Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the podcast about lighting matters. Our unflinching conversations uncover the nuances and complexities which shape the craft of lighting design.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: We explore the pivotal whys behind a lighting designer's choices and find honest answers to your most challenging lighting questions. Because lighting matters.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode three of the Lighting Matters podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Avraham Moore, with more lights in Chicago, and I'm here with my co host.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Lisa Reed with Reed Birkitt, lighting design, and I am really excited about our guest today.
My good friend Paul Beale is.
I have a very distinct memory of the first time I met him. He stood up and said something to a room of people that I would have never said. And so one of our descriptions of our podcast is that it's unflinching. And he was the first person who came to mind as someone who's willing to talk about any topic without flinching. So, Paul, tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a lighting designer.
[00:01:12] Speaker C: Mine's racing, Natalie, so I can't remember what I said.
Dare I ask?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I'll tell you later.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Dare I ask? Maybe we'll come back to that.
Yeah. I'm Paul. I'm a lighting designer with 18 degrees.
I am located in London, so I've been here for about ten years now.
Prior to that, I spent, I think, 16 years in Australia, in Melbourne. Had a wonderful time there, where I started electrolyte, which is still going very successfully today.
Some people will probably say more successfully than when I was running it, but anyway, we're not going there either.
But, yeah, it's been about ten years now.
[00:02:01] Speaker B: I don't want to get distracted by this topic, but you stood up in a group of lighting business owners and said that you thought timesheets were rubbish. So we'll talk about that sometime.
[00:02:10] Speaker C: Such a bore.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: I know, right?
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Although I will say, since then, I think I've started to do a bit of. Well, everyone else needs to do timesheets. Maybe there is something in that. And I start. I'm still wondering, but I'm about four weeks behind on my own ones.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yes, always. Yeah. Yeah. I always struggle with them. But, yeah, we've been intrigued by some of the work that you've been doing around reusing or leds at the end of their life. And I know you have a lot more education on that topic than I do. So tell us a little bit about. About what you're doing there.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: I don't know if it's a thing in America, but it's certainly a thing here.
I'll just rewind a little bit because we are very fortunate that in central London, where our studio is located in central London, there's a load of business headquarters. So office after office after office, there's a huge market for commercial property and we've done loads of this type of, we've done loads of this type of work where we'll go in, we'll work with a tenant that we'll be doing as part of a team designing the fit out. And it's often in buildings that are brand new buildings. So the developer will build a high rise building and in order to market that building, they will fit it out with raised floors, air conditioning, false ceilings and a lighting system that's over here is referred to as cat a. I don't know whether that kind of lexicon is used in the states, but cat a lights are typically quite utilitarian lights and they're just there to light the space so that the space can be marketed. And then a tenant will go in and do the beautiful scheme and that's normally when we come in and so we will inherit this space and it's, it's got hundreds of these, these panel flights typically.
And what happens to these lights is that they end up going into landfill, they, they can't be reused. No one wants a second hand light, do they? And you know what, you know, what about the warranty? And so these, these fittings just end up getting discarded. And it's, you know, this is not just me. There's lots of people in the lighting industry and the wider design industry in the UK that are just really cross about that. And to think there has to be a better way to do it. And so that's the kind of context of this. It's something that I've observed over several years. Now fast forward to last year. We are doing a project in Cambridge and it's so Cambridge obviously it's got the famous university and associated with the university. There's a lot of life sciences startup companies that might start with half a dozen people and then they can just turn massive overnight. And you get these business parks that are full of these buildings that are specifically designed for life sciences startups. Again, we were really lucky. We got one of these life sciences parks as one of our projects. And I went out to visit the site to look at the buildings, the existing building, and I walked in and the guy who had the keys, he was showing me van and I said, what's happening with these lights tell the story of these lights, because to me they looked. They looked brand new. And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, they've been in there for six months. And what happened was the tenant that was there, they just did a fit out and then they got bought. So they got bought for like 40 billion or something like that. So they've moved to a really nice office. They don't want this old office anymore. And they certainly didn't want their 600 by 600 triodonic panel lights. I went up the step ladder, I took one down, and there's not even a layer of dust on the back of the light. It's just like it just didn't fit it.
