No budget, no glory
Singapore, 31st July 2014
July has come and gone…Is it me or is time just zooming past?
How do you deal with clients who have no budget or better still have money (we know the mother company has plenty of cash in the coffers) but refuses to spent a decent and reasonable amount on lighting (and other things)? It is a recurrent issue and time and again we ask ourselves whether we should just quit the project or just soldier on in the hope that something positive awaits us at the end? Let me first say that we fully support and acknowledge the need to engineer our lighting designs to acceptable standards, quality and budget solutions. We consult, we recommend from our professional knowledge and experience. But as a consequence there is a point of “no return” where the available budget will no longer allow us to maintain adequate and acceptable quality and performance standards…then what?
In general these budget issues come hand in hand with fee collection problems…always! In this case it does not help that the project is a highly prestigious resort, known the world over, so it would definitely be a nice feather in the cap, which makes us think that they use that to the consultants detriment. We are not starved for projects so we could walk away, but the attraction of the project so far has kept us in. We have no successfully renegotiated a new contract with some assurances on the payments, so we have embarked on the work and are about to issue tender documents for stage 1, but wait…no payment received yet. We did receive a written confirmation that on submission of the tender documents the related amount could be invoiced…
But far more worrying is whether they will be willing to pay for the lighting as have specified it. Previous experience with them has shown that they have no understanding about what is reasonable and acceptable. There is a very high probability that they will ask us to value engineer it down to totally unrealistic budgets…then what? Hopefully this time around they will have learned…because without budget there will be no glory…for no-one!
Light watch 5-126: It’s all in the numbers!…
Buddha
Singapore, 30th July 2014
Today was in the sign of Buddha. We had a kick off meeting for a new project in Nanjing ,close to the location that is known as the centre of Buddhism in China. As history goes Nanjing was the place where a piece of skull was found of the founder of Buddhism. It was found at the site of a former temple. Today this site is being revamped as a tourism and religious destination and the hotel is one of the components of the site that also will house a museum a huge multi-storey pagoda and a covered outdoor space where the famous piece of skull will be on display. It is expected that many will go to the site in pilgrimage. The whole site is tucked away in the mountains covered with a lush bamboo forest…great site from the looks of it.
Not surprisingly architect and interior designer are taking their design cues from Buddha and the related Ming Dynasty and today’s presentation saw the lead consultant’s first attempts to incorporate a bit of this rich history into the overall concept. Not sure if it came out all-right but the overall look and feel was certainly “Zen” and serene. Still some way to go. We are yet to start on the lighting design and really I am trying to get a handle on what the essence of “enlightenment” is (pardon the pun). It’s not that there are Buddha statues strewn over the lawn or tucked away into niches, even the architecture is not really “Ming” but rather contemporary oriental. The “Buddha” feel, if there is such thing will have to come from perhaps material finishes and its interaction with light as well as overall simplicity and serenity. Warm colours, candle feel, gold reflections, moonlight, peacefulness, that kind of thing…
While I am not a religious person, I have a lot of respect for any ones beliefs as long as it in turns respects and enriches fellow humans. As I plunge in the world of Buddha I will need to find a lighting concept that expresses the essence of Buddhism, the serenity, the peacefulness…
Light watch 5-124: Buddha statues as well as Buddha temples (like the Borobodur in Indonesia and the Budhanath in Nepal, supposedly the birthplace of Buddha) can be found a lot around South East Asia, lit in a varying ways…even under natural daylight…
Daylight management
Singapore, 29th July 2014
Back at work today after a long weekend, which saw the Muslim community celebrate the end of Ramadan (Eid Al Fitr) yesterday, we had workers come into our office to fit special films on our windows specially selected to manage heat and light intake into our office. With large window bays at the street side the amount of daylight is quite extensive, but with that to no surprise I guess also the amount of heat from the burning tropical sun. When we moved into our office we had blinds fitted to the windows with the aim to manage the direct sunlight and outside brightness. However we under estimated the impact of heat, specifically for those sitting closer to the windows.
The blinds work very well in managing the outside brightness, or direct sunshine, balancing the amount of light from outside with the artificial light inside, but it did not manage the heat to well. So we decided to apply heat reduction filters to the window (according to the specs taking out 60-80% of the IR, but only 10-20% of the UV lighting) to get a handle on this. As you know in the tropics the daylight can be quite “strong” (Singapore is practically located on the Equator) so even with the film applied with bright daylight, there is still plenty of light coming in. Ultimately we still want to maximise daylight and minimise artificial light during the day to be as sustainable as possible.
The great win today will be the reduction in air-conditioning need. we anticipate we will not need to run it at full throttle. I already switched off the A/C in my room today after the filters where applied. The fact that it was a rainy day helped as well I guess 🙂
The other great win was the reduction in glare/ brightness allowing us to have the blinds opened up more with a far better balance as result. All in all a good decision! Happy we decided to go ahead with it and what better way to learn how to manage and understand the impact of daylight then applying it to your self! Next step the installation of the lighting controls…coming to our office soon!
