Quatorze Juillet!
Cherating, 14th July 2012
Today is “Quatorze Juillet”, July 14th, the French National Day and somehow I managed to end up in a typical French environment…Club Med Cherating. As it happened the last two days were spent on site with the project manager and the site contractors for the renovation we are currently undertaking. There are worst places to be and spent your weekends..
We get to go places and though we seldom have time to combine business with pleasure occasionally it happens. Most of the time we go straight from the airport to our meetings, to the hotel and back to the airport. Working in some “you” time seems a luxury but is a nice and relaxing thing to do if you can get around actually doing it!
Otherwise my contractor meetings were of the usual “patience and don’t get frustrated” kind. They were working of old drawings, had not really prepared themselves resulting in having to lead them through the design item by item. I have the suspicion they were hoping me to do so and hence had not bothered studying the drawings and details, much to the annoyance of the project manager. But being on site also helps to resolve installation issues right on the spot and make executive decisions about any changes needed to adapt to the site conditions. I am always amazed how different the site actually feels and looks compared to the picture you make in your mind from the drawings. But I am confident we have made the right lighting design decisions and it will look nice on the day we hand over…
Light Watch 3-103: While enjoying my stay at Cherating I always look around for anything with light. I check out the state of the lighting at the place where I stay (definitely in need for renovation this one, but for a 35 year old resort it is still holding out well) and look for any other interplay with light. Being the 14th July we were treated on some fireworks (not easy to take good firework pics!) but during the day I was really struck by the beautiful play of light and shadows. I don’t know about others but I always find a lot of inspiration from daylight situations…see below
Absentees are always wrong
Singapore, 12th July 2012
There is a saying that says “absentees are always wrong”. It is easy to blame those who cannot defend themselves, right? In one of our projects we feel that at times our (requested) presence in meetings is really a waste of time, so assessing the need we decline and sent in a status report to the team prior to the meeting so everyone knows where we are at. However the downside of course is that you only get to know through the minutes what was discussed (and made the minutes). New information or developments that would need your input of course cannot be reacted to and if it negatively affects you the team will be quick to blame you! Anything to divert attention, certainly if it is aimed at someone who is not present to refute any negative allegations!
Anyhow today I felt we should be present even though we had heaps of other work to attend to and there was not really any major issue needing our presence. On receiving the project meeting’s briefing back from KLD’s attending project manager I felt I had made a politically correct decision. Several issues popped up which could potentially blow up in the future as the project progresses, but timely “interception and redirection” during the meeting in my view avoided that.
There was also the issue that by showing presence we showed good will and positive attitude towards the client, despite the fact that their project management is seriously lacking in proper management and administration. The client is always right, yes, but at times it comes with great deals of frustration and rather than “boycotting” project progress as leverage against project managements failure to deliver, showing good will can go a long way.
Light Watch 3-103: During my trip to KL yesterday I also clicked away on some advertisement boards and media screens, here are some…
Arrogance
Kuala Lumpur, 11th July 2012
In KL today for a project kick off meeting. All the project team members are either from KL or Singapore as coordination is of great importance. This the time where you get to meet your fellow project team members and where you get a first feel of the personalities involved. You may have worked with some of the companies before but there are always new faces and new people involved and they come with attitudes and some with arrogances. To me a project is team work. If the players have difficulties in cooperating and respecting fellow consultants then it spells problems further down the road. Specifically architects can be quite up their noses, admittedly sometimes with reason, but every project is a new one and projecting arrogance (the “my way or the high way” attitude) at the start of a project may set the wrong tone. That is where the value of a good project manager comes to the fore. They have the challenging task of keeping all the ego’s in check!
I have met many arrogant consultants, some with reason, some totally misplaced. We can agree to disagree, but above all we need respect for each other (and each-others time) as in principle we are all professionals and experts in our fields with busy workschedules. It was only Monday that I was made to wait half an hour before finding out the architect could not even bother to attend the meeting at the clients office which was set up specifically for him and me to meet and go through the lighting concept. Only when we enquired with the client we were informed he was at another meeting. Not a phone-call, no apologies, nothing. I can understand that meetings drain out or you are held up, but when you see that coming, you inform the rest that you will be delayed or cannot make it, just simple courtesy and show of respect! I can appreciate arrogance with style, but I loathe arrogance with disrespect.