And I got talking to the gentleman that was doing the demolition, and I said, what's going to happen to these lights? He just checked his paperwork. He goes, it's all part of the demolition contract. I said, well, what does that mean? Where do they go? It's a bit like kind of asking that sort of question when you're at a farm, you know, if you're taking a toddler to a farm, you know, oh, what happens, daddy? What happens to the little sheep, the little lamb? You don't want to know what happens to this light once it's taken down. It was one of those kind of conversations. And I said, well, can I have them?
Is this.
I guess so.
He says, are you sure? I says, yeah. I said, let's not throw them away. I'll take them. So I think it was four stories in two wings and there was about six or 700 of these panel lights. So I took one down. That's not too. Not too big. Helping my hand, I went back and the guy said, look, if you. If you want them, I'll take them down carefully and I'll stack them up. Now, I won't, just because normally they just cut them down and just throw them in a great pile. But blessing me, he stacked them all nicely and he says, but, yeah, we've got to be off site by Friday, so if you want, you've got to come back on Wednesday and pick them up. So I hired a van and I drove to California, big sort of transit town, and he said. I said, oh, how you going with the lights? Yeah, yeah, they're all over there. And I don't know, it's enormous piles. There's another pile over there, another pile over there.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Way more than you thought.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: I don't know whether you get transit vans, but it's this big sort of cargo van, and it was volumetrically full.
I think I did three trips at the end of these lines. The van was loaded down, it was like that. And then I thought, I really haven't thought this through. Like, where am I going to put them? Because there's just so many more of them than I thought. I thought, oh, I'll just put them in the corner in the studio. That'll be fine. It's like bigger than our entire studio. And so the landlord had another studio that was sort of just moved out of and it'd been emptied for empty for a couple of months. So I said, look, I've got all these liars.
So I've ended up having to hire another studio, double, double my rent to accommodate these, these things.
So that was the, that was the start of it. And then there's this. I come across this, as soon as you start doing something like this and you tell the anecdote, it's a funny story.
People you get known as, oh, you're the guy that takes the old lights.
So someone else said, oh, we've got all these led fittings, they're headed for landfill. Do you want to save them? I said, yeah, send me a photo. Anyway, I got another van. So I got another pile of these. And then I got about a kilometre and a half of extrusion saved from this project up in Birmingham in the center of England. And so this studio I've got was absolutely full of lease. In fact, I've got even more. There was another one that is company.
I don't know whether this happens in the states, but over here, if you want to sell a light fitting to the sort of consumer market, you have to put labels on it to say how energy efficient it is. So it could be a b or a c or an a or an a or whatever. And these are not the sort of fittings that we would normally specify, but they're perfectly fine, you know, they're just okay, sort of quality, decent sort of fittings. And I think last year they would have been categorized as an a energy rating. But then the government changed the criteria for that. So it's now b. But in order for them to test and recertify and put a new sticker on these lights, it just, you know, I spoke to the company owner and said, it's just not worth our while to do that. So again, these are heading for landfill. These are still in their box. They've never come out of the box.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: They're new.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: They're brand new. Oh, and I said, how many have you got, they sent me this spreadsheet and I said, oh, look, I'll just take them all.
And so.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: So now you got all these lights sitting in a warehouse or sitting in this other studio.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: So I said this.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: How are you, how are you getting them out? What are you doing with them?
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Well, I'm going to send you another photo because this morning I put them into storage and I thought, oh, I'm going to put them into a big storage unit. So this is another space that I'm about to hire.
And it was again filled. The entire volume of this thing was filled. And my sons have just finished their finals, their examinations for school. I wrote them into working for me this week. So I said, oh, I've got a couple of lights we need to move. So this morning, a couple, two complete van pools for these lights. So I can hardly get in my second studio now.
But we've, we've started the process of going through the part numbers, doing an inventory of everything that we've got, color, temperature, wattage, lumen output, whether it's got a driver or not, what the spec of the driver is. But what I.
What's also happened over here is that the government has phased out fluorescent lighting, so you can't buy a fluoro anymore legally, or. Well, you can buy one, you can't sell one. That's the situation. And there's lots and lots of buildings that are full of old fluorescent lights and that don't have any money. So I'm here in central London, I'm seeing all this light, all of these lights go into landfill and no one wants them. And then in the education sector, I mean, I was on the board of governors of our local school. It's full of fluorescence. They've got no money.
And they say, oh, yeah, there's nothing we can do. And I think, well, surely if we can get the lights from over here and put them into this setting, that's got to be worth doing. And so that's been a bit of a sort of dream to.
