It’s still about time and money…
Singapore 8th January 2013
Not much time to breathe! Full steam ahead, right from the word go…Good to see the team back, we seem all rested and ready to take on the year. With many projects starting off, we can see the work building up, so time management and proper work schedules will be crucial to manage ourselves and most of all our client’s expectations this year. We need to be clear right from the start how we intent to deliver our work and what time schedules we will be following. We all have our resolutions but one of our top resolutions in our practice for the year has to be to deliver good quality work, which means proper time to work on it. In other words time management. And that work time has to be balanced with enough “me” time to make sure we don’t burn out half way the year. It’s easy to get caught out on that one, so my project kick off meetings will have to nail down these time and deliverable schedules to everyone’s satisfaction, the clients and ours! With lots of travel ahead in the coming weeks, I will need to manage that part carefully as well…
The other big challenge for the year will have to be managing client payments…our cash flow. More than ever with the economy as it is we will need to be tough with our clients…no money, no honey! Just a day back at work and I am already facing one project clients with wayward “tactics” to pay less than invoiced, even though we did get their nod end of last year to issue our progress invoice. Hiding behind hierarchical levels of authority (“it’s not me!”…) is classic. So breaking down those walls and make sure we know who in our client organisation is responsible for our fee and reimbursable expenses payment will be imperative for a successful year ahead…..
In the end, professional satisfaction apart, it’s still all about time and money…
Light Watch 4-2: Me-time in Australia, a rare insight into my private life 🙂
Enjoying a coffee at the Paddington Markets in Sydney
Yes even at the market they promote sustainable LED lighting!
New Year’s eve fun with my daughter Kyra
Of course nothing beats a good aussie BBQ
Watching Venus Williams at the Hopman Cup
My morning walks along the Ashfield Flats and the Swan River
Movies under the stars…
And of course the beach…with the 40 degree temepratures we had a welcome cooling
A new year ahead
Perth 7th January 2013
First of all let me wish you all a fantastic 2013. I don’t know how the situation is for you out there in the lighting design market but for us the first part of the year will keep us very busy with many new projects on the drawing board and lots of work at hand. Considering the bleak situation in Europe and the USA I guess we are in a good position, but I am mindful that things can turn around quickly, so let’s enjoy things when we can!
I am starting the New Year re-energised with heaps of things to look out for, business wise as well as privately. My break in Australia was very relaxing, as I was able to leave most of the office worries behind. As I write my first entry of the year I have just returned from the beach for my last dip in the ocean before I hop in the plane back to Singapore this evening with a hectic schedule of country visits and meetings starting tomorrow! But I feel healthy and in good shape so all ready to get back into it. Please share some of your “me-time” with our blog readers. I am always interested to learn from others how they balance private and work life. Have you made resolutions and plans for the New Year? Let me know!
Personally I don’t really need the New Year to make resolutions and make decisions but it is a good time to look back, reflect and re-adjust your life/work direction if you find that it needs some adjustment. We are always in the work mode, that keeps going on and sometimes just stepping out of it allows you to have a better view on what’s going on in your life. I have started to work on my second blog compilation so later this year I hope to present Light Talk, Book 2. This will be a compilation of 2011 and 2012. I will keep you posted on this.
Otherwise please send in your comments, experiences and anything else you feel worth sharing this year. I hope my blog can grow further in sharing and promoting our profession of lighting design.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Light Watch 4-1: Life can be an illusion…I thought of sharing this clever video illusion, just to remind everyone that life is not always the way it looks! J All the best in your endeavours this year
http://www.telegraaf.nl/s/21199471
Virtual break
Perth, 3rd December 2012
It’s time for my yearly break, my virtual break that is. After another year of blogging daily about my profession I am taking a break till January 2013 when I will start season 4! It is not only me that seems to need a break…my laptop as well :)! Lately it was showing such signs of fatigue from my relentless daily use that it had started to protest. I sent it for a “medical check-up” last Friday, hence why I was not online blogging. Meanwhile I am back in Perth got my laptop back last night but will give him a break till next year as well…
It’s hard to believe that I have already completed 3 years of daily blogging, nearly 800 blogs so far! But you know what, you get into the routine of doing it and really it doesn’t take that much time. In fact if I don’t blog I really feel I have not completed my daily work! Generally I complete my story in 20-30 minutes spending about the same amount of time to do the finishing touches adding the images and uploading it to the site.