Light Watch 3-102: As I walked through the client’s shopping mall this afternoon I had a quick look at shop window signage lighting, always interesting and educational to look at what’s out there. The different “techniques”. Some well executed some really left wanting! Here are some well-known names…
Lighting power budgets
Singapore, 10th July 2012
Today again I had to “climb in the pen” as we say in Dutch, to let of some steam as I had received one of those typical energy consultants directives telling me how much watts per m2 I was allowed to specify. It really gets to me as these recommendations are made without any understanding what it actually means. Many of those so called “green” consultants just follow numbers and other peoples recommendations without really thinking. Somehow they think lighting should be an easy target, number of lighting points, watts per point, total watts per m2. Easy peasy. Do they understand that other visual aspects of lighting should be considered and that there are recommended international lighting standards for public safety in lighting to be complied with as well?
Time and again I get these directives imposed on me (often by a junior graduate who just copies the values from an energy saving guide) and time and again I get worked up. Don’t get me wrong I am totally in favour to maximise energy saving (or should I say optimising), we do that anyhow as a standard lighting design practice, it is the thoughtless and inconsiderate way these energy saving guidelines are being used that really frustrates me. So I responded to the team (in the most composed way possible 🙂 ) explaining that trying to be green and sustainable has many other factors to consider than only watts per m2. In an interesting twist the Singapore Standards (SS) that we follow in this project for attaining Green Mark certification refer to another SS code of practice for lighting of workplaces, which clearly states that it is important not to compromise the visual aspects of a lighting installation by simply reducing the energy consumption!
Somehow no-one ever cross references the operational and safety guidelines of lighting with the lighting power budget recommendations. And then we have not even start talking about the client’s budget as some in some cases where we did make the cross reference and tried to meet both the power budget recommendations as well as the operational lighting standards, it was only achievable with top quality optical systems, which most of the time are outside the clients financial budget.
Light Watch 3-101: Some more pictures and colourful compositions from the Singapore Garden Festival where I enjoyed taking some snaps
Patience
Singapore, 9th July 2012
I was trying to find quotes from Confucius about the virtue of patience, but when you search the internet you find so much rubbish that you don’t know any more which one is truly from Confucius or what has been made up under his name by others. Anyhow to make a long story short, after exactly 281 days of waiting I was finally rewarded for my patience with a payment from a client. Invoiced in September last year, the payment was finally received. Pheeewwww…
The question one asks oneself is, was it worth the wait, the patience and sacrifice…now that the money has been received I guess the answer is yes. But during the 281 days prior, impatience, frustration, irritation and anger have surfaced regularly. Should we get a debt collector or even a lawyer to sue this client? The thing is that it’s hard to judge whether a client is genuinely needing time to pay or whether they are just stalling with a deliberate aim not to pay at all if possible. Who knows…I made the judgement call that this client was genuine in its intent to pay and played along applying regular pressure to keep the client on alert. I was rewarded today, but had many doubts along the way!
In another situation a few years back I had enough after a few months and decided to engage a debt collector. These guys can be real pains in the butt. The long and short was that the client called me after a while to settle. I will never know if he intended to settle, but I like to believe that without the debt collector (who had someone go sit in their office on a daily basis after having called them for a week every day!) I may never have seen any of the money due to me.
I know that in this part of the world patience can be a virtue, but it can be abused too! So it is really a judgement call.
Light Watch 3-100: Over the weekend I went to see the garden festival here in Singapore which had some really nice displays. Besides some wonderful colour displays I had a specific eye for lighting (of course). This is a garden from Chinese landscape designer (forgot his name). Very soothing images during those patient times…
Le Tour
Singapore, 6th July 2012
With Le Tour de France cycling completing its first week (I am a big fan of it and just saw Peter Sagan win his 3rd stage!) I was just wondering if there are any parallels between competitive cycling and professional lighting design. It maybe far fetched but if you think of it there are certainly a few. The cyclers work in a team like we do to deliver the end result, day by day with the aim to score the big success at the end! The cyclers (do you call them that way?) have their race specialists with some of them specialised in sprinting, some in time trials, some in climbing, the leading man has to be an all-rounder, but all working as a team. Likewise in a lighting design practice we have the same; we have specialists (designers, draftsmen, renderers, project managers, etc) and we have the leader being all round, but deliver the end result as a team. If you do not know all the fine sides of the practice (whether a cycling road racer or a lighting designer) and what it takes to deliver a winning end result it is tough to come through.