I haven't got rid of a single light yet, by the way. I still got them all. I've gathered them all. I haven't sold a single one yet or given. I don't really want to sell them. I'll give them away. But it's a.
Yeah, it's a dream and it's something that it should be easy, but it's not, because as soon as you sell, if I'm selling a lot, even if I give it away, I'm effectively selling a light, zero cost.
Yeah. What about the warranty? What about the. If the building burns down and it's the fault of the light, well, that's your fault. You know, I haven't spoken to my insurance. If my insurer's watching, none of this happened. I just made this up.
I'm dreading that phone call, you know? You're what? You're an architectural lighter designer? Yeah. What does an architectural lighting designer do? We're going to have to go through all of that. That's going to be the preamble to the conversation. And then I've got all these old lights from a building site that I want to put back into service.
[00:14:20] Speaker B: There's got to be a way around that, around that liability. And I know other people here in the states who are looking for that same sort of, sort of rescue and reshare reuse, you know, creating a website or some way of keeping these things from just trashing up the planet and.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Even asking the manufacturers. Right? Like, you know, if you're a reputable manufacturer, look, you shipped this thing and it had a five year warranty and it was installed for six weeks. Okay? We're not asking you for a five year warranty. We're asking you to support the product. If it fails, help us get parts of. And then I think the other piece of it, too would be, I don't know how you guys are approaching in your new projects, spares these days and, you know, spare parts and this, that and the other. Our approach is just buy spare fixtures, right? I don't want spare drivers. I don't want spare led arrays. None of that makes sense to us anymore. It's really like if there's 400 fixtures by 404, so that way you can parts the four to fix the 400 that are up in the ceiling. So I wonder if by talking to the manufacturer and saying, look, we want your support, we're not asking you to extend the warranty. We're not asking you to even maintain the warranty.
But for somebody who's getting stuff for free, because it's that school who just doesn't have the money. Right. Or maybe they have to pay for transportation or something like that, right?
But then also they need 400, they get 420, right? And they have that spare package and you have a manufacturer that says, yeah, this is fine, then what else do you need? I mean, I think it's some legalese with an attorney.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Yes, that's what I was thinking. There's a way to minimize your liability, but what you're doing is so admirable. There's got to be a way of.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Since this phase out of the fluorescence, we are starting to get a lot of led upgrade kind of inquiries coming through and I'm trying to advocate for. Well, do you actually need to change your whole light fitting? Because the casing is fine, but, you know, the metal bit is fine, the diffuser, look at it. It's fine.
We need to take out the fluorescent tube and the little tombstones maybe there, or leave them in whatever it needs. A new dryer, if we can.
We did a project, we looked at a project for a school and we run two different strategies, just for comparison. One was to have new light fittings with new controls, so daylight link occupancy sends in. And on a parallel track, we looked at retaining all of the fittings they've got, but refurbishing the internal. So take out the fluorescent shoes, put in an led board, put in a Kasambi wireless driver, so there's no messing around with control wiring.
And the capital cost was, it was something. It was about 60% cheaper to retain the existing fittings. I know there's a little bit more labor involved and.
And in the end it was really interesting because the client decided not to proceed with this. And I think the thing that was the perception of it was, well, we're spending all this money and we haven't got new lights. And I said, well, the bit that's important is new.
It's better to have the led components best in class. These very high color rendering, really good colour, colour quality, absolute top of the range in terms of energy efficiency and Cassandra control. Daylight linked. Yeah. And it's a school. So I was saying, like these lights, because we're going to control them really well. Yeah. Schools operate from 09:00 in the morning to 03:30 yeah, that's daytime.
The sensor will know that it's bright enough. So if the sensor says, yeah, you meet the foot candles or the Lux levels. Yeah, these things are just going to dim down or switch off, so it's going to run off like fresh air, this thing. But the perception was, oh, but we've still got our own, we've still got our old lights, but it's a box.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: It'S just a back box.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: Right. And, I mean, I think a lot of people have seen. So in the states, we call them escos, right. Energy service companies that come in and do led replacement tubes and they shove them in two by twos and two by fours and the end result looks horrid.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: And I will add that there is 99.9% of the time, and I feel comfortable, as Avi Moore saying this, there is not an IAlD lighting designer involved. It is purely a, we're going to sell you some stuff. Yeah, what you're talking about is a lighting designer coming in and finding a retrofit solution that is cost effective. And let's say, let's include labor. So it's still 40% cheaper. Let's add another 20. Right? 40% cheaper than buying new.
