About contracts, terms and conditions
Singapore, 1st June 2010
In continuation of yesterday’s blog about “the difficult client” it is probably appropriate to elaborate a bit more on the contract, its terms and conditions, that we have with our client. First of all I don’t think there is such thing as a perfect or fool proof contract. Even if it existed it would probably be a few hundred pages thick. It is impossible to cover everything, specifically not the clients ‘wacky” thinking and tastes at time. If I like blue but the client like red I will have to deal with it, right? I can’t really put in my terms and conditions that the client has to accept my design regardless…the so called “my way or the highway” approach. Maybe people like Philip Starck, can command this kind of attitude and condition that into their contract, terms and conditions, but I certainly don’t belong in that category, I think 99.9% of the lighting designers don’t belong in that category.
We can control factual issues such as scope of work, quantities, frequencies and most of all build in milestones for approval in the project’s deliveries. These are critical to determine whether revisions or changes can be considered a re-design, additional work (billable with extra fees) or just simple modifications which are a normal part of the design process. These approval steps are critical also for the progressive invoicing of work. These are all quantitative and measurable things.
But it is very hard to build in protection against abstract and subjective issues, such as taste and personal preferences. That really is the client’s prerogative and part of our relationship as a designer with our client. However we do have the professional duty to make sure our designs comply with the related standards and safety norms. Only when these are breached by the client do we have the moral high grounds.
We are principally hired to satisfy our clients. If we can satisfy our selves in the process, we probably look back on the project with great pride and satisfaction.
The difficult client
Singapore, 31st May 2010
When we start a project with a new client we never know how easy or difficult the ride will be. Every project more or less starts out with the same ground rules, the fee proposal as you submitted to the client, which was either accepted and signed off as is or modified into a contract agreed and signed by all parties. Some companies (specifically the big multi nationals) have their own contracts and have a legal department doing nothing else then scrutinizing every little bit of legal documents. Sometimes their contracts come back with so many additions and clauses protecting themselves that you wonder whether you will survive this project in one piece. It is normally a sign of a difficult client…
When things go well there is no real use for the contract, you do your work, the client is happy and pays. But it is when things go bad that suddenly the contract comes afore and arguments arise about its interpretation. The truth is we all start a project with certain assumptions. We, the lighting designers, in regards to our deliveries, and the client in regards to their expectations. As long as these are more or less in balance the project progresses in good spirit and with good communication any eventual disagreements can be resolved in good harmony.
Today I had a long and tedious 3 hour meeting with a “difficult” client. We presented “version 2’ of our lighting concept, after having incorporated most comments and feedback resulting from our round one presentation. We felt confident going into the meeting that we had addressed most issues, but somehow this client again found ways to pick on every little detail. It did not help that we were talking to engineers with little imagination let alone understanding the concept of design intent. I am sure some of you will relate to this.
The point that I am making is that it is important to understand and communicate with your client on all levels throughout the design process to eliminate misgivings and make sure expectations are met if not managed, specifically with difficult clients. Once you get off on the wrong foot it is hard to redress the situation. While we can stick to our truth, in the end the client is still king…..
It is not what you know…
Singapore, 30th May 2010
Finding work as a start-up company can be tough with little credentials and sometimes little experience to boost of. But we all started somehow and build up the experience and project references step by step. I have always maintained that to become a good lighting designer you need to be in the “game” for at least 5 years. Projects take time and unless you have run through a project cycle from start to finish a few times, it will be hard to deliver a good end product to your client. Only when you have gone through the whole process from conceptual design to final testing commissioning you will have the essential knowledge crucial to what can be called a good lighting design. And then only you will start to have a complete professional lighting design expertise that you can confidently sell to a potential client…or is it?
True enough we (as in my company) get about 80% of our projects through referrals or from existing clients. In other words we get recommended or the client is happy to continue using us in his next project. So that should be good isn’t it? On the outside it is, but once you look a bit deeper it is not what it seems to be as in our profession the business is not necessarily carried by the company but by the individuals in the company. We are a small community of lighting designers and many of us have a small outfit in which the principal is generally the company so to speak.
I am sure you all have heard people saying that it is not what you know…but WHO you know. And that is so true in our business. People do business with people they know. While I have been around for many years, I still get the cold shoulder sometimes with new clients. They don’t know me and even though they may be impressed with my port-folio they still prefer working with people they have worked with before. But the other way around is true as well. There are clients that like to work with me and regardless with which company I would be they trust me, know me and would always continue to work with me regardless where I am…
Dark skies
Singapore, 29th May 2010
Being back in Singapore the first thing that always strikes me is the night sky. Back in Perth, Australia we have mostly clear night skies with great views to the starry Milky Way, even when you are in the city. But in Singapore there is hardly any, maybe down at the beach you may spot one or two of the brightest stars but in general the light glow from the city creates a blanket of light obstructing view into space. Can you believe that there are people in this world, living in the big cities, who have never seen a real star!