Like in a cycling race it is hard to predict the end result as you are subject to many unexpected influences. In racing it may be the weather or crashes or just not feeling fit on the day, in lighting design it may be the clients requirements, the lack of budgets (read financial crisis) or just not feeling inspired to come up with a good concept. It all happens. But what we do both know is where/ when the start is and where the finish line will be. We also know the landscaping of the long and winding road towards the finish, but despite knowing the route and its degree of difficulty (flat or mountainous), we never know what to expect along the way. We are aware of the dangers and potential pitfalls (strong winds/ difficult clients!) but as professionals we both have the experience to deal with it, whether sitting on a bike or sitting behind a computer!
Light Watch 3-99: Today’s tour stage (Epernay-Metz) in pictures. Stage winner Peter Sagan ahead of Andre Greipel and Matthew Goss. There are always some Dutchies along the route, trust them! Have a great week-end 🙂
Project management
Jakarta, 5th July 2012
What better place to reflect on the day past then while waiting in the lounge for the flight back to Singapore. It has been a good day, good discussions and above all good decisions! Thanks to good project management I have to say. Often the role of project manager is under-valued I feel and many clients don’t seem to understand the need to get a professional manager in, preferring to rely on own in-house staff to play the project manager role. While it is good to have an internal project manager to represent the owners interest, it is even more important in my experience to have an independent professional manager to run and bring the project to a good end.
Specifically when the client is a first timer when it comes to building a project. There are so many pitfalls along the way that it is worth the money to have a professional run the project. I have experience with the worst and the best in project management and trust me, when you have a professional with experience you will know the difference! A professional PM knows the ins and outs of every discipline, has worked with each of the specialist consultancies and knows how to trust, respect and work with each individual input. When a project manager is not up to the mark you will feel that immediately, through inefficient meetings, abortive work, “misunderstandings” with unnecessary frictions as a result. If you know the value and input that can be expected from specialist consultants (like lighting) you use it to forward the project, not fight it or try to re-invent the wheel.
The biggest challenge is the interaction and link role between client and project team. The client, certainly if new to the project game, may not understand what is required to steer it to a good end and that is where the PM has its greatest value…making sure the client understands the process, the value of quality, while at the same time listening to the client and their wishes and demands…
Light Watch 3-98: Some more about the Taman Anggrek integrated media facade, which I found out is now officially recorded by Guinness as the longest in the world (1160ft long). The video link showing the lighting effects much better than I reported yesterday.
Jakarta, coming of LED age
Jakarta, 4th July 2012
Today and tomorrow I will be in Jakarta attending meetings. For those who travel regularly around the region you pretty much know the flight routine. Up early, check in and relax in the lounge until departure time. On short flights like this (about 1hr+) you just manage to get a little bite and a coffee, but most business people travelling for the day lay haplessly sleeping in their seats, courtesy I assume of the early wake up. Then there is the rush to the immigration counters, as the waits can be notoriously long, the immigration officers agonisingly slow! That is when it pays to sit in the front of the plane! 🙂
The ride from the airport to the city is actually longer then the flight, courtesy of the notorious “majet” (traffic jam). Galih picked me up so our ride was pleasant and usefully efficient allowing us to catch up and discuss the latest developments in Indonesia. There is heaps going on in this country, easily visible my the many construction sites and latest newly completed building. I have been coming to Jakarta on and off over the last 25 years and have seen the city grow and grow and grow…
What I hadn’t seen till recently was the abundant use of LED lighting on facades, like can be found in China, Singapore and Hong Kong, etc. But with the recent upgrade of the Taman Anggrek podium block, just next to Central Park we now have a serious contender for one of the biggest High Definition LED facades in this region, if not in the world. Costing well over U$ 5 million I have been told it extends over the full length of the podium block façade. High pixel density throughout with TV picture quality at two central areas. Nothing really original, just wallpapering the full façade with LED’s, but somehow it felt different. Well balanced and flowing content with perfectly synchronised lighting effects. And most of all, and amazingly for this part of the world, very little faulty LED’s. Considering the generally well known poor track record in contractor installation, product quality and maintenance, a refreshing sight! Of course it just opened 1-2 months ago, so I may eat my words 6 months down the road 🙂
Light Watch 3-97: Below some “on the run” pictures I took from the Taman Anggrek, LED façade and other buildings around Central Plaza on my way back after dinner. For good measure I throw in the amazing dinner palette which we sampled at the Garuda Restaurant tonight. You just pay for what you eat …
A day at the office
Singapore, 3rd July 2012
With travel looming tomorrow again I spent a good part of the day working on projects that needed my input in view of upcoming deadlines, though I still had to go out for a two meetings later in the afternoon. It was pretty much a normal day at the office today.