And you get all these other benefits and energy savings and everything else.
It's one of the reasons, Paul, this podcast exists, because what isn't out there for that client is somebody saying, yeah, there are these people that do these terrible things, and you may have seen them, and in some people's mind, they're not terrible. But I think to this lighting designer, they are terrible because it doesn't take into quality of light and dimming and all those other things.
And yeah, why do you have to change a metal box?
If you could produce better light and just retrofit some leds in, and you're getting the warranty from the leds. Now we have the other fun problem in the states, Ul ETL CSA, that makes some of that complicated, right? Like that box made by manufacturer X and shoving manufacturers y stuff into it. Manufacturer Y has to be listed to modify manufacturer access.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: It just makes it too hard, though, doesn't it? It puts it in the too hard basket and you think, well, let's just put some new ones in and like, something's got to change, isn't it? Because I went to a really interesting talk at ILD last week, some guy from Denmark, I can't remember his name, but he was saying, when we're talking about sustainability and we're getting ever more energy efficient, well, parallel with that, the generation of electricity is getting greener and greener. So within ten years, it's highly likely that all the energy that all the electricity that we use on our lights is going to be green anyway. So it doesn't really matter how energy efficient they are, because if it comes from a windmill or a great big pv farm, who cares? The thing that doesn't, that's not addressed as part of that thinking, though, is the embodied carbon that goes into manufacturing the fittings. And I've done a lot of reading around this subject, and it is directly related to the weight, to the mass. So if you, if the mass of the light fitting that you're putting in new is a couple of boards and an electronic driver? Well, that way, yes. That weighs hardly anything compared to the metal work and the diffuser and everything else that makes up the bulk of the weight of a fitting. So I think we need to start thinking less about the.
The actual running costs. I know that it's still an issue at the moment because there's a lot of still coal and gas fired power plants, but in the future, when it is all green, it's going to be that embodied carbon that's going to be the important thing.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: And hopefully we can focus on quality of light then, and not electricity.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
I don't know what your experience of this is that over here, at the start of a project, there'll be a sustainability consultant, and I know their hearts in the right place. And it's wonderful that projects have dedicated consultants for this. It's important stuff. I totally get it.
But the kind of lumens per watt that needs to come out of the fittings, they don't actually realize what they're asking for. And they say, oh, it just goes up and up.
We get situations where it's practically impossible to achieve unless the led chip is kind of poking out the bottom of the fitting, and it would just be absolutely horrendous. And no one cares what it looks like. That consultant doesn't care what it looks like.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Of course they don't.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: And I find it unfortunate that those systems don't talk about. So if we transition to, like, new consoles, they don't talk about or give credit to things that are serviceable.
So I've been on a few podcasts where people have talked a lot about lighting designers picking things that aren't serviceable, burying leds and concrete. And you can't get the light bulb out. Right. You can't service it.
But we talk a lot about products and how, like, I get my hand into that down light to get the driver out. Right. We've seen drivers installed on the backside of junction boxes that you would have to magically, you know, do some crazy thing to be able to get to the driver.
Anyways, it was a longer conversation, but we have projects, I'm sure you both do, too, that have been using leds for almost ten years. And we've had a board fail. We've had a driver fail, but it's serviceable, right? You're not ripping open the ceilings. So your footprint, as you were talking about, Paul, while it was, it's a new construction, right? So you have that footprint initially in the truck and the cardboard and everything associated with that the long term footprint. We're at ten years, and we've changed maybe this one restaurant I keep thinking about, we've changed maybe seven drivers and two led arrays.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: And what if that had been a situation where you had to replace the whole fixture? Then you're, like, throwing away the whole thing.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: You know, the restaurant opens at 05:00 p.m. and the chefs are in at 08:00 a.m. so you would have to madly cut open drywall, cut open the fixture. Right now you have two subs, right? Drywall.
Well, the electrician can cut the drywall, but they're going to do a really.
I should watch myself. Electrician's going to cut open the drywall, get the light fixture out, put the light fixture back in maybe an hour for us. Then you have to reprogram the dolly system so that becomes another contractor that's involved. But now you've got to reinstall the drywall, and then you got to tape and mud it, and then you got to paint it. You got to do that all before anybody shows up in the restaurant. 05:00 p.m. dinner seating. That's not going to happen.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So you're not even talking about just being green or sustainability. It's just practicality.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Practicality.