In order to preserve the dark skies, the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA) was formed in the eighties. It’s main aim being to promote good outdoor lighting practices and to educate the public about preserving our beautiful stars and night sky. It is easy to see that lighting is the main culprit and that increasing light pollution is the main cause. It not only is threatening astronomical research but also is affecting natural habitat and wildlife sensitive to light at night. At the root of it all is of course wasted energy consumption, as light pollution (as in light wasted into space) is really wasted energy.
While complete dark skies will be a forever dream in big cities in these modern times, we have a duty as lighting designers to be very concerned about minimizing light spill. And even if we manage to keep all lights below the horizontal, we still need to realize that a lot of light is reflected back into space, hence light pollution is not only a matter of beam control but also a matter of quantity and duration. Maybe someday we will find a way to “light” without lighting and who knows, we may be able to find ways to “see” in the dark in the future and return the starry nights to our grand children.
IPAD and the digital age
Perth, 28th May 2010
Today the much anticipated IPad hits the stores in Perth. In some countries like the US it was introduced a while ago and during Light & Building in Frankfurt I already met some people using it! Now I am not one of those people who will queue for 36 hours overnight to be the first to have one, but some people do… I think the whole hype around it is quite clever marketing from Apple.
Will I get one? Considering it has taken me 3 years to get an IPhone unlikely at this stage, let it first get out of its infancy and see how it holds up. But it is without doubt that our world is gradually turning fully digital and soon we will be reading our newspaper on IPad like devices when sipping our coffee at Starbucks. I can see it as a handy tool for sharing small lighting presentations, projects and other related lighting information in the future; it looks a bit more friendly then passing around a laptop…With programs such as Skype we will be communicating through these devices as well, for sure. And let’s not forget Iphone related programming tools…
In a related way, someone in Frankfurt handed me a business card with an integrated USB stick. You flip it out of the plastic business card (slightly thicker, but same dimensions) and plug into your USB port and away you go with complete company information. No more company brochures. I feel that the drawback of the digital age is a risk of oversupply of information. Just because you have giga-bytes of storage does not mean you have to fill it up. At least in the old “printing” days you had to think and be selective with your information.
The other drawback of the digital age is the disappearance of the social aspect of life. Just look around, people are either on their IPhone, or listening to their IPod and soon be engulfed in their IPad. What will happen to a simple “good morning” or “how are you?” Receiving a smiley as a text message is not the same as a real personal smile…
LED’s and photo-biological safety
Perth, 27th May 2010
It is well known that lasers are a safety hazard when it comes to the human eye. Direct exposure to a laser beam can cause immediate and irreparable damage to the retina. Hence lasers have always been classified as hazardous light source. There are strict standards for the safe use of lasers. But there are also reports on the photo biological safety of other lamps and systems.
So not surprisingly one of the debates going on is about the photo biological safety of LED’s. While some years ago this may have been a non issue because of the low intensity of LED’s, the fast development in performance has created LED systems with very narrow beams and very high intensities. Some of the LED systems currently available have such a high brightness …
One of the issues that makes the assessment of LED safety difficult seems to be the measurement of its radiance, the quantity of light that may cause retinal damage. This is due to the small size and directional characteristics of LED’s. Further issues that influence the results are exposure time (also known as MPE or maximum permissible exposure) and distance away from which the radiation is observed. The CIE is one of the organizations in the process of analyzing and producing guidelines for the safe use of LED’s.
While pretty much an untraded terrain in terms of lighting design (at least to my knowledge) it is easy to see that regulations and due care will need to be applied now and in the future when applying high intensity LED systems. Contrary to high intensity gas discharge floodlights which are obvious and generally safely mounted away, LED systems are small and compact, often used in a small building envelope and because of their high directional character sometimes surprisingly bright and glaring when confronted head on. Let’s keep “an eye” on this issue…
Sustainable design
Perth, 26th May 2010
Sustainability is the catch word in any project nowadays, isn’t it? But what really is sustainable design, or more precisely sustainable lighting design in our case? Sometimes I have the idea that people use the term to be seen as being “in the game” while in reality they don’t have a clue what sustainable design actually means. I for one, am still trying to get my head around it.
The general consensus (from some research on the internet) is that sustainable design is meant to create products (in the largest sense of the word) that are made only of (or with) renewable resources. These in turn are the type of resources that can be regenerated at a rate that is at least equal to the speed with which we consume that resource. One of the other big things with sustainable design is that the products made this way should have no or minimal impact on the environment either when being created or when being used. The design is also made to allow people to feel more “connected” to nature or natural environments.
So how does that translate into lighting design? Relating sustainable design to energy (which we need to power our lights) means the application of renewable energy resources such as solar, wind or water energy. This has become an integrated part of our design process nowadays, though cost in many cases makes it prohibitive. Relating sustainable design to actual light fittings is more difficult. First there are the materials used. Only living materials like wood, leather or plant life are renewable, but most of the materials used in lighting manufacturing are metals and plastics, basically non renewable resources. So that leaves us to the use of recycled materials. At least we re-use waste materials to create something new. I am not aware of light fittings mass produced of recycled materials but it may well be something of the future.