It has been an interesting and exciting year for me personally and for our team at KLD in general. After having started with KLD last year, this year has been the year of consolidation, with a slow (and initially worrying) start in the first 6 month but with a very strong finish of the year with heaps of expectations for the New Year. With many new projects on the drawing board and many new partnerships in development we look forward to 2013. Specifically the cooperation with Earth Check has opened some new and exciting avenues in support to our sustainability drive in lighting design.
Two main issues will remain as we move into 2013. First the worrying state of the world economy and how it will affect our project business, which is really hard to predict. Not putting all your eggs in one basket (if you can) and spreading your interests is probably a cautious strategy and making sure you manage your cash flow in the process, though that maybe easier said then done! The second one is managing expectations when it comes to specifying LED lighting. It has been one of my main topics throughout the year. With sustainability and saving costs the main drivers in most projects we need to make sure we manage the LED Cowboys to uphold the quality standards of LED lighting! See you in January…
Light Watch 3-187: Me and my shadow in 2012…
Here is to a fantastic 2013! Cheers 🙂
Tea for two
Shenzhen, 29th November 2012
The last leg of my China trip has brought me to Shenzhen where we are meeting the creative team of our Hainan project. Crucial to any successful project team is the relationship of trust and respect that is built between the team members. So an important part of any project is to create some bonding and understanding between the team members…exactly the purpose of our trip to Shenzhen today. I feel very strongly that when you know each other well and understand the individual team members back ground you can achieve a much higher level of design satisfaction as you can better interpret the needs and feels of the other specialist designers who contribute to the final and overall design result. Of course you need to understand the location as well as we cannot design from behind our desk, even though you would be surprised how many big name companies develop concepts for projects in other parts of the world without ever having been there! That is why we went to site first.
Our lighting design does not really exist on its own, it exists by the grace on how well it integrates with the other disciplines; architecture, interiors, landscape, electrical and so on. At the other end of the spectrum we have the human ownership; the actual owner investor, the operator and the people who are the targeted end users of the project you are designing for. Today we met with our fellow creators, people like us who have a vision on how to develop the original idea for the project into its final “look and feel”. And while we spent some time familiarising ourselves with the design concepts and design directions, a good part of our time was spent getting to know each other. This may seem strange to some but don’t forget that we are likely to work together over the next few years and creating/ developing/ realising designs as friends achieves much higher outcomes than as business professionals only. Each project is different, I know, and not always do we have the opportunity to bond as friends in a project (in many projects we just operate on a professional “need to communicate” basis), but when it ”clicks”, we enjoy the results J
Light Watch 3-186: Today we enjoyed a warm and personal tea ceremony, hosted by the lead designers, which I thoroughly enjoyed. While our project path will certainly have highs and lows, the ground was laid for a great relationship!
thrills and spills
Lingshui, Hainan, 28th November 2012
Presentation completed to clients satisfaction, done; driving at 160kmh in the clients Porsche to lunch, done; agreeing to all contractual terms and conditions, done; being offered a new job to quote, done. Getting the rest of the day of to do some chauffeur driven sight-seeing around Sanya, did not materialise 🙂 … Life of a lighting designer is not always a stressful and worry-some affair. Like in general life we have good days and we have bad days. You deal with them as they come. Today was highly satisfactory and gratifying. Doing business in China can be both utterly frustrating as well as very enjoyable. Like ying and yang unfortunately they seldom come without each other.