An early visit from a supplier to do some value engineering on one of our projects that really has a very tough budget (who invented the term value engineering anyhow?), followed by some time clearing up the email inbox and replying to some that needed a reply. Replying within 24 hours is one of the disciplines that we try to adhere to whenever possible. Then some individual project meetings with my staff to clear and decide on design directions and lighting details.
I then had some meeting minutes to finalise and sent out, something that can be quite tricky as minutes are generally a reference to the team in regards to what has been agreed, so making sure the minutes are politically correct and in line with our scope and responsibilities. Then another supplier popped in bringing in some product samples for our testing and assessment. Today was pretty much a lunch on the run as so often.
Then sometime for some project acquisition work, though not typical for every day in the office today certainly had some regular features: we lost a project , we got confirmed in another, we got approached for two others and submitted an expression of interest for another one… we like it that way 🙂
Finally a project coordination meeting including an overseas conference call with the client, another meeting for a new project brief and that was pretty much the day gone. On return another session on the email inbox following up on pressing issues. A last review of my presentation for tomorrow and off for diner…
Light Watch 3-96: The big news in Singapore over the last couple of days, and pretty much world news was the grand opening of the Gardens by the Bay with its Super Trees and huge indoor nursery. Did not yet have time to go but have planned that for very soon. I will go towards evening to enjoy the daily light show. See some pictures here.
Drone technology
Singapore, 2nd July 2012
And so we glided into July…
Friday turned out to be too hectic with meetings cumulating in my overnight flight back from Delhi to Singapore and as a result I did not manage to do my blog and in the weekend I really wanted to relax and let everything be…it had been a busy couple of days in India. It was a good trip and I felt we achieved a lot and this morning back in the office I spent the time debriefing the projects with my team.
Today I wanted to blog about something out of left field…one of those technologies used in other totally different applications generally but which somehow has found its way into lighting. I am talking about drone technology, you know those unmanned flying robots remote controlled and generally used in the military field to spy and uncover difficult to reach information. On my way back from India I read about the drone technology being used for a light show in a Creativity Festival in the South of France. In a cross-over from the drone technology, intelligent lights were being focussed on flying drones equipped with operable mirrors. Flying and moving around on the soundtrack of some music, the lights and programmable mirrors on the drone as well as the moving drones themselves, created quite a spectacular light show.
The magic being the fact that you could not really detect the “quadrotor” drones only the light emitted from them and reflected of its (movable) mirror. It takes a while before you actually realise how the lighting magically moves around. Obviously programmed up to the minuscule details I thought it was quite spectacular and I would not be surprised to see more of this cross over application find its way into the lighting field. Probably in the event and entertainment lighting field first but why not in architectural lighting? Why not have some spectacular lighting drones in a ballroom or for an outdoor landscape or façade. Once you start thinking about it (at least I do) it seems the opportunities are multiple!
Light Watch 3-95: Here is the link to the video. I leave you to imagine what else we could do with this cross over technology!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseTX_rW3uM&feature=player_embedded
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