The week that was…25th- 29th June 2018

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The week that was…25th- 29th June 2018

Singapore, Weekend 30-1st July 2018

Back in the office
Finally, a whole week back in the office…while the team is perfectly capable to manage our projects in my absence it was good to catch up on all the projects, attend some meetings and do some paper work. Sounds ordinary, but its good to emerge yourself once in a while to get the feel of everything back in your finger tips as we say…having been away (and switched off) has its advantages, but then once back I just need to “top up” on our daily activities.

PLDC update
While I was away PLDC has progressed nicely to confirm all the keynote speaker slots. We now have Satoshi Teshima, an Asian-German Architect from USA, Young Ho Baik from the government in Seoul, Sven Martin a Visual Effects Designer from Germany who worked on the Game of Thrones (!) and the previously announced Arjan de Boer, a hotelier turned investor and developer. Exciting news is that Sven Martin will also be doing a masterclass on the pre-convention meeting day, something that I think will attract a lot of interested people, considering the enormous popularity of the Game of Thrones series. The Cities Forum on preconvention meeting day program is starting to take shape with PLDC also signing an agreement with Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities to support the event. For further details and follow the progress of the event please see the PLDC website: https://2018.pld-c.com

SILF update
The Shanghai International Lighting Fair in September is also moving into an exciting direction with Messe Frankfurt partnering up with the local Shanghai government to focus the event now solely on Lighting for Cities which of course will include the future outlook on smart city developments. We are now working on an updated program for our Lighting Design Agora which I hope to share with you soon!

LDoT
On my Lighting Design of Things front also a lot is happening! After successful keynote presentations in Jakarta and Bangkok further international guest appearances are now confirmed in Amsterdam, Dubai and Kuala Lumpur between now and October. Specifically the Amsterdam event is created around my LDoT platform. The event and panel discussion have Lighting Design of Things as the central theme and as the founder of the platform I have been invited to share my vision and thoughts for the future at this event that will be beamed live over the internet and social media…exciting stuff! More to share over the coming weeks also on the other events. It’s keeping me busy!

Punggol Digital District
As a direct result of our LDoT activities we are now engaging with several of our clients in regards to opportunities of integrating IoT and other smart features in our projects, the biggest one undoubtedly being the implementation of the Punggol masterplan that we developed last year. Driven by Singapore’s Smart Nation program lighting will be the facilitator of many smart functions. We just had our kick off meeting this week so more in the coming months. Other projects in Singapore, the Philippines and China are also having a serious look at the IoT possibilities through lighting as a host.

Tender review
One of the most meaningful meetings this week was a tender review of alternative submissions by shortlisted suppliers that we had in our office for one of our resort renovation projects. With both the M&E consultant as well as well as the client in attendance it was a great opportunity to show our expertise and use the opportunity to demonstrate the importance of quality to them. The budget for this project, as so often, is ultra-tight and regardless how much we would like to stick to our original specs, there is no way that that was going to happen. So, we committed to serious value engineering, preselected two preferred suppliers with experience in both hospitality and supplying to the remote resort islands of the Maldives, The M&E also brought in one of their choices. Key elements that we were able to demonstrate to the client, besides your typical lighting performance criteria such as colour consistency, optical quality, light output efficiency, etc, were issues such as
– suitability for 3bcore or 5 core electrical wiring and its impact on dimming protocols
– driver quality and compatibility with dimmer systems
– quality and method of wire connections (90% of failure is in the installation!)
– completeness of accessories
– system warranty versus light fitting warranty
and the list goes on.

Our main aim was to highlight to both client and M&E of the importance to have all these issues covered with tender award to make the installation work later on as fool proof as possible and have clear responsible parties to avoid finger pointing and blaming each other when things do go wrong. Having experienced suppliers (like the ones we had shortlisted) showed the client their knowledge and understanding of the site issues providing further peace of mind by assuring their presence and super vision on installation and commissioning. We achieved exactly what we wanted, a client now understanding the potential pitfalls of the ultra-cheap fixtures, worried about the potential site problems (and delays ensuing!) and willing to spent some extra money to assure quality, reliability and ease of installation.

A very satisfying and rewarding session.

Enjoy the weekend…