But without the two opposite you can’t appreciate the good life. Going through tough, tedious and lengthy contract negotiations as we did today, made the end result and relationship much sweeter and more enjoyable. Shaking hands and looking forward to a nice project and a long term relationship with the client is something to treasure. As I had the opportunity to meet directly with the client and his contract department, I was able to trash out the key terms and conditions. Reason being that while we have our own terms of agreement included as part of our fee proposal, most of our clients (big companies) have their own legal and contracts department which comes with their own set of terms and conditions, not necessarily compatible with our “demands”. With some minor adjustments we settled on “our” terms and we can now look forward to signing of the contract in the next few days rather than months!
The Chinese culture can be very tedious and when it comes to contracts and paying it can be like extracting a tooth…and I am not even talking about the language barrier. It appeared that our Chinese contract translation had not exactly the same meaning as the English version. Anyhow all settled and we leave Hainan in high spirits. One more day in Shenzhen for a workshop with the interior designer and then back to Singapore. Cheers!
Light Watch 3-185: Sanya at night…sorry not the best pictures…I will try update these in the coming days with better ones…its late and time to go to bed 🙂
Planes, trains and automobiles
Lingshui, Hainan, 27th November 2012
This is one of those exciting days when you go to site for the first time. I think it is always a special moment in the life a project, the first time you set foot on the project site… To reach Hainan island of the coast of China, I flew in with my colleague and the project manager from Singapore using a direct flight to Haiko, then onto a high speed train towards Sanya with the last bit by car from the train station to site. Luckily we did not have any of the mishaps that happened in the movie, ours was perfect without any delays, and while we had to get up early to catch the 6.30am flight we touched down in Hainan 3 hours later and were on site by midday! For those who know the troublesome route via Guangzhou with the 4 hour stop-over, this is quite a breeze…(just sharing).
Today was site familiarisation, just getting to know the lay of the land so to speak. In this case I am dealing with a huge resort (about 500ha!) of which about half is already build or in various stages of completion. So there is actually a lot to see! we inspected day and night, as a lot of lighting has already been installed. And here lies the problem…I am not sure about the pre-history, but by now the client has realised that he really needs a lighting consultant (he didn’t have one before) and with one of the leading hotel operators now on board as well, getting a specialist lighting consultant on board was imperative. We received our appointment letter just recently and hence our initial site visit to take stock of what is and of what needs to be done.
There are many areas still to be built, so there we can start from scratch, it is the existing parts that are the worry. As so often I found that through ignorance (I assume) and ruthless LED Cowboys, who sell on price, the client has ended up with your typical low end LED installation. Poor performance (intensity), poor and inconsistent colour (many looking greenish, not even whitish), in poor quality fittings, many of them broken and failing already and as this is a seaside resort, material quality is crucial and not surprisingly most of the fittings I observed were already rusting…
I’ve got work to do here!
Light Watch 3-184: Impressions
Resisting the economy
Singapore, 26th November 2012
It is interesting to see and understand how the economy impacts on our projects. I am sharing from my personal observation, not sure if it is representative across the board…with the economy under pressure in all corners of the world we find the projects under pressure as well. The world is interlinked nowadays and economic woes in Europe or elsewhere do affect the economy across the globe. Purchasing powers decrease, as a result exports decrease and as a result revenues decreases…a simple chain reaction. So companies who make their money in selling or should I say exporting, products to economically challenged areas see a decrease in their profits and if that is the cash that is used for new developments (the projects for which we are bidding for or contracted to do work for) will see a slow-down, regardless if the economy in the actual country of the project is doing economically well.
Projects that require the developer to finance the building (cash/loan) will be under much more pressure than projects that are so called ‘self-financing”. For instance, in the hospitality sector the financing is mostly done by loans or investments. But in the realty/ residential sector the developments are mostly financed by pre-sold units or houses. The potential buyer has to outlay cash first to secure his plot or unit, which means the developer gets his financing upfront without any liabilities (other than having to build and deliver the project of course). So the economic risk is much less. One of my clients in India who is in some financial trouble, recently disposed of all his hospitality projects and is now concentrating fully on the development of their residential projects…telling, right?
