Whats wrong with suppliers!
Singapore, 25th July 2014
Sometimes you want to shoot some of your lighting suppliers! Either they are plain dumb or plain arrogant…Another round of frustration today when we assessed tender submissions from 3 pre-selected suppliers for one of our projects. As we have done on previous occasions we had used suppliers’ quotations during our preparation of the budgets for our client. The quotes were “reality” checked making sure they would represent quite closely what we would expect for tender. To our surprise some suppliers came back with tenderer submission up to double (!) the budget, which nota bene we had prepared with them. So they knew the budget…explanation anyone? Even stranger, one of the suppliers had a near as specified bid that was more competitive then someone else’s alternative bid … @#@#%&*!
Two things seems happening here, the one who offered competitively did hardly mark-up some of the specified lights knowing that it would burst the budget and in forward thinking may probably get the original manufacturer to supply directly to the client. This is less headache and leaving him still to supply a package of fittings that he can make some profit on. The other seemingly doubled the price in the hope that we would get back and ask him for alternatives to meet the budget. As we all know each supplier represents and has “dealerships” of certain brands and when they have to deal with other suppliers brands these situations happen. But for us as the designers, having specified and agreed a budget with the client, it can be an utterly frustrating affair at times!
Light watch 5-123: Meanwhile Singapore as embarked in converting all its 96,000 streetlights into LED, with stage one the conversion of about 4000 residential streetlights (now mostly 70-150W Sodium) stretched over 500 roads. The justification is a bit patchy; claiming the current lights have reached end of life, but that they will save 30% energy and will meet all road standards. A bit further they do confess that they “may” need more lights to achieve these standards and that the lights are 60 to 80% more expensive. Only to end on the “bright” note that when all lights are converted Singapore will eventually save $10 Million a year! (But that is not going to happen for another 5 year). Media releases are geared to please the general public….
Here are some images of the Singapore streets. Have a great (long) weekend.
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