[00:27:13] Speaker B: Do the right thing.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: But, I mean, think about the green part of that, though, right? Like all the drywall, all the mud, all the plastic to protect everything. While you're doing that, the four different contractors we just talked about driving to the site, parking someplace, potentially coming back again. And in the discovery of figuring this out, they were there. Right. Like, these are key things that I think we all practice in our design. And think about that. I think it's lost in the process of lighting design.
Maybe not done by lighting designers, but also just lighting in general. Right. People not paying attention to these finer details.
[00:27:59] Speaker C: But that's the other thing. Just on the sustainability sort of code compliance stuff, a lot of it is just installed lumens per wallet. And it's. Well, actually, if you then think about how it's controlled, what about if we invest a little bit more energy in the system? So it's going to look amazing. Quality of life laser, as you brought us, are so important. And so we invest a little bit of extra watts per meter squared to make it really function well and be beautiful. But then we control it so that it's only on when it's needed.
Yeah.
The end result is the same, but that's harder to calculate. So there's sustainability consultants they hate that as a. As a solution, because they say, oh, but we don't know how it's going to be operated day to day.
But, but, yeah, it's. I think really good lighting design with really good controls is the. Is the answer, rather than just trying to make it like, you know, like a skinny, skinny latte with skim milk. It's just never good, is it?
[00:29:18] Speaker B: But, yeah, that's. I mean, the hours of operation is a key component in the energy consumption, so we can't just ignore that. And then, like you said, you know, getting better color and better glare control.
Just healthier, happier people.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Yeah. We have to get beyond the connected watts per square foot and get to the used watts per square foot. Right. And the. I think. I think it's fair to have a conversation on, like, for more. Like, we use a lot of dolly controls and we don't hook it up to relays, so when all the lights are off, they are consuming. I believe the spec. And people are going to yell at me if I'm wrong, but I don't know, off the top of my head, let's just call it a watt, right. To keep the electronics on. So we have a vampire load per driver of a watt compared to a zero to ten volt system or elv system. Okay, fine. But now I can't think of a project where we're running the lights at full ever. Right? Maybe in 510 years as the led degrades. That's one of the beautiful things about using lighting control, right? You get extra life and you can slowly ramp it up.
[00:30:37] Speaker C: In theory. But have you ever done that?
[00:30:39] Speaker A: In theory?
[00:30:41] Speaker C: I know you can do that. No, no. Exactly. And I've never met anyone who has done it.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: No, no. I mean, I will say that that ten year old restaurant we've actually had, we have gone back in and adjust levels because the restaurateur is obsessed with lighting. But quite honestly, he has full control with an iPad to modify. So I would assume that if he walks in and he doesn't like something, he's changing it himself, then calling us.
But it's there and it's available, and we haven't gotten the phone call to relight the restaurant. Right. It's really just been.
How can you help us get drivers and circuit boards? Because things have been failing. I mean, it's ten years old.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: It's really great, though, to have a client with that kind of longevity. Who cares that much about lighting. It's kind of rare. It's like working on your own project. Or something. Working with yourself. Right.
Like, I would go in ten years later and adjust the light levels up for myself if I noticed. But how many of our clients.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it triggers another challenge, which is service. Right. How do these, all of these things get serviced? And the experience we've had is that the service companies don't really understand how to service this new technology. They are very much in the camp of, oh, we just have to replace everything.
[00:32:18] Speaker B: Oh, it just, it sounds like maybe you're doing more of this than I am. I wish that we could get more involved in maintaining our projects and going back and making sure that things are still performing because the clients don't always recognize that the led is degrading or that the color is shifting. And that's something I wish that we could get contracts to do, is just review, do an annual review for a client. But have you done that?
[00:32:48] Speaker A: It's an interesting idea. You know, what does it cost you? A go out to a site four and a half years after it was done.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Right before the warranty runs out.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: And then, and then it saves them how much and replacement product.
[00:33:05] Speaker A: And you just gained a long term client, a customer who says, wow, these guys do more than just that. I don't think the electrical contractors are going to do that. I think the general contractors have moved on five minutes after the light fixtures were installed.
But, you know, we all have these projects on our websites and then we also have the manufacturers we continue to work with.
