Interior Health is making progress on a near-million-dollar project to upgrade elevators at Royal Inland Hospital.

Facilities manager Lorne Sisley says the project to upgrade two elevators will cost about $850,000 dollars.

“We are expecting it to be complete by February. It will be a lot behind the scenes, so the public may not see a lot of difference when they push a button or when they actually walk in to an elevator. But behind the scenes there will be significant upgrades to make sure they’re reliable.”

Sisley says IH is working to upgrade six elevators in the Kamloops hospital which were built in 1965.

Sisley says the upgrades were deemed necessary after a circuit board broke down last year and elevators were out of service for between four and five days.

He says upgrades have already been completed on two of the six elevators.

“As far as the following two, we’re hoping that we can marry that with the additional work that’s going on at the other site with the patient care tower,” Sisley says.

Editors Note: Angelo Iacobucci passed away December 14th. While we work through our tremendous loss he continues to be a big part of Radio NL as he always will be. We have found a folder of almost 30 stories he had prepared for the holiday season. This is one of them.