Warren Takes VDA to the Next Floor

Warren Equity Partners has acquired VDA, a firm that inspects elevators and escalators and advises building owners on how to maintain, modernize and design them, from Keystone Capital.

Keystone first invested in VDA in December 2021. Over the following five years, the business completed more than 20 add-on acquisitions, expanded into Canada and the UK, and now has more than 600 employees.

VDA works on the elevators, escalators and other lifts inside office towers, apartment buildings, casinos, government facilities and other properties. Its customers include real estate firms, asset owners and companies that operate many sites, ranging from a single building to a national portfolio.

State and local codes require that this equipment be inspected and tested at regular intervals. VDA’s inspectors carry out those code-compliance checks, or witness the safety tests performed by a building’s own elevator contractor. The firm says it performs about 120,000 elevator inspections a year in the US



VDA also handles the compliance paperwork for owners through a service it calls Certificate Compliance Management, tracking certificate due dates and filing the forms that local regulators require. Its consultants evaluate aging equipment, audit the contracts owners hold with maintenance companies and plan modernizations, while in-house engineers design elevator systems for new and renovated buildings.

The firm operates in Canada under the GUNN name, with offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, and in the UK and India under the D2E name. VDA plans to bring its 14 US inspection brands, assembled through acquisitions since 2020, together under the VDA name in early 2027.

VDA was founded by John Van Deusen in December 1980, and it took the name Van Deusen & Associates in 1990. In 2010, the founding principals handed day-to-day operations to a group of senior vice presidents.

Today, VDA is led by CEO Gavin Campbell and is headquartered about 25 miles west of New York City in East Hanover, New Jersey. Mr. Campbell became CEO in July 2023. He previously served as a president at Intertek Group, a testing, inspection and certification company, where he oversaw two global business lines across 140 locations in eight countries.

[caption id="attachment_241658" align="alignright" width="120"] Gavin Campbell[/caption]

“Over the past three years, VDA has grown into the clear leader in the vertical transportation space, and Keystone has been an incredibly supportive partner during that time,” said Mr. Campbell. “The accelerated growth trajectory of VDA over the last five years was the direct result of the hands-on partnership between Keystone and our management team.”

Mr. Campbell and VDA’s management team will continue to lead the company in partnership with Warren Equity.

When Keystone acquired VDA in December 2021, the company had more than 30 offices across the US, and the business became Keystone’s fifth platform for its building sciences consulting and engineering services strategy.

Add-on acquisitions under Keystone included New York-based Sierra Consulting Group (2022); Canada-based GUNN Consultants (2024); and UK-based D2E (2025). The pace picked up from there. VDA added Florida-based Suncoast Elevator Inspections (2025); Southern California-based HKA Vertical Transportation Consulting (2025); Virginia-based Central Elevator Inspections (2025); and Colorado-based 1 Above Elevator Inspections (2025). In 2026, it acquired Arkansas-based Elevator Safety Inspection Services; Texas-based Texas QEI; Texas-based Encompass RNC; and Florida-based Certified Elevator Inspections.

[caption id="attachment_241666" align="alignright" width="120"] Jason Van Zant[/caption]

“Keystone is incredibly proud to have partnered with Mike Smith, Rob Cuzzi, and the other business owners and leaders who joined us in the VDA journey over the past five years,” said Jason Van Zant, a managing director at Keystone. “We wish the VDA team the best on their next chapter of growth and have no doubt their future is bright.”

Elevator inspection work is set by regulation. Building owners cannot skip a code inspection, and the inspectors who perform them must be certified. VDA’s inspectors hold the Qualified Elevator Inspector, or QEI, credential.

The installed base those inspectors serve is growing. The US elevator and escalator market is expected to grow from about $17.1 billion in 2026 to $21.3 billion by 2031, a compound annual rate of about 4.5%, according to MarketsandMarkets, which points to commercial construction and the replacement of aging equipment in existing buildings.



Inspection work is carried out largely by regional firms, which is why each of VDA’s 14 US inspection brands began as a separate local business. On the consulting side, VDA competes with firms such as Lerch Bates, an employee-owned technical consultancy headquartered near Denver, which has operated for about 75 years.

The acquisition of VDA gives Warren a national elevator inspection and consulting business with recurring, code-mandated work within the buildings and facilities sector it targets, and a record of buying regional inspection firms.

Warren Equity Partners invests in North American companies with enterprise values of $20 million to $500 million, with no minimum for add-on acquisitions, through buyouts, corporate carve-outs and recapitalizations. Sectors of interest include transportation, power and utilities, buildings and facilities, digital infrastructure, water and wastewater, and waste. Warren was co-founded in 2015 by co-managing partners Steven Wacaster and Scott Bruckmann and is headquartered in Jacksonville Beach, Florida.

Warren is currently investing from its fifth fund, which closed at its $2.8 billion hard cap in July 2026, twice the $1.4 billion it raised for Fund IV in April 2023. Fund V’s first platform investment, made in June 2026, was USG Water Solutions, which maintains water storage tanks for municipal utilities.

Keystone invests in commercial and industrial services, food and beverage, industrial technology, professional services and technical services. Keystone manages more than $1 billion in capital commitments. Its third fund closed in February 2024 with $630 million of capital after just four months of fundraising. Keystone was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Chicago.

Houlihan Lokey and Citizens M&A Advisory were the financial advisors to VDA and Keystone.