifty dollars for the failure to obtain a certificate of operation. A certificate of operation is valid for one year and must be renewed annually. The owner of the conveyance shall pay the required fee before the board may issue a certificate of operation and renewal of a certificate. The owner of the conveyance shall clearly display the certificate on or in each conveyance or in the machine room.”
And § 43-09-33 supplies the consequence that will actually hurt a building:
“If a conveyance fails an inspection, the owner of the conveyance shall remove the conveyance from service until the violations are remedied to the satisfaction of the board.”
For a three-storey condominium with one elevator and owners who cannot use the stairs, “remove the conveyance from service” is not a paperwork problem. It is an accessibility and habitability problem with no stated time limit.
The phase-in, which is where 2026 comes in
Section 11 of the Act is uncodified and sets the schedule verbatim:
“After August 1, 2026, each newly installed or altered conveyance must pass an acceptance test witnessed by an elevator inspector. After August 1, 2026, each traction elevator must pass an acceptance test witnessed by an elevator inspector. After August 1, 2027, each hydraulic elevator, escalator, and moving walk must pass an annual acceptance test witnessed by an elevator inspector. After August 1, 2028, the board shall implement a schedule to meet the five-year full load safety testing requirement. After August 1, 2032, each conveyance must pass a five-year full load safety test witnessed by an elevator inspector.”
Read the second and third items together, because they decide which year your building is in. Traction elevators were due from August 1, 2026 — that date is past. Hydraulic elevators, escalators and moving walks come in from August 1, 2027, and then annually. Most low-rise North Dakota condominium buildings run hydraulic units, which buys them until next August; anything with a machine room and a traction drive is already inside the window. An alteration — a modernisation, a controller replacement — pulls a conveyance into the 2026 rule regardless of type.
The budget question nobody has answered
Registration fees, certificate fees and renewal fees are set by the Board rather than by the statute, and the statute is silent on what a witnessed acceptance test costs. Annual certificates, annual witnessed tests from 2027 for hydraulic units, and a five-year full-load safety test from 2032 are three separate recurring lines that did not exist in a North Dakota association budget written before 2025.
The five-year full-load test is the one to plan for rather than react to. It is the kind of item a reserve study should be carrying by now, and under the state's new disclosure statute the reserve balance and whether the association uses a reserve study are both things a seller must hand a buyer.
One effective-date wrinkle worth knowing
The enrolled bill contains no effective-date section and no emergency clause, which would default it to August 1, 2025. The Legislative Council's own published list of 2025 effective dates records SB 2336 as July 1, 2025. The discrepancy does not affect the phase-in dates, which are stated in the Act itself — but it does move the six-month registration deadline in § 43-09-28 by a month, which matters to any board that has not registered at all.
What to watch next
Watch for the State Electrical Board's fee schedule and for its § 43-09-33 inspection reports to start generating out-of-service orders as the August 2027 hydraulic deadline approaches. Watch, too, for the first association that discovers a stairway chairlift installed years ago as an accommodation is a registrable conveyance nobody registered.
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