So, you know, I think it's interesting. I actually was in a space here in Chicago and I knew who the lighting designer was and I walked into it and I was like, half of the fixtures are out and this is 18 months old.
And I called the lighting designer and I said, hey, whose product did you use?
And what's going on here?
Just that was valuable to me as a business. Right? Like never going to use that manufacturer ever.
But also to understand this is a big project, a big, you know, government space.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: We really have to make sure that we meet the maintenance folks so when we notice something like this, we can call and say, hey, how do we help you? Because our name is on this and we want it to look awesome for 20 years because you're not going to touch it again in 20 years. Like, can we help you? What can we do?
I don't know. It's just kind of this thing that I've kind of taken on because in the theater world, you do a show, it goes up, it comes down, it disappears, it's gone.
But in our world, these things last a long time.
And I don't know, it's just been an idea that we've tried to play with.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: Yeah, us too. And it's just because we care. We care about how it looks for the long term. We care about sustainability. There's so many things at play in keeping a lighting design working and looking good for the duration of its life.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I think a lot of contractors, they just assume that the way it's required to be done on this project is the way that they did the previous project. So we will often at the start of a project, just when the contractor's been engaged, go there with our documentation and say, with respect, this is how it needs to work. This detail, what this is showing, these are the important things here. We don't want you to get this wrong.
We don't want to have an argument at the end of the project and say, for us to be on one side of the table, say, oh, but it says on our detail, you should have followed that. Look, there's a little minute drawing that would show this particular aspect of an installation detail. I'd rather say upfront and say, look, this is really important, and if you get it wrong, we're going to need to redo it. So let's just understand it and not get it wrong. So that the end of the project, and often the thing that I love is when you get contractors and they're just on board and they get it and they say, oh, yeah, this is going to be really special, actually. And as soon as you get them invested, like, you're going to get a great project if you get them, if you get them excited, and conversely, if you get. It doesn't matter how good your design is, how good your documentation, if you've got a bad contractor, you've got almost no chance of getting to look any good. So when they're bidding the project and they say, oh, won the project was half the price of all the others that tended it, you just think, oh, no, it's gonna be a nightmare.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: I'm curious how often you both get the opportunity to interview or discuss or review electrical contractor bids before your partner, the electrician, is selected.
[00:37:24] Speaker C: Lisa.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: So rare. Maybe once, twice, we're the same way.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: It's really surprising, isn't it? They're the people that have to execute something that the client paid for and hopefully find some sustainable efficiencies. Right? Oh, we can run these wires have less conduit. What if we put the electrical panel here, right?
But the partner, they're ultimately our construction partner.
And yeah, I would agree. We never get the opportunity to say, well, how are you going to approach this before they get hired on a job?
[00:38:08] Speaker C: I don't know how it works there, but over here, what can sometimes happen on projects where it's particularly cost sensitive, the contractual go in and they'll bid it really, really low and they'll get the project and there's virtually no margin in there. And the game is to then say, to value engineer the lighting and many other services as well. But the lighting is always seen, especially if there's a fancy lighting designer on board, because the perception is that you've got gold plated switches and, you know, all this sort of unnecessary sort of, you know, liberace sort of chandeliers everywhere. And so they think, oh, there must be just loads of just superfish wasted money in this, in the scheme, of course it's all full of waste. If a specialist is designed, I mean, what nonsense. Surely we know if you've got a specialist that designs it, that's got access to the knowledge of all of the ranges, lower, mid, upper, mid, high. We know exactly where to pitch the design, depending on the budget. So in the design process we'll say what's the cost plan? How much money have you got to spend? We will spend your money in accordance with that cost plan and get you the best possible scheme that you can afford. Right. If they've got a really low budget or really high budget or anything in between, it doesn't matter where it's pitched, we will come up with the best skin and then the contractual come on board and they'll say oh yeah, well you know what these fancy lighting designers are like, we can get you something, it's going to be exactly the same, probably better actually. And it will be half the price because, yeah, look at this one, this one is exactly the. That's exactly the same as this one, isn't it? And that's exactly the same. And sometimes the client, they'll hold this light in the hand, they'll say yeah, they do look sort of pretty similar, you know, why is this guy wasted our money with these fancy german light fittings? Where. Yeah, this one looks exactly the same. Where's this one from? Oh it's from China.
That's fine. There are some ok's products from China, but a lot of these that are no name. Yeah, copycat kind of products just do not perform as well. They don't last the distance. And by this time, avi as you suggest the project's finished. Where's the contractor?
