In a bid to reduce expensive construction downtime--specifically, the delays required in submitting elevator design and engineering plans for safety approvals and inspections, and the back-and-forth this can entail--a company named Modular Elevator Manufacturing makes pre-fab elevators integrated into their own shafts that show up on-site on the back of a truck. Installation of a MEM system, which can go up to seven stories, typically takes less than a day.

The pre-built elevator systems are pre-inspected and approved, so it's more like a plug-and-play component than, say, building a cinderblock hoistway from scratch and filling it with gear. Another neat feature of a MEM is that it can be retrofitted inside a building, provided you've got the space inside, or added to the outside of a building (with a Reverse Entrance option if you want to go from ground-floor sidewalk to second-floor interior).