Light watch 5-124: The film being installed to the windows today
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.
LED: 2500K is the new 2700K
Singapore, 24th July 2014
Something that has been bugging our team for a long time is the notion that incandescent light colour has to be 2700K. While manufacturers have been improving day by day in getting us good colour consistency we have been plagued by visual feelings that the 2700K colour temperature that has been the benchmark for the colour of incandescent light, really does not feel that warm when it comes to LED. We find that LED in 2700K feels like 3000K and that LED 3000K really feels like 3500K or thereabouts. We have found this time and again when inspecting completed lighting installations.
So over the last couple of months we have embarked on some search and test missions to get the better of our frustrations. We had another such test yesterday with a specific lamp manufacturer and tested what is being marketed as 2700K as well as 2500K and 2200K. As it appears manufacturers are also coming to grips that in LED technology 2700K does not look that warm and you will have noticed the 25000K and 2200K lamps appearing on the market.
I, for now, am convinced that if we need warm light for LED to produce a matching feeling to incandescent lamps we need to specify 2500K maximum and in some cases even 2200K. The visual impression is overwhelming and very convincing. We are continuing our research and testing with other manufacturers but our findings so far are quite conclusive. While down lights may still work reasonably well with 2700K temperatures, when it comes to table, floor or wall lamps we will now use 2500K and when it comes to pendants and chandeliers even 2200K to get that nice warm feel.
With the same process we are investigating the use of clear and frosted LED bulbs as some applications like chandeliers need that sparkle. Different LED technologies also create different brightness patterns in light bulbs. Do you want a diffuse looking light bulb or do you want a frosted bulb with a clear hotspot. Supporters will argue this is reminiscent of the filament…Oh, if only life in lighting would be simple… 🙂
Light watch 5-122: The pictures of the testing may not be as convincing as a photo does not capture things like our eye does, but I think these series of pictures says it all.
2700K vs 2500K
2200K vs 2500K
2200K 2700K 2500K compared
SMD(base) vs COB LED (centre)
LED clear vs frosted
The Qatar interview
Singapore, 23rd July 2014
Today I want my actual words and real images to do the “talking”. I have received the video of my impromptu interview taken during Lighting Tech Qatar recently. So instead of me writing, here is me talking 🙂
Light watch 5-121: The video is nice to listen to and gives you a good feel of how I think about our profession and our challenges. Here is the link.
Martin’s interview in Qatar https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bxa9WVr0r4I-TEF6M1pRNmtXdTA/edit?pli=1
LED wars brewing
Singapore, 22nd July 2014
Over the last year or so we have seen the emergence of low costs LED manufacturers and I don’t mean the cheap copy, backyard made bad quality stuff (often referred to as Chinese made) but the ones actually manufacturing good and decent quality LED fixtures. Most of our clients do not have the sort of budgets that are normally associated with good quality LED’s and we, the designers, for one have been educating the client about cost and quality and value for money when it comes to LED technology. But while we were keeping in support of the established LED manufacturers (mostly the original conventional lighting manufacturers), the clients, not satisfied with the high prices they were dished out by these “elite” LED producers, started to come up with suggestions of LED manufacturers with very competitive pricing.
Initially we dismissed this as a “cheap” attitude and did not really spent too much time thinking that they were just some other LED Cowboys. However as a courtesy to some of our respected clients we started to engage with these new “kids on the block” and surprisingly with excellent result. So far we have un-earth several companies that are passing our quality tests easily (including dimming performance) but what is even more astonishing is that they come with unbelievably competitive prices in some case only a fraction of what the “usual” LED fitting would cost. And don’t get me wrong they come with all the required test certifications, IES files and so on.
We have now specified these in a couple of our projects with obviously a happy client. The projects are due for commissioning this year so I look out to the final result. Nothing so far suggest we will have any major issues suggesting to me that the LED Czars have a price war brewing…
Light watch 5-120: The LED manufacturing, specifically in Guangdong province (Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, etc) is massive…it is said that more then 5000 manufacturing plants exist in China alone. Some of them are massive…I visited several of them over the years. Here are some random pictures from Google.