Come back, come back. They're gone. Or even if it's like, after the warranty period, it might be twelve months.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:47] Speaker C: It's not very long for a light fitting to. If after 18 months, this light starts to.
Starts to fail, you've got thousands of them in the, in the building. They'll say, well, yeah, who signed off on this? You know, they won't remember the pressure that they put you under to force you to kind of agree to. So, you know, it's a different. We're often, as line designers, put in a really difficult position.
I mean, I don't mind what the budget is. Yeah. I could design to any budget. Just tell me the budget we're designed to.
[00:41:21] Speaker B: Right. Just tell me. Yeah.
[00:41:24] Speaker C: If you've only got half, of course, what happens is the contractor will say, we can save you 20% on your lighting package, but what they're doing is giving you a 50% less quality and less cost. And they're trousering the remaining 30% because they've gone in with no margin on the project. Not all contractors, but the good ones don't do it. But there's certainly ones out there.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: I didn't know that happened in, in London.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Oh, the game is afoot here as well. Yeah. Well, and then just to bring it back to our core subject for today is, what's the sustainability in that? Right. Like, okay, then it fails in 18 months, and now we got to get another one. Or let's talk about. Let's spend that just moment. Let's just spend that moment of getting something from Germany to greater London versus something getting from China to London. I mean, that has to be part of the conversation.
[00:42:28] Speaker B: Yeah, there are so many costs.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: Well, this has been such an amazing conversation. And Paul, I think we could. There's a lot of subject matter here that we can continue on, and I definitely want to do that, but I think at this point, we should stop there and continue on another time.
I do want to make sure that we thank our sponsor of this episode, which is lighting Services, Inc.
LSI.
They sponsored this podcast today. LSI is celebrating their 66th anniversary and is the premier Us manufacturer of track, accent display and exhibit lighting systems.
[00:43:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I've heard they make excellent tracks and spots.
[00:43:19] Speaker B: They really do. I have to say. My first introduction to them was being up on a lift with one of our museum clients, and they're like, throwing these things down into the basket, you know, when they're changing out from one exhibit to the next. And they're really, they really are built well.
[00:43:36] Speaker A: I have been told that LSI does nothing recommend doing that.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: No, of course not.
[00:43:43] Speaker A: But every single one of our clients, including us, do it all the time and it works just fine. And the paint still is on, which is pretty cool, too.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: LSI designs and manufactures premium quality architectural lighting fixtures. Their products are control agnostic, integrating control, simplicity and feature an industry leading this is important to today's discussion. Twelve year warranty wow.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: We wrote this document and I didn't realize LSI had this twelve year warranty at the end of the twelve years, and if something fails, they will send shipping information to send the track head back, and they will repopulate the track head with drivers and new leds and send it back and give you a brand new warranty on the product.
[00:44:35] Speaker B: That's amazing.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: They've built their system to be as sustainable as possible long term, so you could potentially buy their system and run it. You know, it's. I got in trouble for using this one time while I use it. Anyway, it's future proof. It really does become a future proof system.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Their reputation for creativity, innovative design, and leading technology coupled with intelligent personalized service has made them the manufacturer of choice among the most discriminating specifiers in lighting. Visit Lighting Services, Inc. At www.lightingservicesinc.com to learn more.
[00:45:19] Speaker C: Perfect.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: Thank you, Paul.
[00:45:22] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me on, by the way. It's just an absolute honor and I love speaking with Lisa anytime. So, yeah, lovely to meet you, Avi, and I'm sure our paths will cross it some confidence or other. So.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I know it's always fun talking with you, Paul. Thanks for saying saying crazy things like, you know, timesheets are rubbish.
[00:45:51] Speaker C: In fact, it's now it's almost 05:00 on a Friday afternoon. Maybe you've just inspired me. I'll go do my timesheet before I, before I open the beer.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: There you go. This is your reminder.
[00:46:03] Speaker C: All right, cheers, guys.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: Lighting matters as we wrap up, we want to reiterate how much we value your time, and we hope you found it as much fun to listen to as we had creating it. Remember to like it, and share this content with your friends and colleagues.
[00:46:21] Speaker A: The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of the sponsors. Our content has general application, but we recommend obtaining personalized guidance from a professional iald lighting designer such as RBLd or more lights, for your next endeavor.