So it seems that in lighting (besides using renewable energy) our main contribution in the sustainable thinking process is more the limitation of wastage and optimisation of usage and by so doing, reducing the carbon footprint for lighting, then anything else…
Time
Perth, 25th May 2010
As we get older we start to appreciate time more and more isn’t it? Time is one of the few things in life we can’t really control, it keeps ticking. We can’t fast forward; we can’t stop the time…if only we could at times. Once a moment has past, it’s gone; it will never come back…except maybe some times to haunt you :). What remains are the memories and experiences.
As lighting designers our main commodity is time as well. Every day we have to decide how to attribute our time to our clients. Not always easy as this requires priority setting. Often we get dictated by the client who shouts hardest! But even if you have only one project on the board you still need to decide what to do first. Like accountants and lawyers we basically work towards so called billable hours, time worked on projects which we hope to bill our clients. So if we run lighting design as a profitable business really we should be good time managers. Unfortunately good designers are not necessarily good business people. We are creative people with our thoughts on the moon rather than firmly on the ground at times…I am one of those.
Once your company grows you start to realize that you start losing control of time. Clients, manufacturers, fellow consultants, meetings, etc, start to gobble up your time and before you know the day is over and you haven’t even touched a pen so to speak. Today was another such day where I wonder how quickly time passed and how little I got done, but yet I have been “busy” with a 1001 little things. I am a “list” man and always have these “to do lists”, which keep me organized and focused, but somehow other things always creep in…
I ever read a book called the “4 hour work week”, can’t recall the writer, but there was some pretty good stuff in it about how to eliminate those activities that take up most of your time, emails and phone calls being one of the biggest ones. Don’t they ever!
The lighting tender
Perth, 24th May 2010
A vital part of our work is the preparation of the technical specification document which lays out to any potential supplier or contractor what it is that we want in terms of light fittings and installation requirements. Most of the time the lighting is being tendered out to potential suppliers/contractors, sometimes as an open published tender, sometimes by preselected invitation. But sometimes there is no need to tender if the tender amount is below a certain limit, however generally (also as a good practice) at least three tenderers should be invited to quote for a fair market representation. Today was one of those days in which we emerged ourselves in making sure our tender specifications were “fair and square.”
As lighting designers we have various levels of involvement in the tender process, depending on client scope and requirements. It is important we are involved in the final approval process as our name and reputation are on the line here so we need to be totally comfortable with the final light fitting selection as it can make or break the final result.
The easy way is to spec a light fitting and only accept as specification. In this way you don’t even have to be really involved in this process and can simply reject if the submission is not as specified. However I believe the measure of a good lighting designer is his ability to assess equivalents of similar or better quality. We can’t pretend to know each and every lighting system that is on the market, certainly not with a lighting technology developing as fast as it does. So to be fair to our clients assessing complying alternative lighting systems should be a measure of our professionalism if so required. It is however vital to lay down all the critical lighting performance parameters, besides quality issues such as finishes, electrical safety, etc, to allow for proper understanding of your design intent.
Thus the key to a professional tender assessment is first to nail down your specification as detailed (and relevant) as possible, but secondly to have the experience to give your client a clear and professional justification for your recommendation. The worst thing is to flatly reject a light fitting without justification just because it is not what you specified!
Tax, duties and parrallel imports
Perth, 23rd May 2010
With the European markets in tatters mainly because of the financial woes in Greece, Portugal and Spain, we may well be heading back into economic trouble again. Further, China has clamped down on the residential property speculation, putting a dark cloud on its own domestic growth. Now Australia has joined the fray by announcing a super tax on the profits from the big mining companies. Iron ore is one of Australia’s biggest and most profitable commodities and it is claimed that the new government tax would seriously affect the companies’ competitiveness and thus the country’s economy…
Anyhow in the light of that I wanted to talk about tax and duties on lighting products. Many countries protect their own industry by levying taxes and duties on imported products, lighting included. Till recently countries like India were even closed for foreign lighting products. From my understanding (but this varies from case to case) lighting products imported into China end up nearly 30% more expensive then the same product manufactured locally. It is therefore not surprising that considering the huge Chinese market, many European lighting manufacturers have production or assembly plants in China. Truth be spoken, the labour cost in China is of course much lower too.
Some years ago for a project in Indonesia, we had specified a Philips down light. When we conducted the tender interview, one of the suppliers offered the exact same Philips down light at near half the price the other local suppliers did. Smelling a rat, I questioned the supplier how it was possible his Philips down light was so much cheaper than the Philips agent in Indonesia could offer. He admitted that he had ways to import the down light from Singapore without paying the taxes and duties… that was my first encounter with the so called “parallel” imports. These products are often imported “hidden” in the back of a big container of which the main goods are something totally different. I guess you could say they are smuggled in. One of the main issues with parallel imports is the warranty and maintenance service. It is understandable that the local agent will not extend this for goods not purchased through them.
With exchange rates moving up and down, duties and taxes varying from case to case, one can see that managing the cost of supplies is an art by itself!
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