Just another day
Singapore, 21st July 2014
In the end I made it back safely to Singapore, but the devastation around Haiko and the airport was unbelievable, roofs torn of buildings, giant billboards just blown to pieces with its remains strewn over the roads, fallen trees, damaged cars, flooding…the last few kilometres to the airport were quite a sight! When I arrived at the airport they had just re-opened, but it was clearly the morning-after-feel, with many electrical systems still down, all shops still closed and people mainly pre-occupied in cleaning up the debris. But surprisingly the flight back to Singapore was in time and we left pretty much on time, though with hand written boarding passes… 🙂
Today was back to work as normal and I spent the day mostly catching up on on-going project issues. A client who wants us to attend meetings, pay for our flights and hotel but has not yet signed off our contract, let alone paid the related deposit, a supplier’s alternative light fitting submissions for a project that needed to be reviewed (approved or rejected depending the quality and achievement of the desired effects), another dig at dimming solutions for retrofit lamp (this problem keeps on coming back specifically when it relates to FFE decorative items like chandeliers, pendants, floor and table lamp who are still designed around E27 or E14 lamp holders) where loading and dimming performance are very much competing with each other, revising a fee proposal to comply with the local countries tax requirements and converting the fees into the local currency ( we don’t really like that, but when we do we log in the exchange rate), finalising the design brief for some custom design fixtures so we can stat engaging with the (potential) manufacturer of these fittings and finally coordinating the supply and installation some outstanding lighting components following a defects and liability period so we can at last close of that project (and receive our final fees 🙂 )
There you go just another day in the office…
Light watch 5-119: Bit of an experiment today. The quality of the pictures is not great (mobile phone at night) but I want to give a little mood impression through close ups (not revealing the overall interiors (as we are still in mock up stage) of my recent inspection to give you a taste…
Typhoon Rammasun
Hainan, 18th July 2014
Heavy rain, gutsy winds, but that seems to be the extent of what we are getting from typhoon Rammasun here on site. The typhoon has already reached Haiko, so no wonder all flights and public transport have been suspended since this morning. I have managed to rebook myself on a direct flight tomorrow from Haiko to Singapore, with a fall back option via Sanya and Hong Kong. Will see tomorrow morning, fingers crossed. I guess it adds to the adventure but quite honestly I am not very keen on natural disasters, let alone being shot down out of the sky! I just heard about the Malaysian Airliner that has been shot out of the sky by an anti-aircraft missile in the Ukraine. The flight was en-route from Amsterdam to KL and flying an international route at high altitude. Just gets you thinking what a crazy world we live in! This was totally unpredictable and could have been any other airline. Unfortunately for MAS bad luck seems to follow them after the tragedy of MH 370 and it may well spell the end of the airline in its current form as people are generally superstitious and such karma twice in a row will not encourage people to fly Malayasian! Already I see emails and messages flying around telling me not to fly Malaysian!
So now I am sitting out the typhoon (in my luxury 5 star Villa, could be worse…), preparing my meeting reports and attending to general project matters with my team. The internet and electricity was out briefly this morning but otherwise it has been ok. Trees are sweeping left and right, rain is pouring down relentlessly all day already making any attempt to go to site and do some work there virtually impossible. The site is flooded anyhow and most work sites have been locked up and secured against the wind and rain so not much we can do there. Also as it appears, all workers and most site team have left the site last night to seek refuge in a city hotel…
Light watch 5-118: One of the critical issues always in any of my projects is the ceiling cove lights. This picture below shows you why! The pictures of the outside of my villa shows.. aaargh @#$%! … (the power just dropped out…all dark now except my laptop screen which now operates on the batteries)… a still and does not show you the actual wind. Will have to wait for the power to return as the WiFi obviously need power…
Reporting “live” from Hainan 🙂
Have a great weekend
Can I have a room please?
Shenzhen- Hainan, 16-17th July 2014
It was one of those days that had an unpredictable outcome which in the end did me leave any reasonable time to write my blog. I flew in via Hong Kong yesterday and had an afternoon project meeting planned in Shenzhen. As the client was only going to fly back to Hainan the next morning I decided to change my flight to the next day as well so we could travel together. All good. We then went for dinner (as you do) only with the difference that the restaurant (in seafood street) was more than an hours drive from where we were! By the time we had arrived and finished dinner it was already well past 10pm. Their plan was to then go to a 24 hour spa, get our selves a good massage and hangout there till our early morning flight. I told them happy to join for the massage but as long as I could have a room afterwards so I could do some work as I had to reply to a few urgent project emails with submissions today. No problem they said…they have rooms…
Sometimes between 11 and 12pm I told them I would like to adjourn to my room and that is when the fun started…it turned out that the only rooms they had were privacy rooms with “special services”. I told them forget about the “extra services” just give me a @#$* room. It then appeared I only was allowed to go to that room in semi-undressed “spa clothing”…If I wanted to work I also could not bring in my bags and would have to just hand carry my laptop and whatever documents I needed…really? Anyhow my client feeling utterly embarrassed by the whole situation offered to drive me to the nearest hotel…which we did but by then it was already well past midnight.
Meanwhile I have arrived in Hainan and was advised on checking in that typhoon Rammasun, who just razed with deadly force through the Philippines, is expected to make landfall here tonight or tomorrow morning! Shit! They have just come to fill up my bathtub and brought me extra bottles of water as it could well be that power and water be disrupted when the typhoon comes blazing in…better brace myself. Looks like my Hong Kong meeting tomorrow is off the cards…
Light watch 5-117: I flew out from the brand new Shenzhen airport…brilliant design which makes extremely good use of daylighting! Designed by Italian Fuskas Architects, who won the competition even though they had never designed an airport before…good on them!
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