The other economy resistant projects are mostly the government supported and financed projects. Regardless of spending cuts, budgets (we all pay taxes don’t we?) are set aside each year for this and the more the economy is in dire straits, the more government tend to support the economy by initiating or fast tracking projects. Understanding a little bit how the economic forces drive our project world can be useful in planning ahead!
Light Watch 3-183: Now here are some interesting stats. Barclay’s bank has come out with a so called skyscraper index which shows the link between the sky scraper boom and economic crisis! Even more, not only are more sky scrapers build in times of economic crisis, it also seems that the higher the sky scrapers the deeper the economic crisis! Go phantom that!
The lumen – candela ratio
Singapore, 23rd November 2012
You always learn or realise something new, even after 30 years in the business. Today as a new product range was introduced to me by one of my suppliers the issue of quality and performance came prominently into the discussion. With several experiences with ruthless LED Cowboys still fresh in my mind, making sure the manufacturer and his local supplier are experienced and know what they talk about is of prime determination in whether to decide to do further business together.
In comparing their product to competitive equivalents from some well established brands, they brought in the so called lumen-candela ratio. Always on the outlook for relevant performance criteria to best log in our specifications (and fend ourselves from the LED Cowboys) I found this a really interesting criteria. Nothing new really and similar to what we have always used in terms of describing a lamp/luminaire efficiency or light output ratio, but somehow pushed to the background in the fast evolving LED market.
Because of the compactness of the LED technology and the way light is emitted we have been assuming so far that most of the light emission is channelled into actual useful light. But with lens technology moving forwards in big leaps as well, we find ourselves in a situation where the optics are becoming an as important part of the final performance. So on one hand we have the actual lumens per watt production from the LED chip but on the other hand we have the optical efficiency in transmitting those lumens into s high performing directional beam of light, measured in candela’s…hence the lumen-candela ratio.
What I discovered is that a product with a lower lumen package can still outperform a higher lumen package by its high quality lens conversion. In a particular example I found that although the product had only about half the lumen package it produced a 30% higher candela value. And yes the product and beam shapes were identical. Interesting, and something to seriously consider in our specifications to root out the Cowboys!
Light Watch 3-182: Below one of my earlier sketches explaining the relationship between lumens and candela’s, how lenses can convert a beam and some product pics. Have a great weekend! 🙂
When you leave it to suppliers
Singapore, 22nd November 2012
Overnight flights, specifically the shorter ones, regardless whether you fly business class, are still quite tiring, certainly if you have walked a site for 3 days in a row and dealt with emotional contractors :). Yes I had my feet finally up in the air with a decent flatbed to sleep a bit on my way back, but 3-4 hours sleep after an exhausting site visit didn’t really alleviate much. I paid the price during the day today. I bravely attended to the office in the morning but gradually felt the tiredness creep up and by mid-afternoon I had to retire to take a nap. The coming 4 weeks till my Xmas break are pretty full on with at least one trip a week to various part of the “Indo Pacific” starting with China next week.
Concluding my Mumbai site visit I issued an executive summary to the client with all the lighting issues they (and I!) are faced with. I will share some here in a generic way to the benefit of better lighting (design) as we can all learn from each other. The main lesson for the client as he admitted candidly to me, was that they thought they could finish the job without involving us by just relying on the suppliers…after having bought more than 10 km of LED strip light at $20/m that worked on installation, but now a few months in is practically non-existent an expensive lesson was learned…all have to be replaced!
The poor quality of the lights (in combination possibly with shoddy electrical installation works) resulted in an average light fitting failure rate of at least 20-30% per area! That same poor quality results in extreme poor colour quality and lighting performance (why does it look so dull and dark here?). Selling only wide beam lights results in a monotone contrast-less environment (really there are also 24 and 10 degree beams?). Putting alternative CFL lamps where LED seems too expensive becomes disastrous where all these lighting circuits are connected to a dimmer! Through in some emergency lights in the same circuit and you have a great recipe for “fun” and special lighting effects :). The point is that most of this advice was taken from their suppliers…
Light Watch 3-181: Despite all my rants the project will come out nice eventually once we have remedied the situation, here are some sneak previews
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